JİTEM and the ‘Deep State’

"We estimate that there are about 3,000 unsolved crimes": Sezgin Tanrıkulu, lawyer, and former head of the Bar Association in Diyarbakir

Recent debate in Turkey revolving around the Ergenekon gang has brought up past actions by the state against the Kurds. There are thousands of unsolved criminal cases from the 1990s and the early 2000s. The crimes are political murders, disappearances, kidnappings, and torture.

Last week some 8,000 Kurds demonstrated in Silopi on the eighth anniversary of the disappearance of two Kurdish HADEP politicians, Serdar Tanış and Ebubekir Deniz. Both men disappeared after visiting the Gendarmerie Command there in January 2001. The rally was organised by the DTP (Democratic Society Party), which is the successor party to HADEP.

The investigation and subsequent trial of the Ergenekon gang involves figures from all ranks of Turkish society including military and police officers, politicians, media members, labor union leaders, and political strategists. Some of those arrested have given information regarding JİTEM (Turkish: Jandarma İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele), the über-clandestine Intelligence and Counterterrorism Police Force.

JİTEM is a ‘non-existent’ paramilitary force, an embodiment of the ‘deep state,’ used to enforce national interests. In other words, it is the unofficial military wing of Ergenekon, a group itself that not everyone believes exists. Former Turkish President Süleyman Demirel said that ‘If you want to define this situation, you can say that the military is the state. It is deep in the state. In other words, it is the deep state.’

Abdulkadir Aygan, a former PKK member, and later a member JİTEM, confessed to the media that when retired Colonel Abdulkerim Kirca was the head of JİTEM in Diyarbakir (Amed), the unit conducted dozens of executions. The following day Kirca shot himself in the head.

Aygan has claimed that JİTEM executed between 600 and 700 Kurds in the 1990s and that ‘JİTEM operations always ended in death…those who were reported to JİTEM as having any relationship with the PKK were executed.’ Aygan is now living in political exile in Sweden.

Tuncay Güney, a suspected former member of Ergenekon now living in Canada, claimed on Sunday that the group’s leader is an active duty general in the army and that the leader’s consultant is a retired general. His testimony directly ties the military to Ergenekon.

Güney recently said a large number of the Kurds executed by JİTEM in the 1990s were doused with acid and buried in wells located near facilities of the state-owned Turkish Pipeline Corporation (BOTAŞ) in Silopi.

Both Güney and Aygan have said that many Kurds were thrown into wells between Şırnak and Cizre. Aygan claims to have knowledge of 16 such wells. Güney also claimed that one of the torture centres of JİTEM was based in northern Iraq.

Silopi region

DTP MP Hasip Kaplan also said that bodies had been buried in the wells. He added that informants of the clandestine JİTEM gendarmerie organisation had said that bodies could also be found at the bottom of Cudi Mountain. Kurdish activists are now demanding that the acid wells of BOTAŞ be emptied to look for remains.

Rationale and speculation around JİTEM’s mission are varied. Some say it existed to foment infighting in the PKK and to raise stakes in the fight against PKK terror. The Turkish military needed the PKK (as the US military needs al-Qaeda) to keep it operational. JİTEM carried out assassinations and bombings that were blamed on the PKK and gave the military justification to continue its operations and presence in Kurdish areas. One well-known example is the 2005 bookstore bomb attack in Semdinli.

The existence of JİTEM was first reported by Ayşe Önal in 1994. Önal was introduced to JİTEM’s founder, Veli Küçük, by fellow journalist, Tuncay Güney. She wrote about what she learned at that meeting and was fired immediately thereafter (along with 19 of her co-workers) from her position at Ateş Magazine.

Sources:

Kurdish MPs want disappearances solved, 27 January 2009. bianet,
http://www.bianet.org/english/kategori/english/112162/kurdish-mps-want-disappearances-solved

Siebert, T. In Turkey, prosecutors shed light on dark days, The National, 28 January 2009. http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090128/FOREIGN/783809545/1002

Turkey’s deep state is the army, claims former president, Today’s Zaman, 03 February 2009.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=165789&bolum=101

Uslu, E. The Ergenekon Investigation May Reveal JITEM’s Dirty Past, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 18, 28 January 2009. http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=34425

Read more about Sezgin Tanrıkulu.