Timeline

12 November 2008: IPI launches Justice Denied campaign, highlighting Ahmet Taner Kislali's plight.

3 November 2003: Necdet Yüksel, previously sentenced to death for the killing, receives a sentence of life imprisonment. The other suspects remain at large.

14 May 2000: Necdet Yüksel is detained in Ankara on suspicion of committing the murder of Kislali. Yüksel confesses to planting the bomb, and names others involved in the murder.

21 October 1999: Ahmet Taner Kislali is killed by an explosive device left on his car.

1991: Ahmet Taner Kislali starts writing a regular column for the Cumhuriyet newspaper.

12 September 1980: Following a coup in Turkey, Ahmet Taner Kislali leaves public life and returns to academia.

1978 to 1979: Ahmet Taner Kislali serves as Turkish Minister for Culture.

1977: Ahmet Taner Kislali is elected to Turkish Parliament.

Turkish journalist Ahmet Taner Kislali was killed on 21 October 1999 by an explosive device placed on his car. A regular columnist for the left-wing daily Cumhuriyet, Kislali was known for his staunch secularism and history of critical writing on Turkey's Islamist movements. These writings resulted in multiple death threats over the years, culminating in his brutal murder. The individual responsible for planting the bomb that killed Kislali was apprehended and confessed soon after. However, despite the availability of information identifying those responsible for ordering and planning Kislali's assassination, those behind his execution remain at large.

At approximately 9.30 am on 21 October 1999, Ahmet Taner Kislali left his Ankara home. Approaching his car, he noticed a package, wrapped in newspaper, which had been left on the windscreen. Kislali attempted to remove the package, unaware that he was in fact handling a deadly booby-trap. Lifting the package, he triggered a powerful explosion that tore off his arm and inflicted shrapnel wounds to his face and chest. Kislali was rushed to Ankara's Bayindir hospital, where doctors attempted to save his life. Sadly, their efforts were in vain, and Kislali was pronounced dead at 10.25 am that same morning.

Kislali was also a professor of political science at Ankara University and a former Minister of Culture in the Turkish government. He had previously received death threats linked to his writing. Shortly before his death, he had written an article attacking the leaders of a Muslim sect for describing a deadly earthquake that year as "divine retribution" for Turkey's clampdown on Islamic fundamentalism. Following Kislali's murder, the authorities were quick to highlight their belief that an underground, extremist Islamic group was behind the assassination.

An investigation into the killing was immediately initiated, but it was information gleaned from a different murder investigation that resulted in the detention of the man responsible for laying the trap that claimed Kislali's life. On 15 May 2000, a suspect in the investigation of the 1993 murder of fellow Cumhuriyet columnist Ugur Mumcu named four individuals in connection with Kislali's murder. All four of these individuals were members of the fundamentalist organisation, "Tevhid", and one of them, Necdet Yuksel, confessed while in custody to planting the bomb on Kislali's car. In addition to his confession, he also gave information detailing the involvement of Iranian diplomats in the orchestration of the assassination.

Yuksel was convicted of murdering Kislali in 2001 and is currently serving a life sentence. He remains the only person imprisoned for this coldly pre-meditated act of murder, even though others were clearly involved, and at a much higher level. Local observers have suggested that political concerns are preventing progress in the investigation of the instigators and planners of the murder.