Atalay Filiz was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment three times in Turkey for killings committed in two separate events almost three years apart. In September 2013, in Ankara, he killed a young man and the woman who was with him. After that he disappeared from view, living in Istanbul under a false name and with forged documents. In May 2016, in the Tuzla district of Istanbul, he killed a woman from the family he lodged with and worked for. Turkish courts found that the second killing was committed to hide who he was.
The Ankara court sentenced him on March 9, 2017, and the Istanbul court followed on December 1, 2017. An appeal court upheld the Istanbul verdict in September 2018. The Court of Cassation later set that verdict aside on one point, whether the killing had been premeditated, and the retrial again ended in aggravated life imprisonment.
Little about Filiz's early life is on the record. He was 31 at a hearing in March 2017, which places his birth in the mid-1980s. His birth date, birthplace and family are not on record. When he appeared in an Istanbul court on a forgery charge in December 2016, he described himself as single, a high school graduate and unemployed, and said he had no criminal record.
His own account, given to police in June 2016 and reported by Diken, was that he had gone to France to study and had lived in Paris with Göktuğ Demirarslan. He said he never graduated, though he told his family he had. Demirarslan later became one of his victims. Police made further claims about his schooling and his years abroad; they were never tested in court.
Göktuğ Demirarslan and Elena Radchikova were killed in Ankara on September 16, 2013. Radchikova was Demirarslan's Russian partner and was visiting him at the time, according to TRT Haber. Filiz was identified as the person responsible and was sought for about three years.
He gave several explanations afterward. According to Diken's report of his first interrogation in June 2016, he said the couple had grown suspicious of him and repeatedly raised a personal matter that angered him, and that he panicked and fled after the killings. According to Diken and other outlets, he also said at one stage that a secret message had told him the two were spies. At the March 2017 verdict hearing he said he had killed Demirarslan because he believed him to be a member of the organization the Turkish state designates as FETÖ, and that he had acted on what the public wanted. He denied that the killings were a matter of passion and said he had fled not from the police but from the KGB and FETÖ. No evidence for any of these claims is on record. In a statement to the judge in June 2016, reported by Karar, he said he had not planned the Ankara killings.
The Hürriyet Daily News reported in 2016 that Filiz was believed to have left Turkey after the Ankara killings and to have returned in 2014 on a counterfeit passport. By his own account to police, he spent time in several Anatolian towns before renting short-term lodgings in Istanbul, where he worked at a tea garden in Tuzla and later stayed in a room in the building where the family who ran it lived.
In Tuzla he used the name Furkan Altın. He also acquired other people's identity cards and driver's licenses. In December 2016 CNN Türk reported on a forgery case in an Istanbul court over identity documents belonging to three people who had lost their wallets at the tea garden. The three attended as complainants. The indictment, as reported in February 2019, accused him of making seven false identity cards while a fugitive, and prosecutors sought 14 to 35 years for each of seven counts of forgery of official documents. A hospital report found him fully responsible for his actions at the time of the offenses. The hearings were adjourned, and no verdict in the forgery case is on record.
Fatma Kayıkçı, a mother of two, lived in Tuzla, in the same building as Filiz. Her family ran the tea garden where he had worked for about a year and a half. The court later found that she had repeatedly asked him for identity documents for insurance purposes, that he had not provided them, and that she had come to suspect who he really was.
Filiz killed her on Friday, May 27, 2016. In his police statement he said she had called him by his real name, Atalay, which alarmed him, and that he had earlier suspected her family of going through his belongings. In court he gave other versions. At the verdict hearing in December 2017 he said his relationship with her had been good, that the killing was not planned and that money had nothing to do with it. The Anadolu 5th High Criminal Court found otherwise. Its reasoned judgment, reported in February 2018 by Karar and Memurlar.net, said he had planned the killing in advance, and had made preparations beforehand. It held that he killed her to conceal a crime, to destroy evidence and to avoid capture, in other words to protect the secret of the Ankara killings.
Filiz left Istanbul after the killing and moved on forged documents. He was detained on June 12, 2016, in the Menderes district of İzmir, and taken to Istanbul that night. Police recovered a passport, credit cards, identity cards and false driver's licenses from him.
A criminal judgeship of peace in Istanbul ordered him held on June 13, 2016, for premeditated killing. It found insufficient evidence for the aggravated robbery charge that prosecutors had also requested. He was sent to Silivri Prison. In the same week a court in Ankara ordered his arrest for the 2013 killings. A Forensic Medicine Institute report, dated June 29, 2016 according to the prosecutor's later statement, found him fully responsible for his actions. His lawyers' repeated requests for a new assessment, citing his claims that newspapers carried messages to him, were rejected in both cases.
The trial of the Ankara killings was heard at the Ankara 1st High Criminal Court. In January 2017 the prosecutor asked for two aggravated life sentences, arguing that the killings were premeditated and that Filiz's criminal capacity was established, according to Diken. On March 7, 2017, the court rejected a defense request for a hospital assessment of his mental state. His lawyers then asked for the panel to be removed, were refused, and withdrew from the case, and the Ankara Bar Association appointed a replacement.
On March 9, 2017, the court sentenced him to aggravated life imprisonment twice for the premeditated killing of Demirarslan and Radchikova. The new lawyer's request for a fresh competence report, and his argument that a sincere confession should rule out premeditation, were both rejected. Whether the Ankara verdict was appealed, and what became of any appeal, is not on record.
The Anadolu Chief Public Prosecutor's Office issued its indictment on December 20, 2016. It sought aggravated life imprisonment for premeditated killing to conceal a crime and five to ten years for aggravated theft, the latter on the allegation that Filiz had taken money from the victim. At the second hearing, on May 5, 2017, he was brought from Silivri Prison and, asked whether he would present a defense, only gestured with his head. His lawyer asked for a competence evaluation. The prosecutor opposed it, pointing to the June 2016 report; the court asked for the file of the forgery case and kept Filiz in custody.
On December 1, 2017, the Anadolu 5th High Criminal Court sentenced him to aggravated life imprisonment for premeditated intentional killing, granting no reduction and citing his conduct during the trial. He was acquitted of aggravated theft because the evidence of guilt was not sufficient. On September 27, 2018, the Istanbul Regional Court of Appeal, 1st Criminal Chamber, rejected his appeal and upheld the sentence and the acquittal, according to TRT Haber and Karar.
The case did not end there. Cumhuriyet reported on January 15, 2020, that the Court of Cassation's 1st Criminal Chamber had reversed the ruling, finding that Filiz killed Kayıkçı on the spot after she became suspicious of him, so that premeditation could not support the sentence. At the retrial the Anadolu 5th High Criminal Court followed the reversal and convicted him of intentional killing to conceal a crime, destroy evidence, make another crime easier or avoid capture. It sentenced him to aggravated life imprisonment again, refused any reduction and ordered his detention to continue. The defense had argued that the aggravated form of the offense did not apply.
The convictions concern three deaths in two events. They are the killings of Göktuğ Demirarslan and Elena Radchikova in Ankara in 2013 and of Fatma Kayıkçı in Tuzla in 2016. Police in 2016 also linked Filiz to other matters from earlier years. He denied them, and no charge or conviction is on record.
His motives as he stated them changed from one statement to another: a secret message about spying, pressure from the couple over a personal matter, and a belief that Demirarslan belonged to a designated organization. The courts did not adopt any of these as findings. In the Istanbul case the court found a motive of concealment. In the Ankara case the court's reasoning on motive is not on record.
Filiz was found by the Forensic Medicine Institute and by a hospital in Istanbul to be fully responsible for his actions. His claims about hidden messages were not accepted as a defense.
September 16, 2013: Göktuğ Demirarslan and Elena Radchikova are killed in Ankara.
2014: Filiz is reported to have returned to Turkey on a counterfeit passport and to be living in Istanbul under a false identity.
May 27, 2016: Fatma Kayıkçı is killed in Tuzla, Istanbul.
June 12, 2016: Filiz is detained in Menderes, İzmir.
June 13, 2016: A judgeship of peace orders his arrest for the Tuzla killing.
Mid-June 2016: A court in Ankara orders his arrest for the 2013 killings.
June 29, 2016: Forensic Medicine Institute report finds him fully responsible for his actions.
December 20, 2016: Indictment in the Istanbul case.
January 2017: Prosecutor in Ankara asks for two aggravated life sentences.
March 9, 2017: Ankara 1st High Criminal Court sentences him to aggravated life imprisonment twice.
December 1, 2017: Anadolu 5th High Criminal Court sentences him to aggravated life imprisonment for the Tuzla killing and acquits him of aggravated theft.
September 27, 2018: Istanbul Regional Court of Appeal upholds the Istanbul verdict.
February 2019: Hearing in the forgery case; hospital report finds him fully responsible.
January 15, 2020: Cumhuriyet reports that the Court of Cassation reversed the verdict on premeditation and that the retrial ended in aggravated life imprisonment again.