Hakan Aysal walked out of a high-security Turkish prison this week after serving just six years of an aggravated life sentence for murdering his pregnant wife.
Aysal, 45, was convicted of pushing Semra Aysal, 32, off the famed Butterfly Valley cliff in southwestern Turkey in 2018, a killing prosecutors said he planned to collect on a $25,000 accident insurance policy he had taken out in her name. Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet reported Friday that the Supreme Court’s Criminal General Assembly is now reviewing his appeal while he remains free.
“My client’s six years of unjust imprisonment, approximately four of which he spent in solitary confinement, has come to an end,” Aysal’s lawyer said, according to the outlet.
Aysal’s legal team and Supreme Court Chief Prosecutor Ömer Taş have argued there was insufficient evidence to support the conviction. Aysal himself has maintained his innocence throughout, once attempting to enter an insanity plea and claiming his wife simply disappeared after he turned his back for a moment.
The release has drawn fierce condemnation from women’s rights advocates who see it as part of a broader pattern of impunity in femicide cases. “The decision is extremely worrying, not only for this case but also in terms of the evaluation of evidence in femicide cases and the debates surrounding impunity,” lawyer Hediye Gökçe Baykal told Cumhuriyet.
The women’s wing of Turkey’s New Party, a social democratic faction, issued a blistering statement demanding accountability. “A woman and her seven-month-old unborn baby lost their lives. The defendant, who received an aggravated life sentence, is now free,” the party wrote, according to the outlet. “The Supreme Court has issued a release order for Hakan Aysal, who was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment for being responsible for the death of his wife, Semra Aysal, in Muğla. We ask: How will accountability be provided for the deaths of Semra and her unborn baby?”
The original case against Aysal centered on the June 2018 incident at Butterfly Valley, a scenic destination near the city of Muğla where the couple had been taking selfies together. Semra Aysal was seven months pregnant with their child at the time. Prosecutors told the court that Aysal had made himself the sole beneficiary of the accident insurance policy and collected the funds immediately after her death.
A witness who recorded video of Semra Aysal’s final moments on the cliff provided crucial testimony. Recep Sahin told police after sharing his footage that the husband had appeared “unusually calm” following the incident. “We even joked, ‘Either this man will throw the woman off or the woman will throw the man.’ There was no interaction between them,'” Sahin said.
The aggravated life sentence, Turkey’s most severe penalty, typically means permanent imprisonment with extremely limited parole possibilities. Aysal’s early release pending appeal represents a dramatic departure from that standard.
The case now sits with Turkey’s highest criminal court as Aysal remains at liberty.