This blonde Turkish woman has revealed how her husband poured flammable liquid on her and set her alight, and then stood and watched as she burned.
The woman who was set on fire allegedly by her ex-husband has been named as Elvan Soezkesen, aged 38. She had been married to her husband Erkan Emiroglu for 10 years before divorcing him a few months ago.
Elvan had divorced her husband because he was “violent towards her”. However, her husband reportedly could not handle the separation and wanted to remarry.
After she went to the courthouse to file a report against her husband, who threatened her after she refused to remarry, he allegedly poured a flammable fluid on her and set her on fire in the shocking attack that took place on Wednesday, 12th January.
The woman, who is the mother of his two children, was engulfed in flames and screamed for help, with neighbours coming to her aid and putting out the flames. She was taken to a bathroom and the fire was put out with water.
The incident was reported to the police and to paramedics, and the woman was taken to hospital by ambulance in a life-threatening condition.
The ex-husband fled the scene but was later caught and taken into custody. He now faces a charge of setting fire to the flammable substance he allegedly poured on her, and a charge of “attempting to kill her with premeditation and with a monstrous feeling or torture”.
Soezkesen was transferred to the Burn Centre at the Training and Research Hospital in Samsun. She has since said, in a statement quoted in the indictment prepared by prosecutors, that she had tried to run away because “I was scared”.
She added: “My ex-father-in-law called in the morning on the day of the incident. He told me that he had come to bring me groceries and told me to come downstairs. I went down with the lift.
“I saw my father-in-law at the entrance to the building. We went to him and talked for 2-3 minutes. I took the groceries. I took the lift to my apartment on the 7th floor. As I was about to get out of the lift, I saw my ex-husband coming down the stairs from the top floor.
“He was constantly irritating me. I was worried that he might do something to me because he had threatened me before, so I didn’t go to my own residence and headed downstairs. I tried to escape. As I descended with my back turned, I felt a wetness.
“All of a sudden, before I knew what was happening, I was on fire. Thinking I’m going to die, I shouted ‘mum’. Upon my shouting, my downstairs neighbour opened the door. He led me to the bathroom.
“With the help of my neighbours, the flames were put out. Then we went to the hospital by ambulance.”
Emiroglu, on the other hand, in his statement in the indictment, stated that the plastic bottle was by the window and he angrily picked it up and threw it, saying: “I parked the car behind the building. Because I was too lazy to use the front door, I jumped over the wall and entered the apartment.
“I went up to the floor where the flat is located. I met my ex-wife on the floor of the flat. I wanted to talk. I didn’t say what I wanted to talk about. My ex-wife refused this request by saying ‘There is nothing to talk about right now.’ Then she started going down the stairs. So I angrily grabbed the plastic bottle with a slightly whitish liquid in it, which was on the side of the window in the stairwell, and threw it angrily.
“I was holding a cigarette. This liquid caught fire at once. Then I heard Elvan’s screams. She was going down the stairs rapidly. After the incident, I called my father on the phone and said, ‘I caused an incident,I burned my wife, I said, ‘Go take care of it now’.”
But Soezkesen disputes this, saying: “Erkan did not have a cigarette in his hand. He didn’t try to put out the flames on me. He watched me burn.”
She added: “I want him to receive the heaviest punishment.”
Femicide is a growing problem in Turkey, particularly after the country officially quit the Istanbul Convention in July last year. According to the 2021 Annual Data Report announced by the ‘We Will Stop Femicide Platform’, 280 women were killed by men in 2021, while 217 women were found suspiciously dead.
According to data from the ‘Monument Counter’, which is a monument established on the Internet to keep alive the memory of the women who died due to violence against women in Turkey and which is updated every day, 62 femicides have taken place since the beginning of 2022.
