Turkish Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç has said they expect US authorities to extradite a dual Turkish-US citizen accused of causing a fatal car accident in İstanbul and fleeing to the US as well as his mother, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Friday.
Seventeen-year-old T.C. is accused of driving without a license in İstanbul on March 1 and causing a crash that killed 29-year-old Oğuz Murat Aci and injured four others. Following the accident, T.C. and his mother, Eylem Tok, flew to Egypt and then to the United States. Turkish authorities have requested their extradition.
Turkish novelist and poet Tok and her son were arrested in June pursuant to an extradition request from Turkey as they were about to tour an expensive private school in Boston.
Tunç on Friday said in a statement to the press that they expect US authorities will extradite T.C. and his mother.
“We have sent the necessary documents. … There’s no fleeing from the Turkish judiciary after killing one person and injuring others. … [T.C. and his mother] are still under arrest, and we hope they will be sent to Turkey after the extradition proceeedings,” the minister said.
Tunç’s statement comes a week after the US State Department found that both offenses for which Turkey originally requested Tok’s extradition meet the relevant requirements under a 1980 treaty between the two countries.
The US is not obligated to extradite its citizens under the treaty.
According to a report by the Voice of America’s (VOA) Turkish service on Thursday, T.C.’s lawyers, Martin G. Weinberg and Victoria Kelleher, argued in their petition to the court that their client’s mother’s reason for bringing her son to the US was the deficiencies in the Turkish legal system.
They added that T.C. committed “a non-violent crime with no intent to harm anyone.”
“Had this crime been committed in the US, he would have been released on bail,” they said, referring to the teen.
Chief Magistrate Judge Donald Cabell of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts previously ruled that T.C. will remain in custody as the extradition process continues. The judge said he needed more time to review the extensive documents presented by both the defense and the prosecution before deciding on a bail request.
According to a special report by the Medyaradar news website in June, T.C. attempted suicide while in a Connecticut juvenile detention center. The defense team claimed that T.C. faced harsh conditions at the facility, had difficulty accessing necessary medication and experienced severe psychological stress.