JITEM'S ACID WELLS IN CIZRE

"If the Ergenekon investigation doesn't pass east of the Euphrates, the Kurdish problem will never be solved."
~ Ahmet Türk.

A month ago Nuh Gönultaş at Bugün wrote about some interesting information from supreme Ergenekon weirdo, Tuncay Güney, in a piece titled, "Where are JITEM's acid death wells?":

The black box, Tuncay Güney's life story and his relations, is not known whether or not it is real. He, who first disclosed Ergenekon and has become a legend.

Güney's most important trait is his close nine-year relationship with Veli Küçük, who was the deep paşa of the 1990s.

The book written by journalist Faruk Arslan, who lives in Toronto, titled Black Box: Ergenekon's Unknown Name Tuncay Güney, in which the mysterious witness makes shocking statements.

Güney claims that thousands of Kurdish citizens, who were killed by JITEM as extrajudicial murders for harboring PKK, were thrown into acid-filled wells, in which their corpses dissolved. Thus their bodies were never found.

This is quite an original and new information.

Güney advises looking at the BOTAŞ complex which JITEM had used in the Southeast in the 1990s, to find acid-filled death wells.

For years no one knew where the graves were of more than 18,000 citizens, most of whom were Kurdish and were killed by "unknown perpetrators"; no one questions or dares to question.

Güney claims that although there are very few people who know where these acid-filled wells are located in the Southeast, and Veli Küçük is one of them, but Küçük does not tell.

However, Güney gives a specific address in the book: "The places where JITEM and Kucuk's group used were these places. For a clear address, when you go towards the Habur border, close by Mardin's old town Cizre, on the left there is a complex that is guarded by soldiers. If you dig there, there will be a lot of bodies. BOTAŞ has enterprises in Diyarbakır, Batman, Adıyaman and these places should also be checked."

As a response to the question where did they find the acid, Güney replied in a classic way: "There are several factories in İzmit. Even Küçük's greeting is an order for them. Besides, for drug-trafficking they needed acid. They had become experts in bringing acid."

For more on that, see 32. Gün from November 2008, in which Güney reiterates the claim about the acid-filled wells. Note that I've provided the link for the first in a series of fourteen videos of that particular edition of 32. Gün.

Now it looks like the Şırnak state prosecutor is going to investigate the claims of the acid-filled wells.

The complaint was initially made by the head of the Şırnak Bar Association, based on the book by Faruk Arslan, mentioned in the Nuh Gönultaş piece . Before the state prosecutor's decision to go ahead with the investigation of the acid-filled wells, the Şırnak Bar Association vowed to move to open the wells at the first opportunity as soon as their exact locations were identified. The bar association will now be able to do just that. From Zaman:

Şırnak Bar Association chief Nuşirevan Elçi says: "This situation gave us hope. Turkey must face its past in order to have a bright future. If there are illegal implementations, these must come before the judiciary. The relatives of those murdered by unknown perpetrators don't know whether or not they are dead these last 15-20 years. This situation puts those people in pain. If this event is disclosed, these people will cease hoping. For Turkey's bright future, these kinds of works must be done. Especially within this context I see the Ergenekon investigation as a new era."

In the past, DTP has said that unless Ergenekon was investigated east of the Euphrates, their would be little hope for a solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey. Now let's wait and see how much of this is truly investigated and the results revealed. Then we'll find out, too, if Ergenekon's mysterious "black box" has any credibility.

ERGENEKON BUSTED?

"There are three bases to the [organized] gang. First is the police, second is the [state] bureaucrats and third is the military. We can question the police and some of bureaucrats, but we cannot question the military."
~ Mehmet Elkatmış, Chairman, Susurluk Commission.

The most interesting news of the day comes from Bianet:

Retired Major General Veli Kücük, nationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, lawyer Fuat Turgut, who is the defense lawyer of Yasin Hayal, a murder suspect in the Hrant Dink case, Aksam newspaper journalist Güler Kömürcü, retired Colonel Fikri Karadag, who is the leader of the ultra-nationalist Kuvayi Milliye Association, and Turkish Orthodox Patriarchy spokesperson Sevgi Erenerol, are under police custody.

All 33 taken from their homes on Tuesday (22 January) are charged with forming a clandestine group to plot against the government, and attempts at the lives of Kurdish politicians, as well as storing weapons in a secret arsenal.

Photo Radikal. Article: "İşte Ergenekon."

That's right, folks, the Ergenekon gang is in police detention. The news appeared in Turkish online media late last night, US time, but it may have only a brief appearance, as noted in the Bianet article:

According to the NTV news, the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecution made a written statement about the detentions and then immediately announced a broadcasting and publishing ban on the case.

It's this ban that tells us we should not expect too much from this so-called "operation." If they're ordering censorship about the case, it means that there is something to hide on the part of the government. However, one should remember Veli Küçük in connection with the Susurluk scandal, as a close associate of the notorious Grey Wolf, Abdullah Çatlı and the infamous Turkish state assassin, Mahmut Yıldırım, aka Yeşil. Küçük was also named in connection with the 2006 Council of State attack and with Hrant Dink's murder. For a roundup of Küçük's crimes, see a Rastî post from last year.

Zaman has more about what Küçük and the rest of the Ergenekon gang has been up to:

The gang was plotting to kill Nobel Literature Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk and had already hired the hit man to do the job, the investigation found. Thirty-three suspects accused of being part of the gang, which calls itself Ergenekon, were detained by the İstanbul Police Department's counterterrorism unit in İstanbul and other parts of the country in dawn raids on Tuesday, the culmination of an eight-month operation. The police have been observing the actions of the suspects for three-quarters of a year as part of an investigation into a house full of explosives and ammunition found in a shantytown in İstanbul's Ümraniye district in the June of 2007.

The investigation has found that the gang is linked to a clandestine phenomenon referred to as the "deep state" in Turkey that stages attacks using "behind-the-scene" paramilitary organizations such as Ergenekon to foment public opinion according its own political agenda. Ergenekon is the title of a legend that describes how Turks came into existence.

This particular gang is suspected of involvement in a number of political attacks on individuals and institutions, including the murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. At least eight of the suspects are retired from the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK).

The suspects, who include retired military generals, journalists and underground bosses, have not yet been charged and are still under interrogation, but the police found a list of people the gang had planned to assassinate, including pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) deputies Ahmet Türk, Leyla Zana and Sebahat Tuncel; Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir; Nobel Prize-winning author Pamuk; and journalist Fehmi Koru, who is also a regular columnist for Today's Zaman.

Khaleej Times adds a little more information:

Police are also investigating whether the suspects were involved in several politically motivated attacks that shocked Turkey over the past two years, the daily Sabah said.

They include the murders of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro and a senior judge killed by a gunman who stormed into the country’s top administrative court, the daily said.

And, in what may be a very felicitous coincidence, Martin Lee--who's done more to expose the Deep State, Grey Wolves, and the likes of Veli Küçük, in English than anyone else--may now be connecting Sibel Edmonds' case about the Deep State criminals in the US with the Deep State criminals in Turkey. At least Consortium News, which ran Lee's original article on the Deep State in 1997, feels it's necessary to run the article again to give some background context to Sibel's story. From Consortium News, "Turkey's Drug-Terrorism Connection":

Edmonds, who left the FBI in 2002, said she stumbled upon this corrupt network – which also may have involved money laundering and drug trafficking – when she was hired after the 9/11 attacks to translate a backlog of tapes dating back to 1997.

That was the same year when Consortiumnews.com published a remarkable story by Martin A. Lee about Turkish government officials caught in a web of corruption with notorious drug traffickers and right-wing terrorists.

In view of the Sunday Times article and a follow-up on Jan. 20, we are republishing our earlier story to provide historical context for Edmonds’s allegations:

In broad daylight on May 2, 1997, 50 armed men set upon a television station in Istanbul with gunfire. The attackers unleashed a fusillade of bullets and shouted slogans supporting Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Tansu Ciller.

The gunmen were outraged over the station's broadcast of a TV report critical of Ciller, a close U.S. ally who had come under criticism for stonewalling investigations into collusion between state security forces and Turkish criminal elements.

Miraculously, no one was injured in the attack, but the headquarters of Independent Flash TV were left pock-marked with bullet-holes and smashed windows. The gunfire also sent an unmistakable message to Turkish journalists and legislators: don't challenge Ciller and other high-level Turkish officials when they cover up state secrets.

For several months, Turkey had been awash in dramatic disclosures connecting high Turkish officials to the right-wing Grey Wolves, the terrorist band which has preyed on the region for years. In 1981, a terrorist from the Grey Wolves attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in Vatican City.

But at the center of the mushrooming Turkish scandal is whether Turkey, a strategically placed NATO country, allowed mafiosi and right-wing extremists to operate death squads and to smuggle drugs with impunity. A Turkish parliamentary commission is investigating these new charges.

The rupture of state secrets in Turkey also could release clues to other major Cold War mysteries. Besides the attempted papal assassination, the Turkish disclosures could shed light on the collapse of the Vatican bank in 1982 and the operation of a clandestine pipeline that pumped sophisticated military hardware into the Middle East -- apparently from NATO stockpiles in Europe -- in exchange for heroin sold by the Mafia in the United States.

Read the rest at Consortium News.

JITEM AND HRANT DINK

"They were both in the system and in the file. What should really be asked is why they [Kucuk and Agar] were not captured. If you are going to get a result on Susurluk they should be brought on the agenda".
~ Fikri Saglar.

UPDATE: The media's in a frenzy with Samast's adolescent remark that he murdered Dink because Dink said "Turkish blood is dirty," and I guess everyone will eat that up too, because a Turkish kangaroo court convicted him of it, right? Wrong. For the record, here's an explanation of what Dink really said:

It is ironic that Dink got into trouble for suggesting to diaspora Armenians that it was time to rid themselves of their rage against the Turks. "Armenians, especially of the diaspora, tend to have a problem associated with the role of other that the Turk has played in forming the Armenian identity", Dink says. "There is a certain history. A trauma. The Turk has become such a source of pain that it "poisons the Armenian blood", as the Anatolian saying goes. In my article, I was addressing the Armenian world and saying: "There are two ways of getting rid of this poison. One way is for the Turks to empathise with you, and take action to reduce your trauma. At the moment this seems unlikely. The second way is for you to rid yourself of it yourself. Turn your attention towards the state of Armenia and replace the poisoned blood associated with the Turk, with fresh blood associated with Armenia.'

It was the Turkish media that hyped the lie about Turkish blood being dirty, and that twisting of truth in order to incite the Turkish population and create an atmosphere which accepts assassination as a legitimate means of silencing "The Other" is the feeding of the monster that Ismet Berkan referred to in his column in Radikal over the weekend. The Turkish media was an accessory to the crime of the assassination attempt on Akin Birdal years ago and it is an accessory to the murder of Hrant Dink now.

In other news from the rabbit hole . . . According to Hrant Dink's brother, Orhan Dink, notorious JITEM member Veli Kucuk made an appearance at one of Hrant's trials. The mere appearance of a filthy JITEM vermin like Kucuk is enough to send a message--a message Hrant Dink clearly understood:

Orhan Dink told reporters that his brother told him he became worried when Veli Küçük, a prominent member of Turkey’s controversial Jandarma İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele (Gendarme Intelligence and Counter Terrorism organization), the JITEM, came to the trial and that the affair was “turning into a dangerous one”.

Hrand Dink said, ‘I am being pointed at as the target’, Orhan Dink told reporters.

Orhan Dink said that Küçük never threatened his brother directly.

“After Küçük came, we suspected that the bullet might have followed, and it did. … We were speaking within the family… What can we do? Should we leave [the country] or should we stay? Sometimes we would decide to leave. But then we would say that this nation is ours.”, Orhan Dink said. He added, “I wish they killed us all. We are no longer doves, we are now falcons. We love the people of Turkey. We will not let a bunch of people to take over. And we are not considering to leave any more. We gave our sacrifice. In order to stay, we can give more. We consider leaving as a treason against our brother.”

To give this some context, let's do a little review:

Filthy JITEM vermin Kucuk was involved with Susurluk, too, a minor detail that was noted in the wake of the Council of State attack, from Bianet:

Possible connections between the armed attack on Turkey's State Council during which one judge was killed and four others were wounded surfaced after relations were uncovered linking one of the suspects, retired officer Muzaffer Tekin, to retired general Veli Kucuk who was named in the Susurluk File.

Kucuk, who was a Brigadier General during the period where the Susurluk relations flourished, had refused to testify before the Parliament Investigation Commission on Susurluk.

But there are two other links in the Susurluk folder that have so far, in the last connection with the State Council attack, not been mentioned.

Mehmet Agar, politician-turned-policeman who not only chairs the True Path Party in the following years but serves directly in all operations as Turkey's National Police Chief in the Susurluk buildup. And the highest level security organ in the Turkish system: The National Security Council (NCS) which journalist Ismet Berkan identified as the supreme structure "that authorised the irregular war gang that was revealed with Susurluk".

On Kucuk and Agar, Saglar said "Both of them were in the operations. One of them from JITEM (Gendarme Intelligence) and the other as the Police General Director" and argued that Agar's becoming chairman of the True Path Party (DYP) "does not erase from history what he has done."

"They were both in the system and in the file. What should really be asked is why they [Kucuk and Agar] were not captured. If you are going to get a result on Susurluk they should be brought on the agenda".

[Note: The Mehmet Agar mentioned in connection with Deep State is the same Mehmet Agar who's now running in the Turkish election campaigns for the DYP.]

More, from DozaMe:

What Mr Elkatmis, as the Chair of the Susurluk Investigation Commission, has said still goes without notice. He said in a manner of questioning our “bloody history ?:

“There are three bases to the [organized] gang. First is the police, second is the [state] bureaucrats and third is the military. We can question the police and some of bureaucrats, but we cannot question the military. Ibrahim Sahin [police officer involved in Susurluk] was accused of setting up an illegal gang based on his photographs with Abdullah Catli [Turkey’s most wanted assassin killed in Susurluk crash]. We also have documents proving that Brigadier General Veli Kucuk made several telephone calls to Abdullah Catli. Why weren’t these documents accepted as evidence and there has not been an investigation against Veli Kucuk. Who ever finds him/herself in a difficult situation can claim that it is national security and would not turn up to give a statement in a court. Only if some people speak in Turkey can we get to the bottom of the investigation ?. . .

Ibrahim Sahin was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment, but Brigadier General Veli Kucuk was promoted to Major General in August, the same year.

Yet more, from TNA:

Hanefi Avci, who was then the police intelligence department acting head and now is Edirne police chief, best described the Susurluk connections. In his testimony at the parliamentary commission probing the Susurluk scandal, he claimed that there was an "illegal" organization established within the state to fight terrorism. He also said this organization then became a gang, which was established within the MIT, the police and Gendarmerie Intelligence (JITEM). Mehmet Agar, Korkut Eken, Ibrahim Sahin from the police, Mehmet Eymur, Duran Firat and Kasif Binbasi from the MIT and Lt. Col. Veli Kucuk from JITEM were in this organization and involved in numerous illegal actions under the leadership of Ahmet Cem Ersever, who was later killed by Kemal Uzuner (a.k.a Cubuklu), a driver working at JITEM, said Avci.

[Note: Mehmet Eymur is the bastard who was in charge of MIT's "counter-terrorism" department. He's been in "exile" in the US for some time, apparently after having some kind of trouble with the really big bastards behind the Deep State. Word on the street now is that he's been given some kind of reprieve, and that he's assisting Mehmet Agar in his campaign. Why is the United States protecting mass murderers like Mehmet Eymur? Inquiring minds want to know.]



Today, according to Firat News, through TNA, it looks like Kucuk is expanding his operations . . . into Azerbaijan:

Speculations regarding the murder of Dink, an Armenian-origin Turkish journalist, have been growing, raising further questions, while the media has been looking into the killer's possible link with a notorious ex-general, Kucuk. However, photos released by a pro-PKK media organ, the Firat News Agency, formerly the Mesopotamia News Agency, showed Kucuk with some other important figures.

Kucuk's name entered into Dink's murder investigation when the late writer's lawyers told officials that Kucuk had threatened Dink. They also also said that Ogun Samast, who confessed to the murder, was threatened by circles close to Kucuk.

In a photo taken two years ago Kucuk was seen with gunman Arslan at the Azerbaijan Congress held in Stockholm. After the bloody Council of State attack, Kucuk said he didn't knew Arslan. He also said after Dink's murder that he had no connection with the murder or suspect.

In another photo, Kucuk was seen with Muzaffer Tekin, said to be the mastermind of both the Council of State and daily Cumhuriyet attacks, and Association of Lawyers' Union head Kemal Kerincsiz, a high-profile ultranationalist figure known for filing complaints against writers and journalists, including Dink.

[ . . . ]

Furthermore, the news agency claimed that Kucuk was organizing nationalist circles in Azerbaijan and established a murder network against Armenians. The agency said it based this claim on information obtained in 2001 from Turan A., the nephew of Azerbaijan's then Interior Minister Siyavuz Mustafa . The news also accused Turkey's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) of illegally training soldiers with Kucuk in Azerbaijan.

The Firat News article can be viewed here. It contains a link near the bottom to Mesopotamian News, which carries the photos.

So what's the deal with Kucuk and Azerbaijan? Well, the claim is that Yasin Hayal, Ogun Samast's handler, learned how to make bombs with Chechen militants in Azerbaijan. See Sunday's post for more on that, and remember, Azerbaijan is one of America's new best buddies. Ken Silverstein at Harper's has done some digging in that dirt. Take a look at what he unearthed here and here to see how badly all of DC is sucking up to the Baku regime, and why. I guess these DC movers-and-shakers will look the other way at a little Turkish ultra-nationalist terror crossing the border, as long as they're only targeting an Armenian in Istanbul.

In the meantime, certain TBMM deputies have begun bitching about why Kucuk doesn't have any state protection--see the TNA article for that. In my opinion, Kucuk should be sent to Beytussebap to head up the JITEM office there, so that he can experience the same Kurdish hospitality the last JITEM chief enjoyed last September.