Street musician stabbed to death during dispute

Çetin Aydın - ISTANBUL

A street musician has lost his life after being brutally stabbed in the heart and thrown into the sea by a person, allegedly under the influence, who charged at the musician after he tried to stop him from harassing a woman in Istanbul’s Kadıköy district.

Accompanied by his saz, Cihan Aymaz, a 29-year-old street musician in Istanbul, used to come to Kadıköy Rıhtım occasionally to sing songs.

On the evening of May 3, a person, who was allegedly intoxicated, came to the site where Aymaz was performing.

According to bystanders, the person started harassing a woman in the crowd who was listening to the musician play, and Aymaz tried to warn him.

An argument started between the two, with the person telling Aymaz to “mind his own business” and asking him to play another song as he did not like the one Aymaz was playing. The musician refused the request despite the person offering him money.

As the argument heated up, the person allegedly took out his knife and stabbed Aymaz in the heart, throwing him into the sea afterward. But he did not stop at that, as he jumped into the sea after Aymaz and gabbed him to continue beating him brutally.

Some bystanders took the musician out of the water, and paramedics rushed him to the nearest hospital, but it was too late as he succumbed to his injuries.

The attacker, who was identified as Mehmet Caymaz, was caught in the sea and detained by the security forces on a boat of the Coast Guard Command that arrived upon notifications.

It was determined that Caymaz had 13 other criminal records for possession of drugs, injury, qualified looting, threat, insult and property damage.

Caymaz was arrested by the court on duty, while Aymaz’s lifeless body was buried.

It was learned that Aymaz, who worked in a cargo company for about four years, started singing on the streets after quitting his job.

In his initial statement, Caymaz claimed that he only took out his knife because the musician provoked him by shouting and hitting him first and that he did not throw the musician into the sea, but in fact, he was trying to “save him from drowning.”