A successful businessman ended up in a prison cell after threatening to arrange for a hitman to murder his wife.
Huseyin Erdogan boasted several businesses here in the UK and in his native Turkey, including shops and restaurants. But he is now beginning a 23-month jail sentence after a subjecting his partner to sickening domestic abuse.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that the 54-year-old was confronted by his wife Samara at the Istanbul Grill on Mersey Street in Warrington town centre on April 1 this year. Peter Wilson, prosecuting, described how she believed he was having an affair, but Erdogan responded by shouting "you are a stupid w***e" and slapping her in the face - causing bleeding to her ear.
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The businessman started trying to slash at his victim's face with a skewer, pushing her down into the basement while continuing to "lash out" with the implement. He trapped her in the cellar and threatened to "cut her with a knife" if she called the police.
Ms Erdogan suffered injuries to her forearms and legs as a result. Then, on April 16, she discovered her 11-year-daughter was speaking to the abuser on the phone at 1am.
The complainant took the mobile from her and spoke to the defendant, telling him she wanted a divorce. Erdogan, of Mersey Street, replied: "You're going to make me a murderer.
"I'll kill you and I won't get a big sentence for that. I'll kill you or I'll arrange for someone to kill you."
Erdogan again called her a "w***e" and threatened to "f*** her mum and sisters". When she told him she would call the police, he said: "If you do I will f*** you."
In a statement read out to the court on her behalf, Ms Erdogan said she was "always humiliated" by her attacker, who "threatened to take her children away from her". She added: "I don't feel safe and I don't think I ever will be.
"I am really scared he will kill me. If something will happen to me, it will be him who is responsible.
"I am scared he will pay someone to kill me. I am psychologically finished now."
Erdogan - who has no previous convictions - runs several businesses in the Warrington area, as well as in Turkey. He has lived in the UK for 21 years, with his wife and four children having moved here in 2019.
Julian Farley, defending, said: "He accepted at the final hurdle his wrong doing. He is a very old-fashioned gentleman so far as his relationship with his wife is concerned.
"He is a reasonably successful businessman, owning restaurants in Warrington as well as in Turkey and shops in Turkey as well. He sees his role is to provide for his family.
"A man and a woman are expected to do certain things in Turkey, and a woman is expected to remain married to a man for life. There were difficulties in the marriage and she felt she could not get out of it."
Erdogan admitted assault and making threats to kill shortly before he was due to stand trial. He was jailed for 23 months, handed an indefinite restraining order and told to pay a victim surcharge.
Sentencing, Judge David Hale said: "It has been said on your behalf that you have an old fashioned approached to family life. It is an approach which is totally unacceptable in a modern society, irrespective of whatever ethnic background you are from.
"You are living in England, and you have got to obey the law of England. If the way you behave to your wife is the way life occurs in Turkey, I am very sorry for the female population of Turkey.
"You cannot treat your wife as cattle. Why should she not object to you having a girlfriend, because she should?
"You treated her as someone who has got to put up with anything you say to her. She had to leave her home, take the children away and live in secrecy - she seems a broken woman."
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