Emre Soykök, a Ph.D. student who was found dead in his dorm in the United States, did not “kill himself,” his brother says. The 26-year-old Turkish citizen, an alumnus of the prestigious Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, was studying management at the University of Texas at Dallas at the time of his death on April 21, some eight months after he enrolled in the university’s business school.
His family has called on the Turkish government to exert efforts to shed a light on the young man’s death, while his elder brother Caner Soykök says his brother was not someone who would kill himself.
Soykök was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in a storage room inside the dormitory he stayed in, according to media reports. There was no suicide note, but initial findings did not show any foul play, Turkish media reported. The family found out about his death two days after his body was found, after the Turkish Consulate in Houston notified them. An investigation is underway, while his body was recently buried in a cemetery in the capital Ankara, where the family lives.
“My son went to the United States to be a good academic. He had wanted to fulfill his dreams, to study there and return to Turkey to serve his nation. He was achieving his goals. I could not believe he was dead,” his mother, Suna Soykök, told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Thursday. She says she had a text exchange with her son two days before her death and made a videocall one week before that as well. “He was happy, joyous. He told me he had an article published in a European journal. He told me it was only the beginning and he would have his articles published in the U.S. journals,” she said. She insisted that there was nothing “negative” in his mood. “He always told me that everything was fine in his life,” she added. The mother said her son received a grant from the Turkish state and appealed to the government to help them to find any causes behind his death.
His brother, Caner Soykök, said that they asked him to stay in the dorm because they thought it would be “safer.” “Turkish Consulate officials told us that police suspected suicide but were also conducting a murder investigation. We don’t believe Emre committed suicide,” he underlined.
