By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 13:06, Tuesday, 24 November 2009

A FORMER Workington kebab shop boss who is accused of the “honour killing” of his niece told a jury that she was “like my daughter”.

Disappeared: Tulay Goren’s body has never been found

Tulay Goren, 15, is alleged to have been murdered by her father Mehmet and his brothers Ali and Cuma because she fell in love with the wrong man.

The schoolgirl went missing in January 1999 and her body has never been found, Old Bailey jurors have been told.

Giving evidence in his defence, father-of-five Ali Goren, who at the time was running Pedros on King Street, Workington, was asked what his relationship with his niece was like.

“Very well, like my daughter.

“ I liked her,” replied Ali, who was speaking in the court through a Turkish interpreter.

The court has been told that a relationship between Tulay and her boyfriend Halil Unal would have been unacceptable because he was a Sunni Muslim while the Goren family was from the Alevi branch of the faith.

But Ali, 56, said he had “no trouble” with Sunnis and that his own son had had a Sunni girlfriend since 1998, a relationship of which he approved.

His barrister Michael Bromley-Martin QC asked him: “Do you yourself follow any honour code?”

“No,” replied Ali.

His relationship with Mehmet, Tulay’s father, was “distant”, he told the court, and they had rowed over Mehmet’s gambling.

“We weren’t talking,” Ali said.

Ali, of Brettenham Road, Walthamstow, east London, denies Tulay’s murder.

His brothers Mehmet Goren, 49, of Navestock Crescent, Woodford Green, north-east London, and Cuma Goren, 42, of Evesham Avenue, Walthamstow, have also pleaded not guilty to the charge.

All three also face a count of conspiracy to murder Tulay’s boyfriend Halil Unal between May 1998 and February 1999, which they deny.

Pedros is now under different management.

The trial continues.

First published at 11:18, Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk