A Turkish man allegedly posed as another man and sent messages to his wife so that he could then murder her for infidelity and under local law get a reduced sentence as it was a mitigating circumstance.

Tanju Acar, 32, allegedly came up with the sick scheme after refusing to accept that his young wife had the right to demand a divorce, going online to do research on how to kill your wife and get away with it by looking at what other men had done.

According to the indictment, when he learned that infidelity was a mitigating circumstance, he created a fake account and also got male friends to write to her with incriminating messages.

He had then attacked his wife Selvan Acar, 25, a mother of two living in the district of Fethiye in the south-western Turkish province of Mugla. The indictment revealed that he stabbed her in the back, piercing her heart when she insisted on going ahead with the divorce on 8th December 2020.

Fethiye Public Prosecutor’s Office discovered evidence of the plot to make it seem as if his wife was unfaithful after he talked about what he had done with the cellmate after his arrest for the killing.

The cellmate said that the alleged wife killer had even invented seeing his wife with someone else as part of the fantasy to prove her infidelity.

Prosecutors said that as a result of the extra information they have now demanded the maximum sentence for Tanju Acar of an aggravated life sentence for “deliberate murder of spouse”.

A life sentence in Turkey is 24 years in prison, whereas an aggravated life sentence is what was introduced to replace what used to be the death penalty. Prisoners sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment can be paroled after serving at least 36 years, or 40 years if given more than one sentence.

Selvan’s mother, Cemile Kaya, whose testimony is included in the indictment, claimed that Tanju followed, disturbed, threatened and battered her daughter.

According to the report of local news outlet NTV’s report, Tanju would threaten Selvan her with death by saying: “It may not be today, but one day I will kill you for sure.”

Fatih Tahanci, the lawyer of mother Cemile Kaya, said: “The fact that the defendant told another convict the whole case revealed that he killed his wife by planning it in a cold and calculating way that deserves the maximum punishment.”

The date of the next hearing has not yet been announced.