Court case to shed light on Turkey's past political murders

An Ankara court has continued to try 18 unsolved political murders from the 1990’s in light of new documents provided by the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), unearthing some state institutions’ responsibility in these killings in cooperation with ultranationalist mafia.

The transcripts of phone conversations between former MİT officials and mafia members disclosed that “the gang within the state” is also responsible for a score of murders abroad during 1990s, including Kurdish businessmen and leftist politicians.

The court resumed the hearing July 11 in absentia of Mehmet Ağar, head of the Police Department in 1995, as the primary suspect of these killings. One of most controversial figures, Ağar was elected to Parliament from a center-right party and served as the interior minister in different governments in the late 1990s. In 2012, he was found guilty on charges of establishing an illegal armed organization to commit crime and for his dirty relations with prominent members of the mafia, such as Abdullah Çatlı.

Daily Taraf reported a 13-page transcript of phone conversations between Tarık Ümit and Mehmet Eymür, both former MÄ°T officials, which highlighted the killings of Kurdish businessmen Savaş Buldan, Behçet Cantürk and Fevzi Aslan, as well as assassination plans targeting prominent journalist Mehmet Ali Birand and Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who is currently serving life sentence.  

“In our meetings, Ümit was talking about two different lists of people to be killed: one short and one long list. I heard from Ümit that these lists included Birand, Mustafa Süzer [a businessman], İbrahim...