Death of Abdullah Çatlı, leader of the Turkish ultra-nationalist organisation Grey Wolves in the Susurluk car-crash, which leads to the resignation of the Turkish Interior Minister, Mehmet Ağar (a leader of the True Path Party, DYP).
The Susurluk scandal (Turkish: Susurluk skandal, Susurluk kazas) was a scandal involving the close relationship among the deep state in Turkey, the Grey Wolves and the Turkish mafia. It took place during the peak of the KurdishTurkish conflict, in the mid-1990s. The relationship came into existence after the National Security Council (NSC) posited the need for the marshaling of the state's resources to combat the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The scandal surfaced with a cartruck collision on 3 November 1996, near Susurluk, in the province of Balkesir. The victims included the deputy chief of the Istanbul Police Department, a Member of Parliament, and Abdullah atl, the leader of the Grey Wolves and a contract killer for the National Intelligence Organization (Turkey) (MT), who was on Interpol's red list at the time of his death.
The state had been engaged in an escalating low intensity conflict with the PKK since 1984. The conflict escalated in the early 1990s. Towards the end of 1992, a furious debate in the NSC about how to proceed was taking place. Moderates like President Turgut zal and General Eref Bitlis favored a non-military solution. However, both died in 1993. The death of Bitlis (the General Commander of the Turkish Gendarmerie at the time) in a plane crash remains controversial. The same year, the NSC ordered a co-ordinated black operations campaign using special forces. The Turkish branch of Operation Gladio, the "Counter-Guerrilla", contributed much of these special forces.Deputy prime minister Tansu iller tasked the police force, then under the leadership of Mehmet Aar, with crippling the PKK and assassinating its leader, Abdullah calan. The police unit responsible for this job was the Special Operations Department (Turkish: zel Harekat Dairesi, HD). Abdullah atl also took part. This caused consternation in the MT, which had formerly counted on atl to undertake reprisals against the militant Armenian organization ASALA. Especially concerned was Mehmet Eymr of the MT's Operations/Counter-Terrorism Department, who had irreconcilable differences with Aar.
The scandal has hence been pithily described as "the battle of the two Mehmets".Turkish authorities had claimed that those security officers, politicians and other authorities who had been involved in drug trafficking were initially tasked with preventing the Turkish mafia and the PKK from profiting from illegal activities, such as drug trafficking, but that these officials then captured the business and fought over who would control it.
Intelligence expert Mahir Kaynak described the police camp as "pro-European", and the MT camp as "pro-American". The authorities pocketed billions of dollars in profits from the drug smuggling. This illegal activity on the state's part was partly motivated, or at least justified as such, by the tens of billions of dollars in loss of trade with Iraq due to the Gulf War.
To put this into perspective, the Turkish heroin trade, then worth $50 billion, exceeded the state budget of $48 billion.:588 (Other sources quote the 1998 budget as $62 billion and the drug market as $70 billion, though only a fraction of this was tapped as commission.)
Although Aar and iller resigned after the scandal, no one received any punitive sentences. Aar was eventually re-elected to Parliament (as a leader of the True Path Party, DYP), and the sole survivor of the crash, chieftain Sedat Bucak, was released.:588 Some reforms were made; e.g., the intelligence agency was restructured to end the infighting (with Eymr's department entirely dismantled). Some hold that the scandal was made possible by the wresting of control of the MT away from the Turkish military in 1992.
Abdullah Çatlı (1 June 1956 – 3 November 1996) was a Turkish secret government agent, as well as a contract killer for the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). He led the Grey Wolves, the youth branch of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), during the 1970s. His death in the Susurluk car crash, while travelling in a car with state officials, revealed the depth of the state's complicity in organized crime in what became known as the Susurluk scandal. He was a hitman for the state, and was involved in the killings of suspected members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).