Per Amnesty International’s report and his family’s testimony, he was a Mardin-born peasant who had moved to İstanbul to find work. He was living in the Kanarya neighborhood of İstanbul with his wife and 6 children, when one evening during 1994 he returned home with his family to fing the police waiting at the door. After checking the identities of the family members, they asked Halil Alpsoy to go with them to the police station. The following day, his wife searched for him at multiple police stations, including the Gayrettepe Anti-Terror Unit, to no avail.

A week after Halil Alpsoy’s disappearance, his cousin Kasım Alpsoy also disappeared in Adana (please see his file for details).

20 days later the family received a phone call from a person who introduced himself as the the Kırıkkale Company Commander and asked them to come and identify the body, which would otherwise be buried in a pauper’s grave.

His brother went to Kırıkkale, identified the body, then called Halil’s wife and the two together took the body of Halil Alpsoy and buried him in Midyat county of Mardin. Halil’s wife Shortly later, she was contacted by the authorities to give a deposition regarding her husband, which she refused each time, until a person, claiming to be from Kırıkkale, visited her at the family house and asked again, giving her the ring of her husband and the bullet with which he claimed her husband had been murdered. Thus, an investigation was initiated but produced no results.