FROM SUSURLUK TO PARIS
BY HRAYR S. KARAGUEUZIAN
Funeral of slain Kurdish activist in Paris Sakine Cansiz
The Susurluk scandal refers to the events surrounding the peak of the
Turkey-Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) conflict, in the mid-1990s. It
is considered a scandal because it indicated a close relationship
between the government, the armed forces, and organized crime. The
relationship came into existence after the National Security Council
(MGK), Turkey’s highest body of authority conceived the need for
the marshaling of the nation’s various “resources” to combat the
separatist, Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
The scandal surfaced with a car crash on November 3 1996, near
Susurluk, in the south-eastern province of Balıkesir, Turkey. The
scandal revealed relations between criminal networks, the police, and
the government in Turkey. When a government car crashed, found at the
scene were: Abdullah Catli, internationally wanted alleged murderer;
chief police officer Huseyin Kocadag; and Sedat Bucak, a deputy for
the True Path party (DYP) the political party of then Prime Minster
Tansu Ciller. A sinister alliance of political representatives with
gangsters in combating the Kurds was hence exposed.
Fast forward to 2013; three Kurdish women were murdered execution
style in the Kurdish Information Center in Paris on January 11. One
of the three murdered women, Sakine Cansiz, was a close companion of
Andullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of PKK. She was present when the
PKK was founded in the late 1970s and spent years in the Diyarbakir
Prison, notorious for the systematic torture that took place there,
and later went on to become an important PKK representative in Europe.
Who Is Responsible? The question of who was behind the killings of
the three Kurdish women remains unanswered at the present. However,
the lessons of the past indicate a clear role for the Turkish “deep
state” in assassination plots. The examples Hrant Dink who was trying
to assemble and catalog the identity of Turkish citizens of Armenian
descent thus bringing forward the memory of the Gencoide, the recent
assassination of a teacher in an Armenian School in Turkey all point
to an organized assassination rather than an ordinary killing.
Surprisingly, Dink’s case was initially dismissed as an organized
murder. However, most recently the prosecutor’s office of Turkey’s
Supreme Court of Appeals has asked the top court to overturn the
rulings as an “ordinary killing,” arguing that the assassination was
“organized.”
“Anything is possible,” says the Turkish journalist Saruhan Oluc .
“Both opponents of the peace process within the PKK, or Turkish
right-wing extremists linked to the security apparatus who oppose an
agreement with the Kurds, are potential perpetrators.” A politically
correct discourse would be to suggest an “internal Kurdish struggle”
as PM Erdogan did without wasting time. However he did not dismiss
a more sinister possibility. Erdogan, with his Islamist agenda is
a different breed of politician compared to his late mentor Prime
Minister Necmettin Erbakan. Erdogan is credited in dismantling of a
military plot Balioz (Sludge hammer) designed to topple his government,
However, Erdogan’s selective pursuit of justice is devoid of a high
moral compass. He is after the truth that brings him more power and
against issues that bring forward the memory of the Genocide. “That’s
how it is here,” says the journalist Saruhan Oluc.
“A positive step [i.e., talks with Ocalan] has barely been made
before another setback takes place.” The journalist was referring
to the recent “opening” by the Turkish PM Erdogan, who had sent a
representative to ostensibly discuss possible ways of ending the
lethal violence with the PKK leader Ocalan.
The question was and remains: Which Turkish government can be trusted,
the “deep” or the “not so deep”?