Erdoğan bodyguard commits suicide, leaves note citing insults, threats

A police officer stationed at the Presidential Protection Directorate was discovered dead in his apartment on Tuesday, in what has been ruled a suicide, Cumhuriyet newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Officer Mehmet Ali Bulut’s colleagues discovered his body when they went to his apartment to check up on him after he failed to show up to work and his phone was turned off.

“It must be what you do best to insult your personnel, threaten them, fire them, humiliate them and make them out to be liars,” Bulut said in a handwritten note. “Every man has his pride, and I couldn’t stomach those words.”

The president’s bodyguard cited two people with the initials C.B. and A.Ö., saying, “I wish you had treated your employees well and asked them how they are.’’

The victim also said he did not want any of his superiors to attend his funeral, except one police chief.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Murat Bakan submitted a parliamentary inquiry for Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu to answer, asking how many police officers had committed suicide. Bakan cited two other officers, Halil Akkaya and Ethem Dağdeviren, who had committed suicide in January and March respectively.

“These children, at the prime of their lives, want to become police officers, and then they commit suicide. What pushes them to give up on their own lives?’’ the deputy asked, addressing Soylu.

Bakan said in all cases of police suicides that became public to date, officers complained about harassment from their superiors, and asked whether the names the officers cited in their suicide notes were investigated.