Killing of Ahmet Yıldız

Ahmet Yıldız was a student in the Physics Department at Marmara University. According to accounts reported after his death, roughly a year before he was killed he had filed a criminal complaint with a prosecutor stating that he had received threats from members of his family. Lambda Istanbul's human rights lawyer, Fırat Söyle, who had previously acted as a consultant to Yıldız, said that three months before the murder Yıldız had filed a complaint with the district attorney's office after receiving death threats from his family, but that the prosecutor's office declined to open an investigation or provide him with protection.

On the night of 15 July 2008, Yıldız had gone to a cafe in Üsküdar, Istanbul. He was confronted by an attacker and attempted to escape by car, but was shot three times in the chest. He died of his injuries. Of five bullets fired during the attack, one struck and injured a bystander, Ümmühan Daraca, who was at the time a parliamentary candidate for the AK Parti. Yıldız's cousin, Ahmet Kaya, described the family as an "extremely religious and wealthy Kurdish family" from Şanlıurfa, and Yıldız was their only son.

The killing has been widely referred to as the first known case of an anti-gay honour killing in Turkey and received extensive coverage in both the local and foreign press, including in the British newspaper The Independent, which noted that honour killings were not a phenomenon confined to Turkey.

Yıldız's father, Yahya Yıldız, was named in connection with the killing and has been tried in absentia as a fugitive defendant; he has not been captured. The trial opened on 8 September 2009 and proceeded with Yahya Yıldız tried as a fugitive. İbrahim Can, described as Ahmet Yıldız's partner and the person he had lived with after leaving his family, spoke about the case, crediting the injured bystander Ümmühan Daraca for helping bring the case forward, and stating that they had together reported the family's death threats to the prosecutor's office prior to the murder. Can characterized the case as reflecting discrimination based on Yıldız's sexual orientation. Following the sixth hearing, Can said he intended to pursue proceedings at the European Court of Human Rights, criticizing the lack of an international arrest warrant and describing the court's handling of the case as reflecting a homophobic attitude, calling the matter a political cause and stating that the court had not shown sufficient will to arrest Yıldız's father.

The case inspired the film Zenne Dancer, directed by Yıldız's friends Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay, which was released on 13 January 2011.