The death of Turgay Tamer, just days after journalist Cevheri Güven exposed extraordinary irregularities surrounding the autopsy of former intelligence officer Kaşif Kozinoğlu, raises an unavoidable question: Has a reopened investigation into one suspicious death now produced another?
The investigation into the mysterious 2011 death of former Turkish intelligence officer Kaşif Kozinoğlu has taken a dramatic and potentially explosive turn.
Dr. Turgay Tamer, who had recently been detained and questioned as part of the newly reopened Kozinoğlu investigation, was found dead at his home in Büyükçekmece, Istanbul, on September 27.
He was 66.
Tamer had been detained on September 10 and released four days later under judicial supervision and a travel ban. His wife, who had been abroad, reportedly discovered his body after returning home. His remains were transferred to the Forensic Medicine Institute to determine the exact cause of death.
Some initial reports explicitly described the death as suspicious. TRT Haber, Turkey’s state broadcaster, ran the story under the headline “Suspicious Death in the Kozinoğlu Investigation.” Other reports said police initially treated the circumstances as suspicious, although accounts differ on what investigators observed at the scene. That discrepancy itself makes it important not to declare a cause before the forensic examination is completed.
But the timing is extraordinary.
Because Tamer died only days after investigative journalist Cevheri Güven brought renewed public attention to what he described as serious irregularities surrounding Kozinoğlu’s death, autopsy and forensic evidence.
And Güven’s reporting may now deserve considerably more attention than it initially received.
Cevheri Güven Had Already Pointed to the Autopsy
On September 20, Güven published an extensive investigation into the Kozinoğlu case.
One of the most significant elements of his reporting concerned what allegedly happened during Kozinoğlu’s autopsy.
According to Güven, a cardiologist participating in the autopsy did not see findings sufficient to support the conclusion that Kozinoğlu had died from a heart attack.
Güven reported that the physician wanted Kozinoğlu’s coronary arteries examined more closely and concluded that the observed obstruction was not at a level that would ordinarily explain a fatal cardiac event.
Then something remarkable allegedly happened.
According to Güven, the cardiologist who had raised those concerns did not appear as a signatory to the final forensic report. Instead, forensic medicine specialist Sermet Koç signed the report. Güven therefore called for investigators to determine exactly which doctors participated in the autopsy and to obtain any surviving video records of the procedure.
The official forensic conclusion issued in 2012 was very different.
It attributed Kozinoğlu’s death to chronic ischemic heart disease and reported no evidence of poisoning.
That contradiction lies near the heart of the reopened investigation.
And Güven did not stop there.
Blood, Tissue Samples — and a Mysterious Break-In
Güven drew attention to another extraordinary episode.
Blood and tissue samples taken from Kozinoğlu for toxicological examination had been sent to the Forensic Medicine Institute’s Chemistry Department.
According to Güven’s account, shortly afterward an escaped convict somehow entered the highly secured Forensic Medicine Institute in Istanbul.
The incident was officially treated as a theft.
But Güven raised a much more disturbing question:
What exactly happened to Kozinoğlu’s biological samples?
Were they intact?
Were they properly preserved?
Could anyone have accessed them?
And was the supposed burglary really unrelated to one of Turkey’s most politically sensitive deaths?
Those questions remain allegations and lines of inquiry rather than established findings. But after the reopening of the Kozinoğlu investigation, they can no longer simply be dismissed as historical curiosities.
Then Turgay Tamer Was Detained
Nearly 15 years after Kozinoğlu’s death, prosecutors reopened the investigation.
A court overturned the previous non-prosecution decision on August 26, 2026, and investigators began revisiting the events surrounding Kozinoğlu’s final hours, medical treatment and death. The investigation expanded through several rounds of detentions.
Turgay Tamer was among those detained in the second wave.
Here an important factual distinction must be preserved.
Some Turkish media initially identified Tamer as a former employee or doctor of the Forensic Medicine Institute. The Silivri Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office subsequently said that he was not an Adli Tıp doctor, but rather the campus physician at Silivri Prison at the time Kozinoğlu was incarcerated.
The prosecutor’s office also said Kozinoğlu’s medical emergency had not been reported to Tamer and that Tamer had not personally intervened in Kozinoğlu’s treatment.
That clarification creates another important question rather than eliminating one:
If Tamer did not treat Kozinoğlu during the fatal emergency, why was he detained in a homicide-related investigation 15 years later?
What precisely did prosecutors want to know from him?
What did he tell them?
And Two Weeks Later, He Was Dead
This is the sequence that makes Tamer’s death impossible to treat as an ordinary footnote.
A politically explosive investigation is reopened.
Tamer is detained.
He is questioned.
He is released under judicial supervision and prohibited from leaving Turkey.
Cevheri Güven publishes allegations concerning irregularities surrounding Kozinoğlu’s medical and forensic process.
Then Tamer is found dead inside his home.
None of this proves murder.
But it creates circumstances in which the possibility of foul play must be investigated rigorously rather than casually dismissed.
The distinction is essential.
There is currently no publicly available forensic evidence establishing that Tamer was killed. There is also reporting that he suffered from existing health problems, and his death could ultimately prove natural. The autopsy may provide precisely that conclusion.
But until that examination is complete, declaring his death natural would be no more justified than declaring it murder.
And because Tamer was not simply a random 66-year-old man found dead at home, the threshold for transparency should be exceptionally high.
He was a recently detained suspect or witness in a reopened investigation concerning the suspicious death of a former Turkish intelligence officer.
That context matters.
The Murder Possibility Cannot Simply Be Waved Away
Investigators therefore need to approach Tamer’s death as if foul play is a genuine possibility until the evidence excludes it.
That means establishing far more than a preliminary cause of death.
When exactly did Tamer die?
When was he last seen alive?
Who spoke to him after his release?
Who visited his home?
What do nearby security cameras show?
What do his telephone records show?
Did investigators seize his phone or computer when he was detained?
If so, what information did those devices contain?
What did Tamer tell prosecutors during his interrogation?
Was he scheduled to give additional testimony?
Had he expressed fear or concern to anyone?
Were there medications in the home?
Was a full toxicological examination performed?
Were there substances in his body capable of triggering cardiac arrest or mimicking natural death?
These are not conspiracy theories.
They are basic investigative questions when a person connected to a highly sensitive criminal investigation dies unexpectedly shortly after being questioned.
What Did Tamer Know?
Perhaps the most important question is also the simplest:
What did Turgay Tamer know about Kaşif Kozinoğlu’s death?
The answer may be nothing significant.
But the state itself made Tamer relevant by detaining him.
That is why prosecutors should disclose, to the extent legally possible, the subject of his interrogation.
Was he questioned about medical procedures inside Silivri Prison?
About communications among prison personnel?
About the response when Kozinoğlu became ill?
About records created afterward?
About the transfer of Kozinoğlu’s body?
About the forensic process?
Or about people who were present that night?
Without knowing why Tamer was detained, it is impossible to understand the significance of his death.
Cevheri Güven’s Reporting Now Looks More Significant
This is also why Cevheri Güven’s investigation deserves renewed scrutiny.
Güven did not simply claim that Kozinoğlu’s death was suspicious.
He identified specific points where he says the official narrative breaks down: the cardiologist who allegedly questioned the heart-attack explanation; the change in the final report’s signatories; the toxicological samples; the extraordinary security breach at the Forensic Medicine Institute; and the identities of officials involved in the forensic process.
Those claims should be tested against documentary evidence.
If they are wrong, the authorities should be able to demonstrate why.
If they are correct, however, the implications are enormous.
Because then the Kozinoğlu investigation is no longer merely asking how an intelligence officer died in a prison cell in 2011.
It is asking whether institutions responsible for establishing the truth about his death themselves became part of the mystery.
And now a doctor recently questioned in that investigation is dead.
One Suspicious Death Is Now Investigating Another
There is a grim symmetry to the story.
Kaşif Kozinoğlu died in custody in 2011.
The official explanation was heart disease.
Questions persisted.
Nearly 15 years later, the investigation was reopened.
People connected to the prison and medical process were detained.
Turgay Tamer was one of them.
Then Tamer himself died.
Perhaps the autopsy will establish an entirely natural cause.
If so, that finding should be supported by transparent forensic evidence.
But if investigators discover unexplained toxicological findings, injuries, unusual communications, missing evidence or inconsistencies in the timeline, Turkey could be confronting something considerably darker:
a suspicious death occurring inside the investigation of another suspicious death.
That possibility cannot responsibly be presented as established fact.
But neither can it responsibly be ignored.
The burden is now on Turkish authorities to answer three questions clearly:
Why was Turgay Tamer detained?
What did he tell investigators about Kaşif Kozinoğlu?
And how, exactly, did Turgay Tamer die?
Until those questions are answered, Cevheri Güven’s investigation—and the disturbing questions it raised about Kozinoğlu’s original autopsy—will only become more significant.
