Ex-operative says he is ‘haunted’ by past acts

ANKARA - Radikal

Former police operative Çarkın (C) says he is struggling with his conscience.

Former special police operative Ayhan Çarkın, whose confessions regarding extrajudicial killings led to the arrest of a number of other officers, said he had been haunted by what he had done to his victims for the last two decades.

“[Hüsamettin] Yaman and [Soner] Gül kneeled on the ground. They yelled, ‘Human dignity shall prevail over torture.’ [Our superiors] had directed us with the lie that they had hurled a bomb at a police bus. I cannot believe how we killed a 20-year-old kid. I learned afterwards they were innocent,” Çarkın said, relating the murder of the two youths in 1992 to Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Hüseyin Aygün during a meeting in prison on Dec. 27. 

Extrajudicial killings began following a decision made by the National Security Council (MGK) in the 1990s, Çarkın said, according to Aygün. Çarkın also related horrifying stories about former Interior Minister Mehmet Ağar, the deputy added. 

“He has already divulged to the prosecutors a significant part of what he told [me]. He says there were devious murders, some special operatives turned monstrous and one of them even murdered his girlfriend,” Aygün said. 

Çarkın said he was most deeply moved by the “Cumartesi Anneleri” (Saturday Mothers), who have been holding sit-in protests every Saturday in Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square to learn the fate of their missing loved ones, Aygün added. 

Çarkın’s confessions regarding unresolved murders committed in the 1990s by state-sponsored groups during the fight between government forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) led to the arrest of other operatives, including former police chief İbrahim Şahin, who is also a suspect in the ongoing Ergenekon trials. 

Çarkın also led officials on Dec. 22 to a number of locations in Istanbul where he claimed the body of murdered intelligence operative, Tarık Ümit, had been dumped, but authorities were not able to locate the man’s remains.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.