İzmir Regional Court of Justice Overturns Torbalı Explosion Sentences

The 19th Criminal Chamber of the İzmir Regional Court of Justice overturned the sentences in the explosion case at the sırdan workplace located on Barış Manço Street in the Ayrancılar neighborhood of Torbalı district, which occurred on June 30, 2024 at 3:00 p.m. and resulted in 5 deaths and 63 injuries.

The Torbalı Heavy Penal Court handed down sentences at its decision hearing on November 12, 2025: Mustafa Koç, who replaced the cylinder, received 10 years 10 months; Gülden Kul, the business owner, received 8 years 4 months; and Osman İnce, the Aegean Region manager of the cylinder company, received 2.5 years in prison. İnce's sentence was converted to a fine of 364,000 TL.

The appellate court ruled that the expert report prepared by a panel of Istanbul Technical University (ITÜ) professors was insufficient with regard to Gülden Kul and did not include proper legal analysis. The chamber emphasized that with respect to Mustafa Koç, the ITÜ expert report was relied upon, but created a contradiction with the assessment regarding Kul. Regarding Osman İnce, the chamber found that the expert reports did not contain an evaluation of the defendants' degree of culpability, and also drew attention to the fact that the incident should be examined in terms of conscious negligence based on the information transfer.

During the investigation phase, it was established that the workplace where the explosion occurred had been operating without a license for 6 months, and that business owner Kul had submitted a permit application to the municipality on May 29, 2024. Cumhuriyet Gazette reported on the case.