Defne Joy Foster

Defne Joy Foster was an American-Turkish actress, presenter and VJ. She was born in İncirlik, Turkey, to a Turkish mother and an American father. She studied in Alsancak primary school and İzmir Özel Fatih Lisesi, a private school in İzmir. She started her career as a VJ on Kral TV and later acted in various TV series, such as Ruhsar, Beyaz Yalanlar, Dadı, Sihirli Annem, Selena, and Hayal ve Gerçek. She also participated in Yok Böyle Dans, the Turkish version of Dancing with the Stars, where she finished fourth. She married Yasin Solmaz in 2008 and gave birth to their son, Can Kılıç, in 2009. She was found dead at her friend Kerem Altan's apartment in Istanbul on February 2, 2011. She was thought to have died from respiratory difficulty and a heart attack. The results of her autopsy revealed that she had a cardiac arrest caused by asthma and consumption of alcoholic drinks with medication. In 2015, Kerem Altan was sentenced to two months in prison for waiting over two and a half hours after Foster fell unconscious before calling emergency services, but his sentence was suspended shortly after. In 2016, further investigation into her death revealed that Kerem Altan was the only person whose testimony was taken by the police, despite the taxi driver and the neighbor saying they had heard fighting and screams. Ahmet Altan, Kerem's father and a journalist with ties to the Gülen movement, was accused of persuading the prosecutor to cover up the case. He was arrested in 2016 and the case was reopened, while a travel ban was placed on Kerem to prevent him from fleeing the country.