Turkish journalist Ahmet Donmez’s home, about 12 miles out from the center of Stockholm, looks like it was made by Ikea. Leafy, green, and eerily quiet, the neighborhood is too dull to be dangerous. A good, safe place, Donmez thought, to bring up his kids.

Then one day in March, when Donmez was driving his six-year-old daughter home from school, he was violently attacked. His car was bumped from behind, at a crossroads before the strip of houses ringed by security cameras where his home is. He got out of the car to speak to the driver. He does not know how many were in the car, but he is sure it was more than one. Then from behind he was hit with something hard over the head. Then blackness.

Donmez regained consciousness the next day. He spent three weeks in the hospital and a rehabilitation center. With help from the police, his daughter, and wife, Donmez understands small remnants of what happened. He knows his daughter turned her head away before he was attacked. For now, she does not really understand what happened. He worries about the day she will find out.

Swedish police have not been able to identify the perpetrators. That has not stopped Donmez and others from drawing their own conclusions: that the order for the attack “came from Ankara” — Turkey’s capital. And he believes the government’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, was behind it.