Directed by Abdullah Oguz, Graveyard, the 8-part investigative drama, introduces us to the Special Crimes Division that was tasked with solving cases of femicide. Well, I have to say here that Graveyard season 2 is an extremely tedious watch. The problem is not the length of the episodes but the absurdity of the subplots that are created just to mislead the police officers, which was what made it a task to watch it. That said, let’s find out what happened in the various episodes and how Onem Ozulku and her team found out the truth.
Spoiler Alert
Case 1: Silent Devil
The first case that the Special Crimes Division handled was that of Yasemin Turanli, who worked as a house help at the Sadoglu mansion. Generally, Onem and her team took charge of a case after it happened, but this time around, they were present at the crime scene as it was happening. Fikret Sadoglu was a rich and influential man, and the chief of police, Haluk, often went to such gatherings as he knew that it was important to make those sorts of powerful connections. Onem absolutely hated going to such places, but this time she wasn’t given much of an option. So Yasemin’s body was found hanging in one of the rooms, with a 25-week-old baby still inside her, and it first looked like it was an act of suicide. Thanks to Feriha, the baby was somehow saved. But the moment the body was sent for autopsy, the truth came out. It came to be known that the victim had been laid on her back for 10-15 minutes after she had passed away. This meant that somebody was present at the crime scene when Yasemin had died. Onem had an exceptional bunch of people like Berk and Serdar working with her, and they were pretty good at joining the dots and finding the truth. It came to be known that Yasemin was pregnant, and that Yasar, the younger son of Fikret Sadoglu, was her baby’s father. The entire Sadoglu empire was handled by Fikret’s elder son, the charming Tolga, as Yasar was an alcoholic and not somebody who the family could trust.
Meanwhile, Ozkan, Onem’s boss, who shared quite a good relationship with Haluk, started acting a little weird. It became quite evident that the man was hiding something from his colleagues. Before Onem and the others could do anything, Ozkan also committed suicide; at least, that was what the police thought the moment they reached the crime scene. Just before dying, Ozkan had made a call to Onem, and he had talked to her pretending that she was his son. It meant that somebody was standing near Ozkan at that moment, and he didn’t want them to know who he was talking to.
Haluk was disheartened when he came to know about it, and he told Onem that she needed to get to the truth of the matter anyhow. Berk had found a key that belonged to Ozkan, and he knew that it could lead to the truth. Berk went to talk to Haluk, and they realized that the key could be of a car that was parked in a scrapyard. Their intuition was right, as Ozkan had hidden some important evidence in the trunk of that car. When Berk and Haluk reached the scrapyard, some men started shooting at them out of nowhere, but somehow the policemen were able to make it out alive. Berk and Haluk had hit the jackpot. They found incriminating evidence against the Sadoglu family. It came to be known, though, through the files stored on the hard disk and the microbial profile that the cops got from the dress that was used to strangle Yasemin, that it was Yasar who had raped Yasemin, and he was the one who had killed another woman named Lale Cetin back in the day. But Yasar was not the one who had killed Yasemin. Tolga had gotten to know that Yasemin was pregnant, and he knew that it could prove detrimental to the image of his family. He asked Yasemin to hide the fact and just move away from Yasar, but she didn’t listen. During the party, Tolga realized that if he didn’t do anything, Yasemin might reveal the truth to the people. In a fit of rage, he took her into a room and killed her. Fikret was also arrested by Haluk for murdering Ozkan Yasin. Ozkan had worked for the Sadoglu family, and he knew about the kind of crimes Yasar had committed since the very beginning. But then there came a time when Ozkan became a threat to Fikret, and the businessman decided to eliminate him. I believe that manipulating Tolga to testify against his brother and father was a masterstroke by Onem and her team. Tolga testified because he wanted to save himself, but little did he know that he was digging a grave for his family.
Case 2: Bella Donna
In Graveyard season 2, episode 3, we saw that Aycan Ozata, a hematologist, was killed after a fight broke out at her hospital between the patients and the doctors over a mishap. The first suspect was Sefa Aydin, a young boy whose mother was admitted to Aycan’s hospital and eventually succumbed to her illness under Aycan’s supervision. Serdar interrogated the kid, and through the evidence procured from the crime scene, it came to be known that the doctor was already dead before Sefa stabbed her. Poisoning was considered to be the reason behind Aycan’s demise, but Onem and her crew had no clue who could be behind it. Aycan was suffering from stage 4 cancer, and Onem presumed that the killer wouldn’t have known about it, as otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered killing her. Aycan had a life insurance policy, and the only way it would pay out was if she didn’t die of a disease. So basically, it was concluded that the insurance money could have been a motive behind her death. Onem figured out that Aycan’s husband, Dr. Oktay was the one who was supposed to get the money, and additionally, it was found that he had been having an affair with one of his colleagues, Nihal Arabaci.
Though Nihal and Dr. Oktay were the main suspects, they were not the ones who had committed Aycan’s murder. It came to be known that a fraudulent spiritual guru, Mehmet Duman, had had a tiff against Dr. Aycan, and the latter was trying to gather evidence to expose the man. Mehmet had started a new venture, where he became a bioenergy and quantum specialist, and claimed that he could treat people through transcendental meditation. Aycan found out that this man had told his patients that they were cured and then given a false report to them. One such patient had died of a heart attack after he had told them that they were cured. Onem and her team went to interrogate him, and they realized that he was a conman. The moment Onem and her team left for Mehmet’s place, he gave Nihal a call. Onem realized that Nihal was the one who was helping the fraudulent spiritual guru create fake test reports. When Onem started digging into Nihal’s past life, she came across another shocking revelation. Nihal had forged all her degrees and documents, and she was not a real doctor. The real Nihal Arabaci lived and practiced medicine in the US. This imposter’s real name was Kezban, and her greed had made her put the lives of a lot of patients in jeopardy. Kezban tried to take her own life, but luckily, the police officers saved her and brought her to the hospital just in time. They found a syringe lying near Kezban, and Onem realized that it was the same syringe that was used to inject Aycan with the poison. Traces of lavender oil were found on that syringe, something which Onem and Berk had seen Mehmet using.
When the police officers searched Kezban’s house, they found two missing test reports, one of which belonged to a patient named Ipek. Now this girl could not walk and had been seriously ill for a very long time, but now the police officers realized that probably her report had been altered and that she was perfectly healthy to begin with. But it all just didn’t add up, why would somebody want to show that a person was ill when, in fact, she was perfectly healthy?
Now, this young girl was brought to the hospital by her mother, Gunes. Onem had also spotted Gunes at Mehmet’s place, and she was quite surprised that the mother believed that the conman could cure her daughter. Every time Onem met Gunes, the latter’s daughter made a sign with her hands that was a gesture to tell the other person that she was being abused. For the longest time, Onem didn’t take her seriously, but then, in the end, she realized that the little girl was probably asking for help. It came to be known that it was Gunes who had killed Aycan, and the doctor was not investigating just Mehmet but her too. Gunes was a psychopath, and she tortured her daughter both physically and mentally and made the world believe that she was ill when in fact she was perfectly fine, and in order to prove her point, Gunes administered small doses of poison to her daughter. By doing so, she extracted a lot of money from rich people, asking them to contribute to patients who actually were perfectly healthy.
At the end of Graveyard season 2, episode 4, the Special Crimes Division arrested Gunes as well as the spiritual guru Mehmet. It was found out that Mehmet abused underage girls at his so-called meditation center and was involved in many other fraudulent activities.
Case 3: The Inauspicious Island
The third case that Onem and her Special Crimes Division handled was that of a celebrity turned animal rights advocate, Ruya Sogut. The Special Crimes Division got a severed leg of Ruya sent to them from an anonymous address. Onem and Berk found out that it was sent by a veterinarian named Sadullah, a timid guy who was probably suffering from a lot of mental stress. Sadullah said that he wanted to help Onem and her gang find the truth and make society a better place to live in. Now Ruya had an ex-partner named Kaan, who was also a celebrity. The special crimes team checked Ruya’s social media account, and they learned that the victim had been trolled a lot of times. One weird thing they found out was that three fake IDs, who trolled her the most, had similar IP addresses. On further research, it came to be known that the IP address was of Kaan’s new partner, named Ayca Okcu, an acting teacher who was also Ruya’s best friend back in the day. Kaan and Ayca became the primary suspects, but Onem and her team were still far from finding the truth. The team once again went back and grilled Sadullah, and through him, they came to know about a man named Servet, who had a livestock farm where he organized illegal dog fights. Sadullah believed that Servet was the killer, since Ruya was trying to collect evidence against him to charge him with animal cruelty. But Sadullah was wrong. Servet was taken into custody, but Berk, in no time, realized that despite the man being guilty of many other crimes, he hadn’t killed Ruya.
Onem had a hunch that something was off with Cuneyt, Ruya’s husband, though she didn’t have any incriminating evidence to prove his guilt. There was a piece of wood that was found stuck in Ruya’s shoulders, and at the end of episode 6, Onem realized that it came from one of Cuneyt’s arrow shafts. It didn’t take long for Onem to realize that it was Cuneyt who had killed Ruya and then dismembered her body and dumped it in the forest. The man, before killing his own partner, had also killed Kaan as well as Ruya’s father, who physically abused her. Cuneyt felt that he was helping his wife out, as her father physically abused her, and Kaan wouldn’t just let her be as he wanted to be with her. Ruya got terrified when she saw Cuneyt killing Kaan in front of her eyes. She tried to escape from the house, but Cuneyt got hold of her and killed her. Cuneyt always felt that Ruya was extremely ungrateful, as she didn’t respect the kind of sacrifices he made for her. At the end of Graveyard season 2, episode 6, Onem, after almost getting killed by Cuneyt, stabbed him in the eye with the same arrow he used to kill Ruya. Berk and the others arrived at the end, just in time, and took Onem to the hospital.
Case 4: Nostos Algos
Since the very beginning of the Graveyard season 2, we have seen snippets of the problem that Hasan Duru, one of the members of the Special Crimes Division, was facing with his family. It was the only overarching case that was followed for two seasons. So basically, Hasan’s daughter, Seher had been killed back in the day, and nobody had been able to figure out who the killer was. A man named Bulent was considered to be the prime suspect in the case, but those speculations were found to be untrue after Bulent was taken into custody and interrogated thoroughly. Bulent told Hasan that the person who shot his daughter was the man who assaulted him, too. Before the suspected killing of Seher, Bulent was also held responsible for the murder of a girl named Bahar Ataman. Bahar’s father, Nasit Ataman, was very good friends with Hasan and his family, which is why Hasan believed whatever Nasit told him back in the day. When Berk scrutinized the evidence presented to them, he realized the bullet that killed Seher had deflected after hitting her body and injured Bulent. Bulent also told Hasan that the murder weapon was lying somewhere beneath the floor at the crime scene itself. Actually, at the time, the entire place where the crime happened was under construction, and so there was wet cement on the floor. Berk, after a thorough search, found the weapon, and additionally, Bulent’s fingerprints were also recovered from the front barrel, and not from the grip. It became clear that Bulent never pointed the gun at someone, instead he was trying to stop the culprit from firing it . On further investigation, it came to be known that Doruk Yilmaz, Nasit’s lawyer, who was handling Bahar’s murder case and who, in fact, had pinned the blame on Bulent, was the one who was behind the murders. Doruk was in a relationship with Bahar, and he knew that he was committing a crime, as Bahar was around 16 years old at that time. Eventually, Bahar started blackmailing Doruk as she wanted him to divorce his wife. One day, things got heated, and Doruk couldn’t stop his impulses. He ended up accidentally killing the young girl, and then, to hide his crimes, he got in touch with a man named Necmi, who happened to be a good friend of Bulent. Doruk took Necmi’s help, and he falsely framed Bulent for the crime. Things would have escalated further after that if Seher, Hasan’s daughter, hadn’t found out about Doruk’s involvement in the crime. Seher worked as an intern at Doruk’s firm, and she took a lot of interest in Bahar’s case since she was her friend. One day, Seher got to know that Nasit had gone to kill Bulent, and she immediately rushed to the place to tell him that Bulent was not the killer. Nasit was intending to shoot Bulent, but Seher came in front of him, and she ended up on the receiving end of the bullet and died there. Nasit didn’t know what to do, and that’s when Doruk arrived at his rescue and pinned the blame for the second murder on Bulent too.
In Graveyard season 2’s ending, Onem and her team found the truth, but before they could take Nasit into custody, Mert, Hasan’s eccentric son, came and killed the man. In a way, Onem and team had been successful in cracking the case, but it didn’t seem like a victory. Solving the cases and seeing so many tragedies together took a toll on the mental health of the officers. At this juncture, they felt they were standing in a dark tunnel with nowhere to go. Onem and her team were awarded for their services, but they knew that no medal, no award, could make up for what they had lost in the process, especially Hasan.
