Europe, Headlines, Human Rights

TURKEY: Comrades Of Leftists Killed In Prison Wreak Bloody Revenge

Nadire Mater

ISTANBUL, Jan 10 1996 (IPS) - In faxes sent to IPS and other media in Turkey, the banned Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party (DHKP), confirmed responsibility for the murder of a top businessman and two staff — and sent a message of another kind to the country.

Business magnate Ozdemir Sabanci and his two colleagues Haluk Gorgun and Nilgun Hasefe were gunned down by three new members of the underground leftist force, in revenge for the death of three jailed DHKP activists, allegedly beaten to death by prison guards.

The three prison deaths last week triggered five days of riots, hostage taking and violent public protest only brought to an end by concessions on jail regimes and the sacking of the director and prosecutor at Umraniye high security jail where the DHKP trio died.

“Our armed propaganda units have punished Ozdemir Sabanci in retaliation to the massacre in Umraniye prison,” read a message faxed to IPS in Istanbul, indicating that these concessions were not seen as enough.

The three assassins circumvented tight security systems Tuesday to find and shoot dead Sabanci, chief executive of a joint venture between the family firm and Japanese motor giant Toyota, Gorgun, his general manager and Hasefe, his executive secretary.

Beside the corpses the killers left a cloth inscribed with the message ‘The Murderers Are Punished’ undersigned with the initials ‘DHKP’ and 10 empty 7.65 calibre cartridges.

Istanbul police chief Orhan Tasanlar named the three alleged assassins as lathe operator Ismail Akyol, student Mustafa Duyar and Fahriye Erdal, a maid employed by the office cleaning company. All were described as new affiliates of the DHKP.

The killings were a dramatic statement of defiance by the DHKP, which has lost scores of its fighters in clashes with police and others to extra-judicial executions in the last five years.

The DHKP is distinguished among Turkey’s fragmented extreme left by its frequent use of violence as ‘means of political propaganda’. Recruiting its members from among Turkey’s unemployed youth in its western cities, the DHKP claims to be the true heir to Turkey’s broad revolutionary movement of the 1970s.

After leader Mahir Cayan died in a clash with Turkish soldiers in 1972, the movement went underground during military rule in the 1980s. The DHKP, then operating under the name Dev-Sol (Revolutionary Left), maintained the armed struggle despite heavy casualties, even as other leftists turned to peaceful tactics.

Since restarting armed attacks against ‘military targets’ in 1990 the DHKP has been targeted by the full force of the Turkish security apparatus. Among the 100 DHKP activists who died were Sabahat Karatas, wife of the organisation’s present leader Dursun Karatas, and top members Sinan Kukul and Tayfun Ozkok.

The group was torn by internecine violence in 1993 as Karatas and second-in-command Bedri Yagan battled for control. Twenty of Yagan’s followers were killed by Karatas supporters and Yagan himself died in a police raid in Istanbul in 1993.

Karatas, 47, is now the undisputed leader of the group. He was arrested by the military in 1980, tried and sentenced to death, only to escape from jail before sentence could be carried out. In exile in Europe he was briefly detained by the French police, who refused Ankara’s request for extradition.

Bailed by a French court he absconded again and now controls DHKP operations from abroad. His casual use of easily tapped phone calls to members — a specific criticism of Yagan’s — continues to be a source of information to the Turkish authorities.

After the liquidation of Yagan’s opposition, the group reestablished itself in 1995 as the DHKP-C or Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front.

The group is divided into two sections, a tight cell of ‘professional revolutionaries’ (the Party) and a wider circle of ‘sympathisers’ (the Front), but its bloody internecine record and habit of killing major figures and ordinary people without distinction has alienated most of the Turkish intellectual left.

However the DHKP has gained visible support from unemployed youth, thousands of whom turned out Monday to protest the deaths of the three DHKP activists in Umraniye jail, a demonstration that swiftly turned to violence. A journalist covering the unrest later died in police custody.

The three DHKP activists who died in Umraniye, Orhan Ozen, Riza Boybas and Abdulmecit Seckin, according to autopsy reports were beaten to death with iron bars. They died as paramilitary police moved into secure the jail. The security forces deny the killings.

According to police DHKP activity was up 46 percent in 1995 on the previous year, including 178 violent acts — among them 20 assassinations, 23 bombings, 24 armed attacks, eight arsons and 74 violent protests.

Mehmet Agar, former Turkish Security Director General and now a parliamentary deputy for acting prime minister Tansu Ciller’s True Path (DYP) party, claimed Tuesday that the DHKP had been broken.

The DHKP replied that “the punishment of the enemies of the people” will continue. Sabanci’s assassination has caused serious security concerns among Turkish business circles who blame the crisis in part on the current political uncertainty in the country.

“I denounce the politicians who have been unable to form a government as well as the assassins of Ozdemir Sabanci,” said Fuat Miras, chair of the Turkish Association of Chambers of Trade.

Business leaders again urged Wednesday for Ciller’s DYP and Mesut Yilmaz’ Motherland Party (ANAP) to bury their differences and unite in coalition. On Tuesday Islamist Welfare Party leader Necmettin Erbakan, whose party took the most votes in December general elections but has no majority, was invited to try to form a government by Turkish president Suleyman Demirel.

“The attack on Sabanci will inevitably tarnish Turkey’s international image and was deliberately committed for this purpose,” said Feyyaz Berker, chairman of the Turkish Businessmen and Industrialists Association (TUSIAD) Advisory Board.

Analysts suggest that the real target of Tuesday’s assassination was to be Ozdemir’s elder brother Sakip Sabanci. Sakip is known for his criticisms of Turkey’s human rights record in the war against Kurdish guerrillas in the country’s south-east and his strong calls for democratic reform — to clear political obstacles to Turkish trade with the European Union.

However Sakip Sabanci’s relatively liberal approach won no mercy from the DHKP, which described the Sabancis and other tycoons as “the main source of Turkey’s impoverishment and the real force behind government repression of the people”.

 
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