Yavuz Yapıcıoğlu, the "Screwdriver Killer"

The victims in Çorlu

On 23 December 2002 a series of attacks in the Sağlık neighbourhood of Çorlu, in Tekirdağ province, left three men dead and two wounded. The dead were Hüseyin Yumuk, a 45-year-old guard at the facilities of the local football club Çorluspor, Özcan Karagözoğlu, and Şakir Temürcü, a 44-year-old kiosk operator. The wounded were Salih Baş, the 36-year-old imam of the Tonguçlar Mosque, and Beytullah Güngen. Newspapers reported that a screwdriver was used. Police identified the suspect as Yavuz Yapıcıoğlu, soon known in the press as the "tornavidalı katil", the screwdriver killer.

A long trail before 2002

It was not his first contact with the authorities. Milliyet and other papers later compiled a record of earlier violence attributed to him, beginning with a neighbourhood quarrel in Istanbul that ended in a knife fight in which three people were stabbed. A Habertürk retrospective dates a related incident in the Merter district to 1 July 1993, saying a young man named Sait was killed and a taxi driver was stabbed, and that Güngören police caught the suspect a day later. Most other timelines start in 1994, so accounts differ on when the violence began. Press accounts go on to attribute to him the killing of a school janitor in Istanbul, three further killings in Adana over trivial disputes, and two killings in Ankara during a bus stopover, one of them of a witness. He was also reported to have set fire to his elder brother's shop and the homes of two relatives, to have tried to attack his father in Silivri, and to have killed his grandmother in Edremit, in Balıkesir province. These earlier cases come from press compilations; the 2004 court reports cover only Çorlu.

Psychiatric reports and repeated release

What made the case notorious was how often Yapıcıoğlu returned to the streets. According to Habertürk, after the early Istanbul killings he was held in Bayrampaşa Prison until a report from Bakırköy Psychiatric Hospital stated that he lacked criminal capacity, the legal threshold for being held responsible for a crime. He was released. Hürriyet and Milliyet reported that after the death of his grandmother he was treated at the Manisa Mental and Nervous Diseases Hospital rather than prosecuted. Both papers also reported that about three years before the Çorlu attacks he attacked a Belgian tourist at a mosque in Çorlu and was stopped after being shot in the leg. Habertürk adds that, because of that finding, he was not detained over later incidents and repeatedly left the hospitals treating him.

Investigation and the question of sanity

After his arrest for the Çorlu killings, Yapıcıoğlu was sent back to Bakırköy for observation and then moved to Tekirdağ Closed Prison while the Tekirdağ Heavy Penal Court took up the cases. The court asked Turkey's Forensic Medicine Institute whether he had criminal capacity. Habertürk reports that two units of the institute reached opposite conclusions: its observation department found him sane, while one of its specialist boards found the reverse. The court asked for the conflict to be resolved, and the institute's board issued a single report concluding that he was sane and could be held criminally responsible. According to Hürriyet, he accepted that finding in court and admitted killing Temürcü.

Verdicts and current status

The Çorlu events were split into five separate cases. In January 2004 Hürriyet reported that the Tekirdağ court had sentenced him to 24 years of heavy imprisonment for killing Temürcü and 16 years for the attempted murder of the imam, a combined 40 years. Milliyet's report on a March 2004 hearing gives slightly different numbers: 28 years for Temürcü and 24 years for the attack on the imam, reduced to 16 on mitigating grounds, plus a new sentence of 26 years for killing Karagözoğlu. Two further cases, one murder and one attempted murder, were then still pending. A 2010 report in Posta summarised his sentences as 44 years for two murders, with other cases still open. The reports do not agree, and none located gives a final combined total. Habertürk reported in December 2024 that he remains in prison.

How many victims?

Police records cited by Milliyet, Posta and Habertürk connect Yapıcıoğlu to 18 killings between 1994 and 2002, leading the Turkish press to call him the republic's most prolific serial killer. His relatives and eyewitnesses have claimed the true number is about 43. These higher figures are claims, not court findings. Habertürk's 2024 article, drawing on the memories of a retired police reporter, also raised the possibility that unsolved killings of young women in Istanbul's Avcılar district in 1992 and 1993 were linked to him. He has never been charged with those deaths, and the link remains unproven.

Significance for Turkish justice

The case shows what can happen in Turkey when the assessment of criminal capacity goes wrong. Whether a suspect can be held responsible rests heavily on reports from Bakırköy and the Forensic Medicine Institute. In Yapıcıoğlu's case, earlier findings that he could not be held responsible allowed him to leave custody and care, and even after 2002 the institute's own units disagreed before its board settled the question. The case exposed how loosely psychiatric hospitals, prosecutors and police were connected.