THREE ARRESTED OVER PLANS TO ASSASSINATE KURDS
Today’s Zaman
Sept 10 2009
Turkey
Police have raided a group of homes in Igdir, arresting three people on
charges of planning to assassinate Kurdish politicians and businessmen
as part of efforts to sabotage the government’s recently announced
democratic initiative to solve the Kurdish problem.
According to reports, police arrested three people who had allegedly
formed a "death squad" to kill notable Kurdish personalities. The
raids took place on Monday night at the homes of Mucahit Yalcin, the
president of the Igdir branch of the Grey Wolves ultranationalist
group, and Turan Cevik, the former head of the Melekli district’s
Grey Wolves branch.
Police searches of the homes yielded documents that detailed plans
to sabotage the government’s newly launched democratic initiative on
the Kurdish problem. Among the documents was a "hit list" listing
the names of Kurdish businessmen and politicians to be killed to
harm the government initiative. Also seized was a Kalashnikov rifle
and ammunition.
Yalcin, Cevik and his son Kamil Cevik were arrested by order of the
Igdir state prosecutor and sent to Igdir Prison. Police are reportedly
still searching for one individual, Zafer Agridag, in connection
with the death squad. Police had been monitoring Agridag and Turan
Cevik ahead of the raids, and they say that suspicious conversations
between the two helped lay the ground for the police bust.
‘Agridag one of Kucuk’s soldiers’ The police raid reportedly took
place after a period of police monitoring of Zafer Agridag. Agridag,
who in 2000 served in the military alongside retired Gen. Veli Kucuk —
among the defendants in the ongoing trial over Ergenekon, a clandestine
deep-state group that plotted to overthrow the government — had been
taken into custody and interrogated following a Jan. 31, 2009 raid by
Igdir police on his home as part of the Ergenekon investigation. In
the search of his home, police had confiscated a journal in which he
praised Kucuk.
In 2007, Agridag had been caught by police when he and a friend,
Isfandiyar Ekinci, traveled to Istanbul as part of a plan to steal
a ship traveling from Lapseki to Gallipoli in protest of the public
usage of the slogan "We’re all Armenian" following the assassination
of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink.