Organizer of academic's murder 'shares $900,000 with accomplices'

ISTANBUL

The organizer of the 2002 assassination of Necip Hablemitoğlu, an academic from Ankara University, has whacked up a commission fee of $900,000 with his partners in crime, daily Milliyet has reported.

The daily, which is publishing the prosecutor’s indictment, said in its second report on Dec. 1, that Enver Altaylı, a former MİT (Turkish National Intelligence Organization) employee accused of being the organizer of the murder, mediated a meeting with a businessman and senior military officers.

The businessman won a tender on a military infrastructure, paid $900,000 to Altaylı in return as commission, the daily alleged.

The allegations are based on confessions of N.A., personal assistant and driver of Altaylı for nearly 24 years.

According to the daily, N.A. said in his testimony that took place in the indictment that the money was sent to his bank account. “Altaylı shared some of the money with some people,” the daily wrote quoting N.A.

“The mentioned amount is a sum on which sides agreed on before the assassination of Hablemitoğlu,” the prosecutor wrote in the indictment, the daily reported.

Born in 1954, Hablemitoğlu was an academic known for his works on Turkish minorities in Europe, the Balkans and Asia. His first book was about the exodus of the Crimean Turks.

He was assassinated on Dec. 18, 2002, when he was penning a book named “Köstebek [Mole],” about FETÖ. The unfinished book, which was published after his death, alleged that FETÖ members were in contact with various intelligence services and serving information to them.

The FETÖ and its U.S.-based leader, Fetullah Gülen, orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, in which 251 people were killed.

The Hablemitoğlu assassination came to the country’s agenda after two decades when Nuri Gökhan Bozkır, one of the FETÖ suspects, made some confessions after being captured by MİT in December 2019.