RIGHTS-TURKEY: Military Implicated In Attack On Rights Activist

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nadire Mater

ISTANBUL, May 26 1998 (IPS) - The would-be assassins who gunned down Turkey’s top human rights activist got their training, in secret, from a non-commissioned officer with neo-fascist sympathies serving with a top anti-terrorist intelligence unit.

Six men were arrested at the weekend in connection with a near- fatal gun attack on Akin Birdal, chairman of the country’s Human Rights Association. Shot seven times, Birdal was badly wounded but survived.

Two of the arrested group, Kerem Deretarla and Bahri Eken, have reportedly confessed all to investigators and will plead guilty to charges of attempted murder.

In a remarkable confrontation, they were both brought before Birdal’s hospital bed so he could confirm them as the men who gunned him down in his office on May 12.

“I looked into their very eyes,” Birdal told IPS by phone Monday, “but they could not do the same to me. They were the killers. But they are only tools, mere children. The real agents are behind them.”

Deretarla, just 17 years old, has told police that he was trained for the attack in a secret woodland camp north of Istanbul. His trainer was one Cengiz Ersever, a non-commissioned officer serving with the country’s paramilitary gendarmes.

Ersever was promptly arrested and is expected to plead guilty to the charges.

Speaking to IPS from his bed in Ankara’s private Sevgi Hospital, Birdal recalled the moment when the would-be killers struck. “I knew,” he said, speaking faintly and with difficulty. “I was expecting that they would make an attempt on my life.

“They had come as visitors. But I suspected them, so I was alert and stood up as they were leaving the room, so I could move and defend myself.” Birdal must undergo more surgery in the days to come. His left foot and right arm are still paralysed.

According to the gunmen’s own testimony, as widely reported here, he was targeted after the media printed the leaked testimony of former Kurdish guerrilla commander Semdin Sakik, who was snatched by a Turkish special forces unit earlier this year.

In a wide ranging series of allegations attributed to Sakik — som eof which he has since denied — a long list of critics of the government and military were ‘named’ as ‘Kurdish agents’ and supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrilla forc e.

According to the alleged testimony of Sakik, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was supposed to have said that while Birdal “is not affiliated to the PKK, he is more PKK than anybody else in the organisation”. Without Birdal, Ocalan allegedly said, the PKK “w ould not be able to establish the present influence we have in Europe”.

The unsubstantiated claims, quickly denied by Birdal, gave a green light to Ersever, Deretarla and Eken, who had formed a covert death squad specifically to target such ‘enemies of the state’.

“We decided to kill Akin Birdal when we read Sakik’s testimonies in the dailies,” the gunmen are said to have told the police.

According to evidence presented to the courts here, Ersever signed the two up alongside 15 others to form a death squad code- named the Turkish Revenge Brigade. All were members of the neo-fascist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) whose youth wing, the Gray Wolves, have been implicated in the murders of thousands of dissidents over the last three decades.

“I have scores of others in my list. Those who are the enemies of the Turkish military and the police are also my enemies,” Ersever reportedly told police interrogators. The original Turkish Revenge Brigades killed dozens of left-wingers during the civ il strife of the late 1970s. One brigade member, Mehmet Ali Agca, later tried to kill the Pope.

Remarkably, Ersever’s name has come up before in similar contexts. He was recently named by witnesses testifying at a parliamentary commission investigating the so-called Susurluk Affair.

This followed a now notorious car crash on the Susurluk Highway that revealed top level links between the neo-fascists, the police and MPs from former prime minister Tansu Ciller’s True Path (DYP) party.

The parliamentary investigation, helped by testimonies from top officials such as Security Intelligence chief Hanefi Avci, exposed a vast network of covert death squads. These sqauds, in the course of the 15 year war between the army and the PKK, have be en linked with the deaths of some 2,500 dissidents.

Ersever, formerly with the Gendarme’s Intelligence and Counter Terrorism (JITEM) squad, was named by several witnesses and linked to another former PKK cadre turned informer, Mahmut Yildirim, codenamed ‘Yesil’ (‘Green’). Yildirim in turn has been linked

with a number of extra-judicial killings.

Ironically Hanefi Avci was himself in court Monday, charged with ‘revealing state secrets’. There he took the opportunity to tell the judge that though Ersever’s links with Yildirim was known by the authorities, he was not prosecuted.

“Turkish Security, the Turkish Intelligence Organisation (MIT) and the Gendarme, all knew this person ‘Yesil’ well; followed him; filed their information about him, but did not move a finger to shackle him,” noted Kutlu Savas, who led the investigation into the Susurluk Affair for prime minister Mesut Yilmaz.

“Why?” he asked, “The only logical answer to this question is that Yesil’s operations and activities do not run contrary to the general priorities and preferences of the administration.”

A string of top officials implicated in the running of death squads, including former interior minister Mehmet Agar, Gendarme General Veli Kocok and others, so far have escaped prosecution.

“Since the state has declined to prosecute the key figures in the Susurluk Affair, the gang has come to believe in their own legitimacy and impunity,” says journalist Oral Calislar of the Istanbul’s daily Cumhuriyet. “The mafiosi behind this gang have been convinced that they are free to pursue their activities.”

Calislar has also received death treats and currently lives and works under police guard.

“The attack triggered a revolt among public opinion,” Birdal told IPS Monday. “They had to investigate the attack and arrest the gunmen in the face of such a massive reaction.”

Thousands of protestors took to the streets in protest at Bridal’s shooting and a string of high profile visitors to his bedside included British foreign secretary Robin Cook, in his capacity as holder of the European Union’s presidency.

“Turkey is governed by a totalitarian system that does not recognise the rights of the opposition,” Birdal said. “I have been targeted for I have been expressing the common belief of so many millions, that basic human rights can only be implemented he re when peace reigns in Turkey.”