Washington Kurdish Institute June 3, 2021
The crimes perpetrated by Turkey against the Kurdish people, in all of their absurdity, brutality and severity, amount to horror stories nearly beyond belief. Indeed, the denial of Kurdish identity and harsh persecution of the Kurds, the world’s largest nation without a state, are founding pillars of Turkey’s state identity and ideology – part of the Republic of Turkey’s past, present, and most likely, future.
Since the establishment of the modern Republic of Turkey in 1923, wars and massacres planned and executed by Turkish state against the Kurds have resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Kurds, including major ethnic cleansing campaigns like those in Dersim. When asking a Kurd in Turkey about which Turkish leader or an era in the country has been the most aggressive and hostile, one will be met with confusion, as nearly all leaders have clung tightly to the same policy concerning the Kurds – denial and war. Thus, it is both painful and difficult to compare the degrees of oppression suffered under Turkey’s various regimes. Needless to say, the current situation in the country is exceptionally difficult for the Kurds, as authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has eliminated all checks on his power and persecutes Kurds within Turkey’s borders, filling the country’s prisons with real and perceived foes and focusing his ire on members and supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) while also pursuing campaigns of unprovoked military aggression against Kurds in Syria and Iraq as well. Indeed, Erdogan’s wars on Kurds at home and abroad are designed to distract from his evident governing failures. That said, the Turkish state tradition of oppressing the Kurds began with the country’s secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, though it is now positioned in religious terms by the Islamist Erdogan. Despite fundamental differences between Ataturk and Erdogan, perhaps the two most consequential heads of state in Turkey’s history, they share an approach to the Kurdish issue.
Turkey’s tyranny against the Kurds takes all forms – political, economic, military, and cultural – and is caried out through various official and unofficial institutions, including not only the military and police services but also state-sponsored organized crime syndicates. Like any organized crime group, the Turkish mafia is involved in the trafficking of drugs, arms, and people. Additionally, the Turkish mafia has a history of involvement in political assassinations, mainly against Kurdish politicians and businessmen. The Turkish mafia and the country’s leaders share the same a hatred of Kurds and, previously, have been proven to maintain ties with the Turkish intelligence (MIT), the country’s defense establishment, and Turkey’s powerful National Security Council.
In recent weeks, infamous Turkish mafia leader Sedat Peker appeared in the UAE after fleeing the country. Peker opened Pandora’s box, posting videos on Youtube in which he frankly discussions crimes such as corruption, rape, and murders committed by Turkish officials along with other scandals, implicating President Erdogan, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, and many others. Peker, a member of the radical ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves, claims to reveal the perpetrators and planners of assassinations of Kurdish business people in the 1990s. The Kurds have always known that the Turkish state was behind the hundreds of deaths targeting political activists and businesspeople in the 1990s. Many of those were assassinated in the daylight, including renowned Kurdish politician Vedat Aydin and former Kurdish MP Mehmet Sincar.
The government’s involvement with the mafia and what are known as “death squads” was a part of deep state operations against members of the pro-Kurdish People’s Labour Party (HEP) and one of its successors, the Democracy Party (DEP). Moreover, tens of Kurdish businesspeople were assassinated, including Savaş Buldan and his colleagues. These businessmen were accused of aiding the Kurdish rebels fighting for the rights of the Kurds, mainly the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Mob leader Peker explained that the former national police chief Mehmet Agar, who later became the Interior Minister, was responsible for these deaths. Agar was sentenced in 2011 to five years in prison for many crimes, including some relating to the infamous Susurluk Scandal of the mid-1990s, which undeniably exposed the deep state links with the mafia and shadowy rightwing groups. At the time, Agar spent only a year and a half in prison and was released. The scandal resulted in the resignation of Tansu Çiller, the Prime Minister, who was also accused of mass corruption.
In a recent video, Peker admitted ties with Minister Soylu, who used the mafia boss for political gains. Soylu is one of Turkey’s most controversial figures, and is a known perpetrator of human rights abuses. Soylu’s style of directing the Ministry of Interior is similar to that of a mafia boss. For example, he once returned the corpse of a Kurdish rebel to his family in pieces via post. Soylu has a track record of ignoring hate crimes against Kurds killed by fascists or silencing investigations of such incidents. The US has also sanctioned Soylu on various occasions for criminal acts , including once for two weeks due to Turkey’s military aggression in Syria which endangered innocent civilians and undermined the campaign to defeat ISIS, and another time for four months before Turkey released a US pastor detained in the country. US policymakers clearly have enormous knowledge of Soylu’s human rights abuses, and when US-Turkey relations falter, he is a main target of US sanctions. Soylu has been loudly accused of turning a blind eye to drug trafficking.
Unsurprisingly, Soylu’s father figure and mentor is Mehmet Agar, a former police chief, politician, and leading deep state actor. Peker has accused Agar’s son, Tolga, of raping and killing an 18-year-old Yeldana Kaharman in 2019. Tolga Agar is currently a lawmaker from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). When Sedat Sur, an investigative journalist, labeled Kaharman’s death as a rape and murder, he was immediately investigated, while Mehmet Agar covered up the story.
Peker continues to rock Turkey’s political scene with his new videos, in some cases releasing videos of conversations with intermediaries of state officials. The public in Turkey, worn down by economic collapse and the coronavirus crisis along with Erdogan’s various wars, stays alert for new releases from the exiled crime boss. Of course, Peker’s case is one of many that shines a light on how various actors and institutions in Turkey can commit crimes against the Kurds, with the knowledge and cooperation of the Turkish state, with impunity. Officials like Soylu, Mehmet Agar, and Tolga Agar, have all been partners and supporters of Erdogan, who enjoys unchecked power in Turkey. Peker is a career criminal, while Erdogan has been a politician for decades, first serving as mayor of Istanbul in 1994 and assuming national political leadership as Prime Minister in 2003. However, in reality, Erdogan is not very different from Peker or the other figures in his regime with proven ties to the mafia and, indeed, the crimes of the fugitive Peker pale in comparison to those of Turkey’s head of state, Erdogan, a man who values self-preservation above all else and sees persecution and war as his best bet to maintaining absolute power.