Fatma Ünal found guilty on 16 charges in landmark case involving a fraudulent master’s degree, as attention turns to other outstanding prosecutions.
A former senior official of the National Unity Party (UBP) has been sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty on 16 charges arising from North Cyprus’s fake diploma scandal.
Fatma Ünal, the former head of the UBP’s Girne women’s branch, was sentenced by Lefkoşa Heavy Penal Court on Tuesday, 27 October, in a case closely watched for its implications for others accused in the sprawling investigation.
The court found Ünal guilty on all 16 charges, which included preparing and circulating forged official documents, instigating the preparation of forged documents and preparing documents without authorisation.
The case centred on a master’s degree issued in her name by the Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University, known by its Turkish initials KSTÜ, in Güzelyurt.
The scandal, which emerged in 2024, has raised serious questions about the oversight of higher education in the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC) and the alleged involvement of public officials, academics and other prominent figures in obtaining or facilitating qualifications without the required study.
Court rejects Ünal’s defence
During Ünal’s trial, the court heard from 31 witnesses and was presented with 80 documents and other exhibits.
According to local media reports of the judgment, the court found that passing grades had been entered in Ünal’s name despite her not attending classes or examinations. A transcript was subsequently created and a master’s degree issued. The judges also found that a thesis had been prepared after the diploma was issued.
Ünal had denied the allegations. Her defence maintained that she had not instructed anyone to prepare false documents and argued that the charges had not been proved. The court rejected her account after considering witness testimony, electronic correspondence and university records alongside the other evidence.
The case was treated as a pilot prosecution concerning a recipient of an allegedly fraudulent qualification. It follows earlier convictions of university officials involved in the wider scandal.
Hundreds of qualifications under scrutiny
The investigation began at KSTÜ in 2024 amid suspicions that degrees and other qualifications had been issued in return for money without the recipients completing the necessary courses or examinations.
As the inquiry widened, police investigated allegations involving undergraduate, master’s and doctoral qualifications, as well as other suspected irregularities. The case has also prompted concern about the potential damage to the reputation of North Cyprus’s universities and the qualifications earned by legitimate students.
Serdal Gündüz being led into court, Nov. 2025
A May 2024 report by education journalist Pervin Kaplan, citing Turkish Cypriot media, said KSTÜ’s minority shareholder and general secretary, Serdal Gündüz, had reportedly admitted issuing more than 600 fraudulent diplomas.
In a separate prosecution last year, Gündüz was sentenced to 15 years in prison in November 2025, while the university’s international office manager Amir Shakerifard was jailed for six years.
The investigation has reached beyond the university. Among those arrested during the inquiry were former education minister and KSTÜ trustee Kemal Dürüst, senior police officers, civil servants and officials from YÖDAK, the TRNC’s higher education planning, supervision and accreditation body. Arrest or investigation does not in itself establish guilt.
Former YÖDAK chair Turgay Avcı and former deputy chair Mehmet Hasgüler were investigated over separate bribery allegations connected to the university’s application to open a medical faculty. Both denied the allegations, according to the 2024 report. Avcı resigned from his post during the investigation.
Dürüst, who has also served as a government minister and MP, has faced proceedings connected to the KSTÜ investigation. In a report earlier this year, his case was continuing and he was being tried without being held in custody.
Özersay: “Accountability requires concrete steps”
Halkın Partisi (People’s Party) leader Kudret Özersay, who has been among the most vocal campaigners for accountability over the scandal, welcomed Ünal’s conviction and called attention to the cases still to come.
Writing on Facebook after Tuesday’s sentencing, he said in Turkish:
“The only way forward for this country is CLEAN POLITICS, and holding people to account is not achieved through words, but by taking concrete steps and following through persistently.”
The outcome to Fatma Ünal’s case has intensified public interest in the remaining cases. There is a clear expectation that everyone found to have played a role in the scandal, whether in issuing or obtaining fraudulent qualifications, will now be held to account.
