Abdullah Çatlı

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Abdullah Çatlı (1 June 1956, Nevşehir - 3 November 1996; Susurluk, Balıkesir), was a Turkish organized crime leader, mafia leader, deep state agent and counter-guerrilla member.

He was tried for various murders in Turkey. He fled abroad after the September 12 Coup and was tried for drug trafficking. He escaped from prison. He died in the Susurluk Accident in 1996.

Biography

In 1977, he was elected as the Ankara Provincial Chairman of the Grey Wolves, and on May 25, 1978, he was elected as the Deputy Chairman of the Idealist Youth Association.

In 1977, he was prosecuted by the Ankara Police Department for violating Law No. 6136, shooting at the police, and hiding a gun as an instrument of crime.

On July 11, 1978, he was arrested in absentia by the Ankara 5th Criminal Court of Peace for the murder of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bedrettin Cömert , a faculty member at Hacettepe University in Ankara. He was caught and detained in Sakarya province on August 23, 1978 .

The arrest warrant regarding the allegations that Abdullah Çatlı was the planner and main responsible for the killing of 7 TİP members in the Bahçelievler district of Ankara on October 9, 1978 was issued 4 years and 4 months after the incident. The decisions to arrest him and issue a Red Notice for his international search were made by the Ankara Martial Law Command in 1982 for the crimes of killing 7 people in Ankara, establishing an illegal organization, throwing explosives and violating Law No. 6136, along with his accomplices in the Bahçelievler Massacre.

In October 1980, an arrest warrant was issued by the Konya Second Army and Martial Law Command Military Prosecutor's Office for issuing fake passports for Mehmet Ali Ağca and himself under the name Hasan Dağaslan. In 1995, an arrest warrant was issued by the Edirne Police Department for helping to take Ağca abroad.

In 1982, the extradition request submitted to the Swiss authorities by the Minister of Justice through diplomatic channels, which included the charges of "inciting the public to use arms against the government and killing 7 people ", was rejected by the Swiss authorities as incompatible with their own legislation. When Abdurrahman Kıpçak, the second defendant in the MHP case opened in 1981 and mentioned in the murder of Adana Police Chief Cevat Yurdakul , was caught, his connection to Abdullah Çatlı was determined. Abdullah Çatlı was also arrested in Switzerland while he was wanted in connection with the murder of Cevat Yurdakul. However, he was released because the Swiss authorities did not receive the relevant documents. Uğur Coşkun, one of the convicts sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of CHP Provincial Chairman Zeki Tekiner, said in the reconnaissance conducted before the assassination that they had used Çatlı's car.

Çatlı went abroad in the months following the September 12 Coup . He spent some time in Bulgaria and Vienna . On February 22, 1982, he was caught in Switzerland with a passport issued under the name of Mehmet Özbay , but was released. His request for extradition to Turkey was rejected because the crime was considered political.

In September 1982, he met with Stefano Delle Chiaie, a member of the Gladio organization in Italy, in Latin America.

The Turkish intelligence service (MIT) paid Çatlı in heroin, and he was eventually arrested in Paris on 24 October 1984 for drug trafficking. He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and in 1988 he was handed over to Switzerland, where he was also wanted on charges of drug dealing. However, he escaped Bostadel prison in March 1990 with the assistance of the Grey Wolves. After he returned to Turkey, he appeared to have been recruited by the police, while also officially been sentenced to death in absentia by the Turkish authorities for several murders.

Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Çiller declared on 4 October 1993: "We know the list of businessmen and artists subjected to racketeering by the PKK and we shall be bringing their members to account." Beginning on 14 January 1994, almost a hundred people were kidnapped by commandos wearing uniforms and travelling in police vehicles and then killed somewhere along the road from Ankara to Istanbul. Çatlı demanded money from people who were on "Çiller's list", promising to get their names removed. One of his victims, Behçet Cantürk, was to pay ten million dollars, to which casino king Ömer Lütfü Topal added a further seventeen million. However, after receiving the money, he then went on to have them kidnapped and killed, and sometimes tortured beforehand.

According to Mehmet Eymür, a team led by Çatlı was responsible for the 1995 deaths of Iranian spies Lazım Esmaeili and Askar Simitko. Çatlı's fingerprint was also allegedly found on the drum of one of the machine guns used to assassinate Ömer Lütfü Topal. In 1996, Çatlı kidnapped the TV businessman Mehmet Ali Yaprak and demanded a ransom of four million deutschmarks.

Death

He died in a traffic accident known in history as the Susurluk scandal near the Susurluk district of Balıkesir on November 3, 1996. Gonca Us, who was sitting in the back left next to Çatlı, and Hüseyin Kocadağ, the former deputy chief of police in Istanbul who was driving the car, also died during the accident. Of the four people in the car, only Sedat Edip Bucak, a True Path Party deputy at the time, survived. His name is frequently mentioned in different reports prepared for the Susurluk Scandal by Kutlu Savaş, the head of the Prime Ministry Inspection Board , and Sönmez Köksal , the Undersecretary of the Naytional Intelligence Organization.