Oktay was found critically wounded in his automobile in February with a single gunshot wound to the head and was pronounced dead at a hospital in Ankara. Police found two guns in his car. Suicide was listed as the cause of death by officials, but his family remained suspicious about the circumstances.
The autopsy findings brought back questions over whether the special operations unit head could have been assassinated. The family's lawyer, Ülkü Gedikli, announced that he would demand a more thorough investigation into Oktay's death.
“Doctors at Gazi University's school of medicine have examined the autopsy. They said suicide was not the likely cause of Oktay's death. The findings in the report have brought with them doubts that a thorough probe into the incident was carried out. We don't know whether the fractures happened when Oktay was alive or during cardiac massage. An investigation should shed light on all these questions,” the lawyer noted.
Shortly after his death, claims emerged that Oktay shot himself in the head after his girlfriend refused to see him. Oktay was married but also had a mistress, according to rumors. Other sources said he killed himself after he felt frustrated when his car became stuck in the snow.
Oktay served as the head of the National Police Department's special operations unit for 13 years. He replaced İbrahim Şahin, who is currently under arrest for membership in the Ergenekon terrorist organization, a clandestine network charged with attempting to foment chaos and undermine stability in the hopes of leading to a coup. Oktay's name was mentioned in the testimonies of two Ergenekon suspects.
His death came only weeks after the suicide of an alleged member of JİTEM, a clandestine and illegal gendarmerie intelligence unit whose existence has thus far been officially denied, bringing the question to mind of whether he could have killed himself out of fear of being detained as part of the Ergenekon probe.
