Eleven people have been detained in connection with the deaths of four members of the same family from suspected poisoning in Istanbul, the state-run Anadolu news agency said Monday.
A Turkish-German woman, her husband and their two children, who were on holiday from Germany in Turkey’s largest city, fell ill on Wednesday after eating several popular street food dishes in the waterside neighborhood of Ortakoy, at the foot of a bridge spanning the Bosphorus.
They were taken to hospital but the two children died on Thursday and the mother a day later. Anadolu identified them as Cigdem Bocek, her son Kadir, six, and her daughter Masal, three.
The father, Servet Bocek, died Monday after several days in intensive care.
“I offer my condolences to the family members who have passed away, and express my sympathies to their relatives,” Istanbul’s regional health chief Abdullah Emre Guner wrote on X on Monday. “Our investigation into the incident is being conducted with utmost diligence.”
Istanbul prosecutors opened an investigation, initially focusing on suspected food poisoning.
But evidence has since emerged that the family may have been exposed to pesticides in the hotel where they were staying, Turkish media reported.
Quoting investigators, Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper said a substance was sprayed in a room on the ground floor of the hotel to combat a bed bug infestation, which may have reached the family’s room on the first floor through a bathroom vent. Police collected samples from sheets, pillows, water bottles and blankets before sealing the building, the newspaper reported.
Chris McGrath / Getty Images
The unnamed hotel in the Fatih neighborhood near Istanbul’s historic peninsula was evacuated on Saturday after two more guests were taken to hospital with similar symptoms, Anadolu said.
The hotel was sealed off by municipal officials on Sunday, the agency added.
Among those detained were five food sellers, the hotel’s owner and two staff, and three people from the pest control company, it reported, without giving a timeline for exactly when they were all detained.
Eight of them were to appear before a judge on Monday.
A toxicology report prepared by forensic experts was expected to be released later on Monday, along with a report on the food samples being checked by experts at the agriculture ministry, Anadolu added.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after a cabinet meeting Monday that “our security forces and prosecutors will lead the necessary investigations to determine the causes of these deaths.”
The mother and her children were buried on Saturday at a ceremony in their family village in the Bolvadin area of central Turkey, about 150 miles southwest of Ankara, several Turkish newspapers reported.