Belgian student remembered

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Nearly 50 of Iseghem’s friends joined the commemoration. DHA photo

A commemoration for Nathan van Iseghem, the Belgian Erasmus student who died in Istanbul on Dec. 1, was held on Dec. 3 by his friends and the consul general of Belgium, Henri Vantieghem, in the same place where Iseghem jumped to his death.

Twenty-year-old Iseghem, a visiting student in the Economics department at Istanbul University, allegedly committed suicide Dec. 1 by jumping from a closed balcony between a hotel and a newspaper’s building in Istanbul. However, his friends do not believe that he was the kind of person to kill himself.

“I do not believe that he jumped from there to commit suicide. He was so happy and I know that he had no reason for dying,” Muhammed Şenel, Iseghem’s friend at Istanbul University told the Hürriyet Daily News. Nearly 50 of Iseghem’s friends marched from Taksim Square to the scene of the incident.

Iseghem had spent the night with his friends when the incident took place. He was heading home to the Harbiye neighborhood from Taksim Square, taking a road from Talimhane instead of Cumhuriyet Street, as the latter is currently closed to traffic for the ongoing renewal project.

He was found on the street by security guards at the office building of the newspaper Habertürk, lying critically injured with broken ribs and bleeding heavily. Video records from the office building show him jumping over a two meter high barrier, located behind ventilation pipes.

He was found on the pavement of Yedikuyular Street and was taken to the Taksim Training and Research Hospital immediately, where doctors were unable to save him.