Adnan Çolak admitted killing eleven elderly people in the province of Artvin, in northeastern Turkey, between 1992 and 1995. The people he killed were between 68 and 95 years old, according to the national papers Milliyet and Posta, which have returned to the case several times since. He was caught after an attack in which the person he meant to kill survived. The Zonguldak 1st Heavy Penal Court tried him in proceedings that lasted about five years and sentenced him to death six times, with a long prison term on top.
Turkey had carried out no judicial executions since 1984, and in 2002 it abolished the death penalty in peacetime. On May 28, 2005, Çolak was released under the conditional release law of December 2000 that the Turkish public knows as the "Rahşan affı," the Rahşan amnesty, named after Rahşan Ecevit, the wife of the prime minister of the day.
The Turkish reports give few details of Çolak's life before his arrest. In an October 2006 article in Gazete Vatan, the journalist Türkan Hiçyılmaz wrote only that a man named Adnan Çolak had turned up in Artvin in the 1990s. The researcher and author Sevinç Yavuz, whom she interviewed for that article, described him as an uneducated shepherd.
The same Vatan report gives an account of his childhood, and it comes from Çolak himself. Speaking in court, he blamed his parents. He said he was one of five children, that the children slept in the same room as their mother and father, and that he had come to hate his parents there. The article reports the statement without testing it, and no other detail of his family appears in the reports.
His date of birth was not reported in the national papers. Milliyet's 2009 photo gallery on Turkish serial killings and its June 2016 report, as well as a 2013 album on the civil servants' news site Memurlar.net, all say that he was 25 years old when he began to kill.
The killings took place in Artvin and in its districts between 1992 and 1995, the reports agree. Posta's 2010 summary puts the case in a single line: Çolak killed eleven elderly people in Artvin in those years. Milliyet, Memurlar.net and Haber7 give the same span of ages, from 68 to 95.
The reports differ on who the eleven were. Webtekno, in a 2024 feature on Turkish serial killers, says that six of the eleven were women. Habertürk, in an April 2010 feature by Serap Özgün, describes all eleven as elderly women. Gazete Vatan's 2006 article says that elderly couples were among those he attacked.
The national coverage does not name any of the eleven, and it says little about who they were beyond their ages and the province where they lived. Their families have not been quoted in the reports.
The investigation went slowly. According to the Vatan article, the gendarmerie and the police did not connect the killings to one another, even though they followed the same pattern. Local newspapers gave the unknown attacker a nickname, Artvin Canavarı, and, according to Sevinç Yavuz, they called him nothing else. Canavar is the Turkish word for a wild beast, and Yavuz argued in the interview that Turkish culture tends to describe a man who kills again and again as a beast rather than recognizing him as a serial killer.
Yavuz had asked the Turkish National Police, the Emniyet Genel Müdürlüğü, for a list of the country's serial killers, and she was given six names. Çolak was not among them. She counted him as a serial killer all the same and pointed out the omission.
In the same interview Yavuz compared the Artvin killings with those of the American Richard Ramirez, who, she said, had worked in a similar way in 1985. She doubted that Çolak had ever heard of Ramirez, because he was an uneducated shepherd. The comparison is hers; no court or police finding links the two cases.
The series ended when one of the people Çolak attacked survived. Posta's 2018 gallery and a Demirören News Agency (DHA) report printed by Gazete Vatan in August 2018 both say that a victim who lived through the attack helped lead to his capture. The 2006 Vatan article says only that he was caught after he failed to kill the last person he had set out to kill. The reports do not give the date of the arrest or the details of how the authorities found him.
Çolak admitted to eleven killings. Milliyet's 2009 gallery and Haber7's 2013 gallery both describe the eleven as his confession, and both quote the words he used to explain them.
The statement the Turkish press has quoted most often reads: "Yaşlı insanları öldürüyorsam da bunlar zaten zamanlarını doldurmuşlar. Onlar bizim yerimize fazladan yaşıyorlar." In English: if I kill old people, they have already filled out their time; they are living extra years in our place. Milliyet printed the words in 2009 and again in 2016, and Posta, Haber7, Memurlar.net and the DHA report carried in Gazete Vatan have repeated them.
Memurlar.net, in its 2013 album, adds the rest of the explanation as the press reported it: "Hem kendimi tatmin ediyordum, hem de onları öldürerek toplumu rahatlatıyordum." He was, he said, satisfying himself and at the same time easing the burden on society by killing them. The DHA report of 2018 says that he made this argument in his defense in court.
Habertürk's 2010 feature quotes a shorter version of the same idea: "yaşlılar bizim kısmetimizi yiyor," the old are eating our share. The press has treated these words as the motive he gave. The reports do not describe any psychiatric examination.
Çolak was tried far from Artvin, before the Zonguldak 1st Heavy Penal Court (Zonguldak 1. Ağır Ceza Mahkemesi). The reports do not explain why the case was heard there. Milliyet's 2009 gallery says that the trial, which began after his arrest, lasted five years, and later reports repeat that figure.
The court sentenced him to death six times. On the prison term the reports disagree. Milliyet in 2009, Memurlar.net in 2013 and Webtekno in 2024 give six death sentences and 112 years of heavy imprisonment (ağır hapis). Posta's 2010 summary gives six death sentences and 40 years. Milliyet's 2016 report, Posta's 2018 gallery and the 2018 DHA report mention only the 112 years, without the death sentences.
The national reports do not say which of the eleven killings each death sentence covered, or why the court imposed six death sentences rather than eleven. Nor do they describe any appeal or the date on which the judgment became final.
Turkey had carried out no judicial execution since 1984, Human Rights Watch noted in August 2002, although courts went on passing death sentences.
On August 2, 2002, the Turkish parliament abolished the death penalty for all offenses committed in peacetime and replaced it with life imprisonment. Human Rights Watch reported that eighty-three prisoners on death row were reprieved, among them Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK. On January 9, 2004, Turkey's ambassador to the Council of Europe signed Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires abolition in all circumstances, including war, Al Jazeera reported.
The reports on Çolak do not say how these changes affected his own sentences.
Law No. 4616, on conditional release and the suspension of cases and sentences for crimes committed up to April 23, 1999, was adopted by the Turkish parliament on December 21, 2000, and published in the Resmi Gazete, the official gazette, the next day. Its first article provided that death sentences for crimes committed before that date would not be carried out, and that ten years would be deducted, once, from the terms of people sentenced to life or to other prison terms. Prisoners who had served the rest of their time after the deduction were to be released. A long list of offenses was excluded.
The law took its popular name from Rahşan Ecevit, the wife of Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit. According to a December 2025 Karar report on the law's history, the proposal grew out of a news story she had read about a two-year-old girl who spent her days in a kindergarten and her nights in prison with her mother, who was serving a 27-year sentence. President Süleyman Demirel vetoed the first version passed by parliament, Karar reported, and the bill went through on a second attempt after prison riots. Prisons with room for about 70,000 inmates were left holding about 40,000, though the number rose again by more than 20,000 within three years.
In July 2001 the Constitutional Court ruled on challenges to the law. Its deputy president, Haşim Kılıç, announced that the court considered it a conditional release law rather than an amnesty, and the court's rulings partly widened its reach, the news site Bianet reported at the time.
The law's breadth caused lasting controversy. Crimes committed by people freed under it shocked the public, Karar wrote, and Rahşan Ecevit herself later said: "Benim düşündüğüm katillerin değil garibanların affıydı." What she had had in mind, she said, was an amnesty for the poor, not for killers.
Çolak was released on May 28, 2005, under the conditional release provision known as the Rahşan affı, according to Posta's 2018 gallery and the DHA report printed by Gazete Vatan in August 2018. Webtekno's June 2024 feature repeats that he was released in 2005 under the same law, despite his six death sentences and 112-year term.
The reports since then do not say where he went after leaving prison, whether he returned to Artvin, or whether he is alive. The reports describe no later court case involving him.
The case has become a standard entry in Turkish newspaper features on serial murder. Milliyet included it in its 2009 gallery of Turkey's serial killers. Posta and Habertürk summarized it in April 2010, Memurlar.net and Haber7 in August 2013, and Milliyet again in June 2016, in a report on what it called the mystery of Turkey's most recent serial killer. Posta's February 2018 gallery and the DHA report of August 2018, written after a new murder case, both listed it. Webtekno included it among the twelve cases in its 2024 feature.
These features repeat the same small set of facts: the eleven killings, the ages of 68 to 95, the quotation about old people having filled their time, the five-year trial, and the sentences. The 2006 Vatan interview with Sevinç Yavuz goes further, placing the case in a discussion of how Turkish police and newspapers had dealt with repeated killings.
The prison term. Most reports give 112 years of heavy imprisonment alongside the six death sentences; Posta's 2010 summary gives 40 years. Some later reports mention only the 112 years.
Who the eleven were. Webtekno says six of the eleven were women; Habertürk says all eleven were elderly women; Gazete Vatan in 2006 says elderly couples were among them.
His age. Milliyet and Memurlar.net say he began killing at 25. The reports do not give his date of birth, so the figure cannot be checked against one.
What the sentences covered. Çolak admitted eleven killings, and the court passed six death sentences. The reports do not set out which killings were proven in court, which charges were brought, or whether any of the eleven were left out of the judgment.
The arrest. The reports agree that a person he attacked survived and helped lead to his capture, but they give no date and no account of the arrest itself.
The Ramirez comparison. Sevinç Yavuz's comparison with Richard Ramirez is her own opinion, offered in a 2006 interview.
1984: Turkey's last judicial execution, according to Human Rights Watch.
1992 to 1995: eleven killings of elderly people in Artvin province, which Çolak later admitted.
After the last attack: a person he attacked survives and helps lead to his arrest; the date was not reported.
About five years after his arrest: the Zonguldak 1st Heavy Penal Court sentences him to death six times and to a prison term (112 years in most reports; 40 years in one).
April 23, 1999: cutoff date for crimes covered by Law No. 4616.
December 21, 2000: parliament adopts Law No. 4616, the conditional release law known as the Rahşan affı; it is published in the official gazette on December 22.
July 2001: the Constitutional Court rules that Law No. 4616 is a conditional release law rather than an amnesty.
August 2, 2002: Turkey abolishes the death penalty for peacetime offenses.
January 9, 2004: Turkey signs Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights.
May 28, 2005: Çolak is released under Law No. 4616.
October 27, 2006: Gazete Vatan publishes Sevinç Yavuz's comments on the case.
2009 to 2024: the case appears in features on serial murder in Milliyet, Posta, Habertürk, Memurlar.net, Haber7, Gazete Vatan and Webtekno.