Wikipedia

List of assassinated people from Turkey

The following is an incomplete, chronological list of people from Turkey murdered by assassins mainly on political and religious grounds. Many were critical public servants and intellectuals assassinated by far-right proponents of an army-controlled Turkish Republic.[1] Many of the victims have historically been intellectual proponents of laicism and the strict separation of religion and state in Turkey, as defined in the constitution, and diplomats who were victims of militant attacks outside of Turkey.[2]

Mustafa Suphi edit

  • 28 January 1921: Mustafa Suphi was the founder of the Communist Party of Turkey. Suphi and his 14 comrades were assassinated while they were being sent to Erzurum for trial.[3]

Sabahattin Ali edit

  • 2 April 1948: Sabahattin Ali was a writer and critical intellectual who was assassinated at the Bulgarian border while fleeing from Turkey. He had been imprisoned by the Turkish government.

1970s edit

See also: Political violence in Turkey, 1970s

Mehmet Baydar and Bahadır Demir edit

  • 27 January 1973: Mehmet Baydar was Turkey's consul general in Los Angeles, and Bahadır Demir his deputy, in 1973. Shot in a Santa Barbara hotel by Kourken Yanigian who had invited them there on the pretext of a donating a painting to the Turkish government. Yanigian, sentenced to life imprisonment, was amnestied in 1984 and died shortly afterwards.

The event is considered to be the first in a decade-long chain of organized attacks against Turkish diplomats by Armenian militant groups.[4]

Daniş Tunalıgil edit

  • 22 October 1975: Turkey's Ambassador to Austria Daniş Tunalıgil was murdered by three Armenian gunmen raiding the Embassy in Vienna.[5]

Ismail Erez edit

  • 24 October 1975: Turkey's Ambassador to France İsmail Erez and his driver Talip Yener were murdered by Armenian militants in the vicinity of the Embassy in Paris by car bomb.[6][7]

Taha Carim edit

Bedrettin Cömert edit

  • 11 March 1978: Art historian, scholar, literary critic and translator. He was serving on a committee investigating right-wing terror squads at his university.[8] Shot dead in his car with his wife severely wounded by Rıfat Yıldırım, Üzeyir Bayraklı and by another man nicknamed "Ahmet" who were ultra-nationalists and believed to have been directly funded by the Turkish state. A tribunal found Abdullah Çatlı responsible but nobody was punished as a result.

Doğan Öz edit

  • 24 March 1978: Public prosecutor who wrote a report for Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit accusing clandestine groups (later named as Ergenekon) of creating chaos in order to lay the ground for a military takeover.[9] Haluk Kırcı, a Grey Wolves activist, was implicated in his assassination.

Bedri Karafakıoğlu edit

Abdi İpekçi edit

Metin Yüksel edit

  • 23 March 1979: Islamist political and social activist. Shot to death outside of Istanbul's Fatih Mosque by nationalist gunmen while leaving Friday prayers.

Cevat Yurdakul edit

28 September 1979: prosecutor.

Ahmet Benler edit

12 October 1979: son of the Turkish ambassador to the Netherlands, Özdemir Benler, murderered by ASALA.[11]

İlhan Egemen Darendelioğlu edit

  • 19 November 1979: journalist and writer. Shot to death by unidentified left-wing militants.

Cavit Orhan Tütengil edit

1980s edit

Ümit Kaftancıoğlu edit

  • 11 April 1980: TV producer, writer and columnist of the newspaper Cumhuriyet. Gunned down in front of his home in Istanbul as he was about to get in his car.[13]

Gün Sazak edit

  • 27 May 1980: briefly customs and tobacco minister of Turkey and a right wing politician. Murdered in front of his car while putting out baggage. Radical leftist militant group Dev Sol (Revolutionary Left) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Nihat Erim edit

  • 19 July 1980: Prime Minister of Turkey in 1971-1972, for almost 14 months. Shot to death by two gunmen in Istanbul. Radical leftist militant group Dev Sol (Revolutionary Left) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Kemal Türkler edit

  • 22 July 1980: Socialist trade union leader and left-wing politician. Murdered in front of his home by ultra-right militants.

Şarık Arıyak edit

Kemal Arıkan edit

  • 28 January 1982: Turkish diplomat Kemal Arıkan shot to death by two gunmen of Armenian origin in Los Angeles.

Atilla Altıkat edit

Esat Oktay Yıldıran edit

  • 22 October 1988: Military officer and former internal security chief of Diyarbakır Prison. Shot dead in a public bus in Istanbul by a PKK militant.

1990s edit

Muammer Aksoy edit

Çetin Emeç edit

  • 7 March 1990: Journalist, editor-in-chief and chief columnist of the liberal rightist daily Hürriyet. Shot to death in front of his house. Case remains unresolved.

Turan Dursun edit

  • 4 September 1990: Former member of Islamic clergy who became a critic of Islam and advocate of atheism. Shot to death in front of his house. Case remains unresolved.

Bahriye Üçok edit

Hulusi Sayın edit

  • 30 January 1991: Retired lieutenant general. Shot dead in front of his house. Claimed by Dev-Sol.

Memduh Ünlütürk edit

  • 7 April 1991: Retired general. Shot dead at his house by Dev-Sol.

Kemal Kayacan edit

  • 29 July 1992: Admiral (retired), former commander of the Turkish Navy. Shot dead in his house.

Musa Anter edit

Zübeyir Akkoç edit

Uğur Mumcu edit

  • 24 January 1993: Research journalist, columnist of the major newspaper Cumhuriyet. Killed in front of his home in Ankara by a bomb installed in his car.[18]

Cem Ersever edit

  • 4 November 1993: ex-JITEM commander who had begun speaking to the press.

Onat Kutlar edit

Metin Göktepe edit

  • 8 January 1996: Metin Goktepe  DOC, a left wing journalist of Evrensel was beaten to death by Turkish police while covering civil unrest in the Gazi district of Istanbul. The first case in Turkey where the police were convicted of murder.

Özdemir Sabancı edit

  • 9 January 1996: Businessman and a member of the Sabancı family in the second generation. Gunned down in his office in Sabancı Towers, Levent, Istanbul, by assassins hired by the leftist armed group DHKP-C. The general manager of ToyotaSA and a secretary was also killed. They had been given access to the building by Fehriye Erdal, a female member of DHKP-C, who was an employee at that time.

Ahmet Taner Kışlalı edit

  • 21 October 1999: Academic, writer. politician, former Minister of Culture and columnist of the newspaper Cumhuriyet. Killed in Ankara by a bomb placed on the windshield of his car.[20][21]

2000s edit

Gaffar Okkan edit

  • 24 January 2001: Diyarbakır Police Chief, his driver and four policemen escorting him were shot dead in an attack after they left Diyarbakır Police Department building. Radical Islamic group known as Kurdish Hezbollah was suspected.[22]

Üzeyir Garih edit

  • 25 August 2001: A prominent Turkish Jewish businessman and a founding partner of the Alarko group of companies. He was stabbed to death in the cemetery of the historic Istanbul quarter of Eyüp.

Necip Hablemitoğlu edit

  • 18 December 2002: A Kemalist historian from Ankara University who was killed in an armed attack near his home in Ankara.

Andrea Santoro edit

  • 5 February 2006: Father Andrea Santoro was a Roman Catholic priest, murdered in the Santa Maria Church in Trabzon where he served as a member of the Catholic Church's Fidei donum missionary program.

On 5 September 2006 he was shot dead from behind while kneeling in prayer in the church. A witness heard the perpetrator shouting "Allahu Akbar". A 16-year-old high school student was arrested two days after the shooting carrying a 9mm pistol. An investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations on stolen weaponry in Iraq revealed that the gun was of the same type used in the supposedly Islamist attack on the Turkish Council of State in 2006.

Mustafa Yücel Özbilgin edit

  • 17 May 2006: Council of State member judge. Murdered during a session in the high court in Ankara.[23]

Hrant Dink edit

Main article: Assassination of Hrant Dink
  • 19 January 2007: Armenian-Turkish journalist and editor-in-chief of the weekly Armenian and Turkish language newspaper Agos in Istanbul. Shot dead in front of his newspaper's office.[24]

Necati Aydın, Uğur Yüksel and Tilman Geske edit

  • 18 April 2007. Three Christian leaders assassinated, two Turkish Pastors and a German missionary.

İhya Balak edit

  • 16 November 2007. Director of Milli Piyango, the Turkish National Lottery, was assassinated in his office by an ex-inspector of his directorate.

Ahmet Yıldız edit

Cihan Hayırsevener edit

19 December 2009: founder and editor of the daily Güney Marmara’da Yaşam, was shot in a street in Bandırma, Balıkesir Province and died later that day at a hospital in Bursa. He had reported on corruption charges involving the owners of İlkhaber, another daily in the town.[29][30]

Andrei Karlov edit

Main article: Assassination of Andrei Karlov

19 December 2016: Andrei Karlov, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, was assassinated by Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, an off-duty Turkish police officer, at an art exhibition in Ankara,Turkey[31][32][33]

Sinan Ateş

Main article: Sinan Ateş

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Bawer Çakir, Families of Murdered Intellectuals Follow up Dink Murder Case Archived 28 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Bia News, 8 February 2010
  2. ^ "Armenian Terrorism against Turkish diplomatic and non-diplomatic institutions - A Chronological List, 1973 - 1986". Archived from the original on 20 March 2007. Retrieved 22 March 2007.
  3. ^ Shaw, Stanford J., History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. 2. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 354.
  4. ^ "Events". ASALA Online. 6 October 2001. Archived from the original on 22 April 2008. Retrieved 27 August 2008.
  5. ^ "Terrorist Organizations". Archived from the original on 20 December 2014. Retrieved 20 December 2014.
  6. ^ "News Summary and Index; The Major Events of the Day International National Metropolitan". New York Times. 25 October 1975. Archived from the original on 23 July 2018. Retrieved 27 August 2008. Ismail Erez, Turkey's Ambassador to France, was fatally shot in Paris by assassins who also killed his chauffeur.
  7. ^ "Adding Up to an Epidemic". TIME. 3 November 1975. Archived from the original on 19 July 2010. Retrieved 27 August 2008. Two days after the Vienna murder, gunmen in Paris opened fire on a car belonging to the Turkish ambassador to France, Ismail Erez, 56, who died along with his chauffeur.
  8. ^ Ahmad, Feroz. The Making of Modern Turkey, (London: Routledge, 1993), 171.
  9. ^ "Spirits of Doğan Öz and Uğur Mumcu ask about Baykal". 2012-10-14. Archived from the original on 2012-10-14. Retrieved 2022-12-25.
  10. ^ Brief biography Archived 27 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ https://www.ad.nl/den-haag/aanslagen-op-ambassades-vandaag-was-niet-de-eerste~a5633c36/?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F (Dutch)
  12. ^ "Başlarken..." Milliyet (in Turkish). 24 January 1999. Archived from the original on 15 September 2008. Retrieved 27 August 2008.
  13. ^ Aydemir, Kadir (14 July 2006). "Bir 'Garip' Kaftancıoğlu". Kitap. Radikal (in Turkish). Archived from the original on 8 June 2008. Retrieved 27 August 2008. 11 Nisan 1980'de Mecidiyeköy'de, küçücük çocuğunu okula götürürken, gün ortasında, kızının gözleri önünde katledilen bu değerli aydınımız
  14. ^ Gokcer Tahincioglu, Ersan Atar (22 May 2000). "Suspects told the murders". Milliyet. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 27 August 2008.
  15. ^ "Murdered journalist Aksoy commemorated". Turkish Daily News. 1 February 2005. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 27 August 2008.
  16. ^ Zaman, Amberin (17 May 2000). "Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit has accused Iran of failing to respond to evidence of Iranian involvement in the murders of Turkish pro-secular writers and academics". Voice of America. Federation of American Scientists. Archived from the original on 7 September 2008. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  17. ^ "Iran accused of aiding Islamist violence in Turkey: report". Agence France Presse. Iran Focus. 18 December 2005. Archived from the original on 19 May 2011. Retrieved 27 August 2008.
  18. ^ Public outrage over Mumcu's murder unabated four years later; Foundation carries on Ugur Mumcu's work Archived 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  19. ^ "Yazar Onat KUTLAR, 11 Ocak 1995 de Yaşamını Yitirdi". BirGün (in Turkish). 6 January 2008. Archived from the original on 26 May 2011. Retrieved 27 August 2008.
  20. ^ "A tragic loss for the nation". Turkish Daily News. 22 September 1999. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 27 August 2008.
  21. ^ Hocaoglu, Selcan. Prominent secularist academic and writer slain in Ankara Archived 8 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine, Associated Press, 23 October 1999.
  22. ^ "BBC News - EUROPE - Crowds mourn slain Turkish officers". 25 January 2001. Archived from the original on 26 January 2003. Retrieved 20 December 2014.
  23. ^ "BBC NEWS - Europe - Judge dies in Turkey court attack". 17 May 2006. Archived from the original on 20 December 2014. Retrieved 20 December 2014.
  24. ^ Paul de Bendern and Thomas Grove (19 January 2007). "Turkish-Armenian editor shot dead in Istanbul". Reuters. Retrieved 27 August 2008.
  25. ^ Birch, Nicholas (19 July 2008). "Was Ahmet Yildiz the victim of Turkey's first gay honour killing?". The Independent. Archived from the original on 25 June 2011. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  26. ^ Bilefsky, Dan (25 November 2009). "Soul-Searching in Turkey After a Gay Man Is Killed". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 6 October 2011. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  27. ^ Gençkal, Elif (9 September 2009). "Ahmet Yıldız Murder Case Started. Fugitive Defendant: Yıldız's Father". Bianet.org. Archived from the original on 4 October 2011. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  28. ^ "The killing of Ahmet Yıldız (2008)". Archived from the original on 5 July 2013. Retrieved 20 December 2014.
  29. ^ "Cihan Hayırsevener". Committee to Protect Journalists. Retrieved 2022-12-25.
  30. ^ Wolfe, Lauren (2009-12-21). "Editor killed by unknown gunmen in Turkey". Committee to Protect Journalists. Retrieved 2022-12-25.
  31. ^ "Chilling Video Shows Assassin Shoot, Kill Russian Ambassador in Ankara". NBC News. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  32. ^ Arango, Tim; Gladstone, Rick (19 December 2016). "Russian Ambassador to Turkey Is Assassinated in Ankara". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  33. ^ "What drove assassin to gun down Russian ambassador?". cbsnews.com. 20 December 2016. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
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