On the night of 4 May 2017, an armoured vehicle of the Panzer type, driven by police officer Ömer Yeğit, who was assigned to guard the MHP Silopi District Organization building in the Karşıyaka neighbourhood of Silopi, Şırnak, crashed into the living room of a single-storey house belonging to Mesut Yıldırım. The armoured vehicle broke through the walls and columns of the house and entered the living room, killing 7-year-old Muhammed Yıldırım and 6-year-old Furkan Yıldırım, who were sleeping there.

Following the incident, an expert examination of the armoured vehicle was carried out on 12 May 2017. The examination found no technical fault in the vehicle. It also found that the personnel driving the vehicle had not received any training on operating armoured vehicles and concluded that the incident had resulted from the personnel’s lack of knowledge and experience.

Following an investigation conducted by the Cizre Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, criminal proceedings were brought against police officers Ömer Yeğit and Murat Maden for causing death by negligence.

Defendant Ömer Yeğit, who had been detained, was released under a judicial control measure at the first hearing on 17 October 2017. At the hearings on 11 January 2018 and 19 April 2018, police officers whose signatures appeared on the record assigning the armoured vehicle were heard as witnesses. At the hearing on 12 July 2018, a police officer who testified stated that the District Police Chief was responsible for assigning personnel who had not received training on operating armoured vehicles.

At the hearing on 25 October 2018, an expert report prepared following an on-site inspection conducted between hearings was submitted to the case file. The report stated that the primary fault lay with the armoured vehicle that had crashed into the house, while Ömer Yeğit, who was driving the vehicle, and the police officers who had made the assignment were found to have secondary fault. The police officers who testified as witnesses and defendants at the same hearing stated that the order to assign personnel without the required certification had been given by the District Police Chief.

Counsel for the complainants objected to the expert report, stating that the responsibility of those who had ordered and those who had implemented the assignment of personnel without training on operating armoured vehicles should be investigated. They requested that the act be assessed not only as negligence but also in terms of eventual intent, and that the defendants be detained. The court rejected the requests for detention and decided to obtain an expert report from Istanbul Technical University in order to reassess the degree of fault.

At the hearings on 25 December 2018 and 14 February 2019, the hearings were adjourned because the expected expert report had not yet been received into the case file.

At the hearing on 2 May 2019, the expert report prepared by Istanbul Technical University was submitted to the case file. The report attributed the lowest level of fault to Ömer Yeğit and Murat Maden. It found the armoured vehicle primarily at fault, noting that the vehicle was 23 years old and could have developed faults that could not have been detected in advance. At the hearing, Ömer Yeğit stated that he had returned to duty and requested that his obligation to sign in be lifted. The court lifted the obligation to sign in but ordered that the ban on leaving the country remain in place.

At the hearing on 31 May 2019, Ahmet Yıldırım’s request to participate in the proceedings was accepted on the grounds that he could have suffered harm as a result of the offence. In the prosecutor’s opinion on the merits, the public prosecutor requested that Ömer Yeğit and Murat Maden be convicted of causing death and injury by negligence.

At the judgment hearing on 19 June 2019, the court convicted Ömer Yeğit, the driver of the armoured vehicle, of causing the death of one or more persons and the injury of one or more persons by negligence and sentenced him to 2 years and 6 months’ imprisonment. The sentence was reduced by one-sixth to 2 years and 1 month and was then converted into a judicial fine of TRY 19,000.

Murat Maden, the police supervisor who was tried for the same offence, was acquitted. The court took into account that Maden had been in office for only one week on the date of the incident and that assigning police officers without certification to operate armoured vehicles had previously been an established practice. As for Selçuk Erdoğan, the Silopi District Police Chief at the time, whose responsibility for the incident had been alleged, the court decided to file a criminal complaint against him for abuse of office.

The lawyers representing the Yıldırım brothers appealed against the judgment before the Regional Court of Appeal. The public prosecutor also appealed against Murat Maden’s acquittal, arguing that Maden should be convicted of the same offence as Ömer Yeğit.

Following the appellate review, the TRY 19,000 judicial fine imposed on Ömer Yeğit became final. The acquittal of Murat Maden, however, was overturned by the Court of Cassation. Following the Court of Cassation’s reversal, it was decided that the first hearing of the retrial concerning Murat Maden would be held on 20 October 2026.