The Palu Family: Under a Dark Spell

The program examines public cases

based on accounts and testimonies.

Accounts in this episode

are based on views of guests, witnesses and experts.

Allegations in this episode

are not facts but reflect personal accounts.

Experts' statements reflect personal views,

not those of producers or institutions.

The verdict has been delivered...

...in the case of the Palu Family,

...which has occupied

Turkey's news cycle for some time.

TUGÇE KOCAMAN: When I first heard

about the Palu Family,

it seemed like an ordinary story to me.

Of course, back then I didn't even know

-one percent of what I know now. -(SIREN BLARING)

The family's story horrified all of us.

He's being escorted down by police officers.

TUGÇE: I was scared.

There are very few things that frighten me.

The new allegations and the new details that emerged

were far more terrifying.

When we first examined the file,

there were religious elements involved.

They thought we would send jinn

to possess them.

TUGÇE: And everywhere you look, you find amulets.

They were saying he had some kind of spiritual master

in another dimension.

He was performing strange rituals.

They couldn't escape witchcraft and jinn.

There were threats.

In the petition he filed, he claimed the Tahnal Family

was an organ-trafficking mafia. A criminal organization.

There were also drug-related issues.

And he would stick needles in him

-when he was still a child. I was about to run away.

I was going to take my sister with me.

I reached out my hand to my sister.

There was a missing mother and daughter.

A mother and daughter

who had disappeared ten years earlier.

-Search efforts are ongoing. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

TUGÇE: There was murder,

torture, abuse...

"My sister-in-law raped me and drugged me."

For years, I blamed myself.

Because I was the one who opened the door for my father.

His criminal record includes many crimes,

from rape to robbery.

A 400-square-meter area

was excavated under the supervision

-of a special team. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

TUGÇE: Everything exists within the Palu Family.

Honor, dignity... Do things like that even exist here?

If they give them the death penalty,

I'd go to heaven. That's how I see it.

They turned their own family into monsters

and it's impossible to live within something like that.

To cleanse their conscience, they have to become visible.

And the best way is through reality shows like these.

IBRAHIM ÜNLÜ: Being on a television program

puts pressure on every police officer.

The longer the process drags on,

the greater the pressure becomes.

My last recollection is this...

I saw that poor woman tied to a tree here.

SECRETS, LIES AND MURDER

KÖRFEZ, KOCAELI

I came here in 1979.

You do the math yourself.

We moved into this house in 1991.

We're one of the oldest families here.

FAHRIYE ALKAN NEIGHBOR OF THE PALU FAMILY

We always kept our keys in the door.

People could just drop by anytime.

It was really nice.

Our neighborhood is very good, thank God.

20 MAY 2006

I sent my husband off to work.

Was it half past eight, or nine? I can't remember exactly.

-(CHICKENS CLUCKING) -(CLOCK TICKING)

-When I heard the bang. -(GUNSHOT)

When I got there, people were crowding

-in front of the grocery store. -(CROWD CLAMORING)

I said, "What happened?" I asked our neighbor, Ismail.

He said, "Harun shot his son-in-law."

Our lives suddenly became a complete mess.

Everything fell apart.

We couldn't understand what had suddenly happened,

why, how...

My name is Isa Palu.

I was born in 1977 in Kumru, Ordu.

I lived there until I was eight years old.

Everyone had a house next to their field.

They made their living from hazelnuts.

Hazelnuts yielded one year,

but not for three or five years...

Since there was no work there, we moved to Körfez.

We bought a plot of land and built a house.

At first, there was no one else in the neighborhood.

When we moved here,

the Palu family were already living here.

For a year or two,

we didn't know them and they didn't know us.

After that, we visited each other.

They came to us, we went to them.

Our neighborly relations were very good.

My name is Fatih Palu.

I was born in the Körfez district of Kocaeli.

Thank God, I was happy. I was a bit spoiled as well.

Because of the power that money gives you,

and because everything I wanted was done for me,

and because I was the youngest child.

My father fell ill in 1993.

He would go outside, run away, then come back home again.

He started saying he was seeing visions.

He began sweating a lot. He would say, "I'm suffocating."

Day by day, he was getting worse.

People who saw him said,

"He won't survive. He's going to die."

BAKIRKÖY DISTRICT MENTAL AND NERVOUS DISEASES HOSPITAL

In 1999,

my father was receiving psychiatric treatment

in Erenköy, Istanbul.

HALIS DOKGÖZ: Schizophrenia is actually

a psychiatric illness

that begins to show symptoms in early adulthood,

starting in adolescence.

HALIS DOKGÖZ FORENSIC MEDICINE SPECIALIST

It appears with symptoms such as delusions,

seeing things that aren't there,

or hearing voices, hallucinations.

Of course, there is also a genetic component.

It can pass from father to son, and from son to child.

Brother Harun was our next-door neighbor.

We spent years together, sharing meals at the same table.

Look, Harun plastered the first floor of this house.

I swear, he was the kind of man who would even hesitate

to drink a cup of tea if you offered it.

My father was a construction worker.

I worked with him.

I became a master under my father.

I earned very good money. I was like a bank.

I could even lend money to people.

When I left school in the eighth grade,

I realized it wasn't going to work.

Looking at my surroundings,

I thought that instead of becoming a delinquent,

I should contribute to my family.

So, when I quit school,

I started working in construction

with my older brother.

The Palu family were actually an ordinary family

who migrated from Ordu to Kocaeli.

A typical family from this country.

In many ways, it resembled the average Turkish family.

FEYZA AKINERDEM SOCIOLOGIST

So, the Palu family could have been a structure

that both supported and monitored its members.

We were all in harmony.

We would come together, make a decision,

and move forward based on that decision.

Until the problems began.

Before that, everything seemed perfect.

The search is ongoing

for missing Meryem Tahnal

and her eight-year-old daughter, Melike.

So, how does a typical family end up in a situation like this?

First of all, there's the saying,

"Don't air your dirty laundry in public."

It's a proverb we often refer to in sociology.

We're talking about a social order

where things are covered up in the name of privacy.

From the very beginning, the family intuitively sensed

that something was wrong, and during this process...

AYHAN ERBAY FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST

...we saw that many people

were connected to this chain of crimes.

What triggered these events

was the situation Meryem found herself in.

We are five siblings in total.

Two boys and three girls.

My mother's sister, Emine Tahnal,

is married to Veysel Tahnal.

Veysel Tahnal is also the brother of Ahmet Tahnal.

So, Emine Tahnal came to my mother and said,

"My husband has a brother.

Why don't we marry your daughter to him?"

Meryem and Ahmet Tahnal were married

through an arranged marriage in 1998.

Ahmet worked as a staff member

at the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

After the marriage,

he started going to the coffeehouse.

When his friends called him, he felt obliged to go.

Eventually it became a habit.