A surgeon has told how he thought he was going to die when the husband of a woman who died in a botched operation put a gun to his head and told him “Now I will kill you.”

The man’s wife Cigdem Eris, 29, died after the medic, 56-year-old Dr Mustafa Erdem, accidentally cut her aorta artery during routine gallbladder surgery, and she bled to death.

The surgeon had been found guilty of causing her death by negligence in 2017 but was released after judges converted a prison sentence to a paltry TRL 15,000 (GBP 403) fine.

Now her distraught widower Gokhan Eris, 34, is facing 20 years behind bars after a court heard how he lay in wait for the medic in a hospital car park armed with a gun.

And judges heard how a shot missed the surgeon by inches after the gun went off while Eris was pointing the pistol at his neck.

Accused Eris had, the Samsun 4th High Criminal Court in Turkey heard, snatched the surgeon as he left the Samsun Training and Research Hospital in September (2023).

Horrified witnesses called police who stopped the car and seized Eris, now charged with deprivation of liberty, aggravated plunder, damage to property and carrying an unlicensed weapon.

Dr Erdemcut told the court how earlier he had fled a job at another hospital in a different city to escape vengeful Eris.

He said: “The defendant has hostility towards me. He has hostility towards me because of his wife’s surgery seven years ago.

“There are things he has done and inflicted against my family and my wife’s family before. I came to Samsun from Sinop because of him.”

The surgeon added: “He did not get into the vehicle by chance.

“As soon as I got in, he said, ‘Do you recognise me? I will kill you’ and put the gun to my neck.

“I said: ‘I have been waiting for this moment for seven years.’

“He also said that he had been following me for a week.”

Dr Erdemcut told how Eris said he’d let him go if he gave him money to pay off debts.

The medic said: “He told me that he would release me if I paid the debt of TRL three million [GBP 80,530] to a loan shark.

“He was hitting me with his gun handle. When we got to the Ankara road, he noticed the police, stopped the vehicle and ran away.”

But Eris claimed he had run across the surgeon by chance and had never threatened him.

He told the court: “Could Mustafa have been this comfortable if I had committed the crimes charged against me?

“He drove and made a phone call. He came to the front of the store and honked the horn. I saw two people approaching the vehicle and told him that he should not stop and leave.

“I wanted to protect myself, so I took out the gun. When he stopped the vehicle, a fight broke out between us and the gun went off.

“I did not put a gun to his head. I did not commit the crimes that I am accused of.”

But witness Ayhan Olgun,46, told judges: “I saw Dr. Mustafa sitting in the front seat.

“I saw a person on the side first squeezing his throat, then when I looked from behind, I saw him pointing a gun.”

The trial is ongoing.