A court in Ankara on Friday ordered the release of former Turkish military officer Nuri Gökhan Bozkır, the only jailed defendant standing trial over the 2002 killing of Ankara University academic Necip Hablemitoğlu, although he will remain in prison due to a separate case.
The decision came at a hearing at Ankara’s 28th High Criminal Court in the trial of 10 defendants over Hablemitoğlu’s assassination.
Hablemitoğlu, a faculty member at Ankara University, was shot dead in front of his home in Ankara on December 18, 2002.
The court kept judicial supervision measures in place for defendants who are not in pretrial detention and adjourned the case until May 18.
A lawyer for the Hablemitoğlu family told the court that prosecutors have opened a fresh investigation to identify people seen in security camera footage from the days before the killing, including recordings from a conference Hablemitoğlu attended in Eskişehir and footage from a supermarket he visited on the day he was killed.
Bozkır denied the accusations and asked the court to focus on what he called the “real perpetrators,” saying phone records and witness statements show he was not at the scene.
Bozkır’s continued imprisonment is linked to another file that Turkish media describe as the “onion trucks” case, in which a court in Şanlıurfa sentenced him to 21 years, nine months on charges including supplying weapons to a terrorist organization, in a case tied to alleged shipments for the Islamic State group.
Bozkır was previously recaptured in Ankara in January 2024 after he failed to comply with a signature requirement under judicial supervision.