MHP urges intel to reveal documents

ANKARA

Bahçeli rejects that his party was linked to the killings of Alevis before 1980. AA photo

The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) urged Turkey’s intelligence agency yesterday to reveal all documents it has about deadly riots that helped pave the way for the 1980 coup. Party leader Devlet Bahçeli also angrily rejected allegations that militants linked to his party were behind the killings of Alevis in separate incidents.

“It has become a matter of honor for the state, especially the National Intelligence Organization [MİT], to reveal whatever documents and information is available, particularly on the incidents in Kahramanmaraş and Çorum,” MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli said in a written statement. “The intelligence agency, which is acting as the ruling party’s hitman, must openly reveal the documents instead of secretly leaking them to various media outlets.”

Bahçeli was referring to two of the landmark events that fuelled clashes between leftist and rightist militants and exacerbated the political chaos that paved the way for the Sept. 12, 1980 military coup. More than 100 members of the Alevi community, which has been traditionally leftist, were killed in the riots in Kahramanmaraş in December 1978. About 50 perished in similar unrest in Çorum in May 1980.
Bahçeli blamed the bloodshed on “grave conspiracies and ploys in the years preceding the coup” and argued that nationalist militants were unfairly convicted and even executed over the killings.


He claimed that the revival of allegations targeting the MHP was part of a smear campaign led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that aimed to discredit and “finish off” the party, recalling the series of leaked sex tapes that forced the resignation of MHP heavyweights ahead of last year’s general elections.

According to recent media reports, the MİT sent papers to the court handling the case into the 1980 coup which indicated that the massacre in Kahramanmaraş was planned at the local MHP office and that the military did not intervene while the attacks on Alevi homes raged.