Complaint filed against husband for causing wife to commit suicide

İsmail Saymaz – ISTANBUL

A criminal case has been filed against a man in the Central Anatolian province of Eskişehir on accusations that he drove his wife to commit suicide.

Şemiye Budak, 50, was found dead in the city’s Porsuk River with a knife in her liver on March 1, 2015, but the prosecutor’s office failed to find any evidence of a murder.

Prosecutors, however, determined that the woman had been subjected to violence and had been cheated on by her husband, Erhan Budak, for a number of years. According to investigations, Şemiye Budak wrote in her diary that she “was subjected to violence, insults and threats since the day they got married and that she couldn’t take it anymore.”

Budak wrote in her diary that she learned that her husband had cheated on her in October 2014. 

“All of my efforts went down the drain. Now I’m falling into the water and then the soil,” she wrote on Feb. 27, 2015, two days before her death. 

“Time has reminded me that I’m not wanted and I’m dead. My unfaithful and big love, smile now,” she also wrote. 

Another note written on May 18, 2013, said her husband had “decided for her to die.”

“My lover, you have given me the death penalty. You put the noose around my neck. You’re waiting for the appropriate time to kill me,” she wrote. 

The prosecutor’s office determined that Şemiye Budak, who had been married to Erhan Budak for 23 years, could not talk to anybody because of her husband’s restrictions. 

In the indictment of the case, the prosecutor stated that Erhan Budak wanted her wife to commit suicide.
“Erhan Budak devalued and disrespected his wife and acted against the rules of marriage. He was able to foresee that she could commit suicide and wanted her to do that,” the indictment read. 

A file was lodged upon the findings against Budak for “driving someone to commit suicide” with the prosecutor seeking up to 10 years in prison. 

The first hearing in the case was held on Nov. 14, where Budak said “he cheated on her as a result of weakness.”

“However, I didn’t cause her to commit suicide,” he told the court.

The case was adjourned until January 2017, at which time the children of the couple will be heard as witnesses.