5.  The applicant was born in 1970 and lives in Istanbul.
6.  On 19 November 2007 the applicant’s sons, Aykut and Aykan, born in 1991 and 1992 respectively, left home in their school uniforms with their rucksacks to go to their secondary school. When they did not return home at the usual time in the evening, their mother called the applicant, who in turn enquired about his sons’ whereabouts from friends and family. When his enquiries did not yield any results, the applicant informed the police that his sons were missing.
7.  In his statement taken at the Samandıra police station on 20 November 2007 the applicant told the police that his sons had apparently not gone to school after leaving home the previous day, and that they had left their mobile telephones at home. He also informed the police that they had not had any disagreements or fights which could have prompted their disappearance.
8.  On the same day, the police informed the Kartal public prosecutor of the disappearance of the applicant’s sons. The public prosecutor instructed the police to take the statements of those who could have information as to the two children’s whereabouts, and to keep him informed of developments.
9.  On 22 November 2007 the police took the applicant’s wife’s statement. She told the police that on the morning in question her sons had left home on foot, whereas they had normally taken a minibus to go to school. She had noticed that Aykan had looked somewhat anxious before leaving home, and that he had forgotten to wear his school tie and socks. She had had no idea where Aykut and Aykan could have gone, and none of their friends, relatives or school teachers had had any information on the two childrens’ whereabouts either. Although her son Aykut had had a mobile telephone, he had left the telephone at home that day. She added that she had no reason to suspect anyone with regard to her children’s disappearance.
10.  Based on the information obtained from the applicant and his wife, the police registered Aykut and Aykan as missing persons.
11.  Still on 22 November 2007, the Kartal district gendarmerie asked the Kartal public prosecutor’s office to authorise access to Aykut Aka’s mobile phone records for the past six months.
12.  On 27 November 2007 the Kartal public prosecutor’s office asked the Turkish Telecommunication Institution to provide a record of the individuals who had called Aykut Aka’s mobile telephone in the past three months, together with their complete identity information and addresses.
13.  In the meantime, on 23 November 2007 three fishermen, T.G., K.S. and A.D., had contacted the coast guard as they had spotted a corpse at the bottom of the sea off the Emirgan coast. The male corpse recovered by the divers deployed to the incident site was fully dressed in a school uniform and wearing a rucksack. While removing the rucksack from the body, they noted that the rucksack was filled with heavy stones. The student identity card subsequently discovered in the victim’s pocket suggested that the body was that of the applicant’s son, Aykan Aka. The body was subsequently taken to the morgue of the İstinye State Hospital, where the applicant confirmed the identity of his son.
14.  On the same day, a post mortem examination was conducted on the body in the presence of the Kartal public prosecutor. An initial examination revealed no sign of violence on the body. It was decided to transfer the body to the Forensic Medicine Institute for a full autopsy, without which the definite cause of death could not be established.
15.  On the same day, officers from the Sarıyer Security Directorate prepared an incident scene report. After reiterating the aforementioned information, the report verified that stones weighing three to four kilograms had been found in the victim’s rucksack.
16.  Still on the same day, the police took another statement from the applicant. After reiterating the statement he had made on 20 November 2007 (see paragraph 7 above), he provided the following additional information.
-  On 21 November 2007, two days after their disappearance, his son Aykut’s mobile telephone had rung. When he had picked up the telephone, a woman unknown to him had asked why he had answered that telephone, and then had hung up. When the applicant had called the number back, someone else had answered and hung up, after shouting at him for calling.
-  His son Aykut had received a text message in Arabic on the occasion of the bayram[1], one month prior to his disappearance. Following his request, the Samandıra gendarmerie command had managed to locate the owner of the number from which the message had been sent (M.Y.), but M.Y. had denied any involvement with the message.
-  After his sons’ disappearance, the applicant had found a handwritten note by Aykan in their room, which read:
“I, Aykan Aka, will die and become a martyr on December 13th at 2.25 a.m. Place of [death]: Istanbul Samandıra/Kavaklık. I will be waiting for all of you. Words: Aykan Aka Written by: Aykan Aka [and signature]. I am giving my life to his holiness Azrael, this is wonderful”.
17.  On 26 November 2007 the police questioned the principal of the secondary school which the applicants’ sons had attended, along with Aykan’s school friends, Y.D. and Ö.K. The principal said that Aykut had been talkative and a successful student. Aykan, on the other hand, had not had good marks, and, according to his schoolmates, had not been very sociable. Y.D. stated that he had met Aykan some three months before at the start of the school year. Aykan had been withdrawn, but he had not appeared to have any problems at school or home. He had always studied during the breaks, and had told him to study too so that they could get good marks. He had regularly scribbled notes such as “doomsday signs”, “dajjal[2]” or “Christ” in his notebook. He had once made a calculation and said that the doomsday would arrive in fifty two years and two hours, and had then said that it would not matter whether they died then or fifty two years later. Ö.K.’s statement corroborated Y.D.’s.
18.  The applicant requested that an underwater search be carried out along the Emirgan coastline to find his other son Aykut’s body. This was done on 30 November 2007. A body was located at the sea floor some fifty metres from the coast. Just like Aykan, Aykut was also wearing a rucksack filled with heavy stones. His rucksack was also attached to his body by a rope.
19.  The incident scene report prepared on the same day noted no signs of violence on Aykut’s body. The post mortem examination conducted subsequently found that the cause of death appeared to be drowning. It was, however, decided to transfer the body to the Forensic Medicine Institute for a full autopsy, without which the definite cause of death could not be established.
20.  On 3 December 2007 the Sarıyer public prosecutor’s office requested detailed information on incoming and outgoing calls pertaining to four telephone numbers which had been apparently used by the applicant and his sons in the period between 5 and 30 November 2007.
21.  The Turkish Telecommunication Institute informed the Sarıyer public prosecutor’s office in a letter dated 13 December 2007, that the requested information had been compiled. The call records enclosed with that letter were not submitted to the Court. However, a handwritten note on the letter, by an unknown author, indicates that no significant calls were detected in the records.
22.  According to a report prepared by the police on 28 December 2007, the CCTV footage from 19 November 2007 of the place where the bodies were recovered did not reveal any information that could shed light on the circumstances of the applicants’ sons’ suspicious deaths.
23.  The autopsy reports issued by the Forensic Medicine Institute on 14 and 25 January 2008 in regard to Aykan and Aykut respectively noted their cause of death as drowning. The report also indicated that no toxic substances were found in their bodies, nor were any signs of trauma noted.
24.  On 1 February 2008 the Sarıyer public prosecutor rendered a decision not to prosecute in connection with the death of Aykan. The decision simply noted that the cause of death had been established as drowning by the Forensic Medicine Institute, and that no evidence of a crime had been found.
25.  In a similar decision not to prosecute taken on 15 February 2008 with respect to Aykut, the Sarıyer public prosecutor stated that there was no reason to hold anyone accountable for his death.
26.  On 1 April 2008 the applicant objected to the decisions delivered by the Sarıyer public prosecutor. He claimed in particular that the public prosecutor had failed to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the incident. He had not fully investigated his sons’ telephone records or CCTV footage that could have revealed information regarding their deaths, nor had he questioned his sons’ close friends. The lack of an effective investigation into the incident had impaired his trust in the justice system, which had compelled him to participate in a live TV show in the hope of gathering information that could shed light on the circumstances of his sons’ deaths. A number of viewers had called the studio with possible information on the incident, yet the public prosecutor’s office had not sought those individuals out with a view to getting official statements. He also made the following allegations.
-  On 7 February 2008 five individuals had attempted to kidnap his younger son Volkan, an incident which had been reported to the police.
-  On 22 February 2008 three photos of his son Aykan had been left on his doorstep, which had also been reported to the police.
He claimed that all of these factors, when viewed together, showed that his sons’ deaths had not been a simple case of drowning, and that he suspected that they had been killed. He asked the authorities to extend the investigation into the deaths and to question his sons’ friends H.B., Y.A., E.İ., F.Ç. and E.Ç., none of whom had yet been questioned.
27.  On 10 June 2008 the Bakırkoy Assize Court dismissed the applicant’s objection, holding that the Sarıyer public prosecutor’s decisions not to prosecute had complied with the procedure and law.