Nordic Monitor: Turkey’s chief of general staff set up a secret hit team for targeting minorities
Metin Gürak, recently appointed Turkey’s chief
of general staff, has been accused of forming an assassination squad to carry
out attacks and murders targeting minority groups, especially non-Muslims, all
under the guise of counterterrorism efforts.
Reviewing hundreds of legal documents, NordicMonitor produced Evidence shedding light on the existence of this covert squad.
These documents reveal a disturbing picture
of Turkey’s top commander, who is alleged to have exceeded his mandate and
violated laws.
A shocking disclosure regarding Gürak’s
covert hit squad was brought to light by İbrahim Şahin, the former deputy chief
of the police department special operations unit. Şahin is a notorious figure
who was convicted of involvement in extrajudicial killings in the late 1990s.
Arrested in January 2009, Şahin provided a
comprehensive account of his interactions with Gürak to the court, revealing
how he was secretly meeting with Gürak when the general was head of the General
Staff communications department.
During that period, Gürak was engaged in
the establishment of numerous disinformation websites in Turkey, primarily
focused on conducting negative campaigns against the United States, the
European Union and the Jewish and Christian communities.
In his testimony, Şahin revealed that Gürak
had instructed him to assemble a select group of 150 to 300 individuals.This
team’s intended purpose was to operate as a clandestine death squad,
responsible for carrying out assassinations, bombings and other violent attacks.
The intended targets of this operation
included individuals from minority non-Muslim communities and others perceived
as threats within Turkey. Şahin disclosed that he was on the verge of executing
operations against Armenians under orders from the General Staff had he not
been apprehended by the police.
Şahin further revealed that he had
maintained consistent communication with Gen. Gürak, keeping him apprised of
developments within the squad. Gürak had instructed him to recruit individuals
exclusively of a Turkish ethnic background for a group tasked with “domestic
cleansing” operations within Turkey.
Court-authorized wiretaps revealed that
Şahin was involved in more plots than he had initially admitted to in his
statement to the prosecutor. For instance, in a phone conversation with Fatma
Cengiz, also a suspect in the same case, on December 1, 2008, Şahin mentioned
the presence of 580 Jews, Armenians and expressed his interest in obtaining
such a list.
Among the documents seized from Şahin’s
apartments in Istanbul and Ankara were intricate assassination plots targeting
prominent figures, including the then-Armenian Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan and
the leader of Sivas’ Armenian community, Minas Durmaz Güler.
