One year has passed since the suspicious death of Rojin Kabaiş, a first-year student at Van Yüzüncü Yıl University, Department of Child Development.
While the investigation was ongoing, it was not until months later that it was learned from which areas the DNA of the two men found on Rojin Kabaiş's body had been taken. The ATK informed the court on October 10 that the first sample was taken from the chest and the second sample from the vagina, and the withholding of this information caused reactions.
Forensic informatics expert Tuncay Beşikçi shared a remarkable post on his X (former Twitter) account regarding the Rojin Kabaiş murder investigation. In his post, Beşikçi expressed serious doubts about some contradictions reflected in the press during the investigation process, allegations of access to phone data and the way the investigation was conducted.
Beşikçi's statements also reinforced the questions “is there a blackout in the file?”.
Tuncay Beşikçi's post is as follows:
Yesterday, I talked, listened and asked questions to Mr. Nizamettin, Rojin's father. His experiences, his pain, the plot and his quest for justice...
Ethem Büyükışık, the father of Doğukan, who was killed and made to look like a suicide, came to mind. One in the east and one in the west, one Kurdish and one Turkish, one civilian and one soldier, even if they speak in different sentences, their experiences, their perpetrators and their pain are the same, and it is our debt to our children to support both fathers who have lost their children.
First of all, I extend my greetings and respect to all those demanding justice for Rojin, especially the students in Van, and I expect the same sensitivity to be shown for every woman and child killed anywhere in the country.
Thanks to this reaction, a ministerial statement was finally issued, promising to “uncover the truth without leaving a single point in the dark”.
Despite this explanation, it seems that the vast majority still do not believe that Rojin committed suicide. The restriction order and the lack of access to information, the existence of which in itself raises suspicion, increases the public's perception that “they are protecting someone” and “the incident will be covered up”, which is what I am thinking today and I will share the reasons why.
After my involvement in the Narin Güran murder case and the phone investigations I conducted, I started to investigate the case, which I became aware of when the people following the case mentioned Rojin's phone and tagged me. Even though I was not going to examine her phone, I scanned all the news in the press from the archive before calling her father.
The first thing that caught my attention was a news article that was published right after Rojin's dead body was found, and even received more media coverage than her death. The news article stated that Rojin's cell phone was examined, and that Google searches such as “how to do an autopsy” and “how to go to heaven after death” were made. It was a “suicide” themed news report without any evidentiary documents or photographs, and the information that the phone password was high security and had 10 digits.
This news started to make sense after the statement made by the Minister of Justice. The statement said that, contrary to what was written in the news article, Rojin's phone password had still not been decrypted and that work was continuing. As a professional, I know very well that one cannot access the data on a phone that cannot be unlocked, and therefore cannot access past Internet searches. Even if this information could somehow be accessed - which would have been a million-dollar breakthrough - only information suggestive of suicide was selected from among them, and various headlines were published with the meaning “Rojin's cause of death revealed”.
In the days after the perception that Rojin had committed suicide spread, the media's interest in the case waned and the news was cut off like a knife. Rojin Kabaiş's name was only visible in the press 1-2 times a week and only on women's solidarity platforms. Then, as you know, with a Forensic Medicine report, the whole perception operation was reversed and today Rojin is being defended more strongly than ever.
I called Mr. Nizamettin with only the information I had read in the press. There was no reason for his daughter to commit suicide, he had never believed it from the beginning. You can say that it is normal for a father to think like that, but if you listen to what he went through, the only thought you can think of is that “there was an attempt to cover up the incident”. What happened during the autopsy, the 17 times he traveled back and forth from Diyarbakır to Van after the funeral, trying to find out what had happened by contacting all the institutions he could reach and being told that his daughter had committed suicide every time, I cannot write it all here, it is beyond words!
I was also struck by the Minister's statement that “experts from abroad” were involved in breaking the phone code. The idea of hiding the phone for a year and bringing in experts from abroad just when public pressure was mounting was itself suspicious, I never believed it. Because I now understood that the only purpose of the “high security long password” news that was leaked to the press in the first place was to keep the phone in their hands for a long time. The long password meant a long time, and the long time meant cooling the case and forgetting about Rojin. What else could the decision to restrict the investigation and the timing of the decision be but a planned precaution to prevent outside interference in the case. And in this case, if the data on the phone was to be hidden, why was the idea of bringing in experts from abroad to decrypt it even mentioned?
Before answering this question, I need to explain the perception work on the password and what it actually is. You may have seen Rojin's photos and the phone with the green case she is holding. It is a Xiaomi brand Redmi series (probably 11 pro) phone. It is a model that can be unlocked from abroad without the need for an expert or even an expert.
Those who don't believe can go to a good phone repair shop and ask. Even easier, you can find videos on how to bypass the screen lock on these phones with a search on Youtube or Tiktok. (Search for phone model and “screen lock”) In other words, the fact that Rojin's phone was not unlocked is just a hoax.
In our meeting yesterday, I told Mr. Nizamettin several times and insistently, “Whatever we do, we need to get that phone back before an accident happens to it.” Because I know that if an honest and independent expert were to examine it, it would reveal whether or not it could be unlocked, how long it took to unlock it, which Google searches were made and when, and yes, perhaps how, why or by whom Rojin was murdered. The data on Rojin's phone is therefore still in danger of being lost or destroyed.
This is where we understand why experts were brought in from abroad. A state institution that had been hiding the phone for a year could not delete data from a phone in its custody, could not take this responsibility, could not give it a bad name, and could not draw the already growing public outcry. However, the process of destroying the data on the phone could easily have been carried out by a foreigner who could have been blamed for the crime and responsibility, and state institutions and employees could have been excluded. In other words, the foreign expert was nothing more than a useful apparatus in a plot to destroy the data on the phone, not to unlock it.
I know that my allegations will not be answered, my questions will not be answered. There will be those who will call it a conspiracy theory and say that I am delusional. So be it!
Until there is a reasonable explanation about the fate of that phone, and even until I examine it myself, I will think that Rojin Karaiş was murdered and that the murder is being covered up, and I will stand by her father until the end.
You know, that the material truth would be uncovered without leaving a single point in the dark... Let the dark forces who set up the plot and misinformed the Minister worry about the rest.