He was the third Turk ever to appear on the cover of Time Magazine. His people regarded him as the leading reformer in Turkish history after Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. He was a frequent adviser of former President George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War, and as a show of appreciation, was a guest at Camp David with his family.

A grief-stricken Turkish nation gave him an unprecedented “people’s farewell” after his sudden death in office in 1993. Now the Turkish state prosecutor says late president Turgut Ozal did not die of natural causes, but was murdered, and points his finger at the military.

For the past several years his widow, Semra, the former first lady, and his son Ahmet frequently claimed that Ozal had been poisoned and did not die of a heart attack on April 17, 1993. This prompted President Abdullah Gul to commisson a special investigation into Ozal’s death, resulting in a report that showed strong suspicion of foul play.

The report prodded the prosecutors into action, and they followed leads and later decided to exhume Ozal’s remains for detailed forensic studies. Experts reported in December 2012 that they found toxins in his system but were unable to determine whether the poison had caused his death. The facts that the blood tests performed on Ozal at the time of his death had vanished in 1999, no autopsy had been performed on the late president and there was a lack of medical staff at the presidential palace at the time of the incident deepened suspicions and the prosecutors pursued the case.