Abdullah Çatlı

Abdullah Çatlı (1956 – 3 November 1996) was a convicted Turkish drug trafficker, and contract killer for the Counter-Guerrilla. He led 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 hit man for the state, ordered to kill suspected members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the ASALA.

Career
Growing up in Nevşehir, a small province in Central Anatolia, Çatlı was familiar with the views of the far right MHP, and Turkish ultra-nationalists, which were strong in this area.

1978 - 1984
Çatlı was responsible, along with Haluk Kırcı and several other MHP members, for the 9 October 1978 Bahçelievler Massacre in which seven university students, members of the Workers Party of Turkey (TIP), were murdered.

He is also said to have helped Mehmet Ali Ağca murder the left-wing newspaper editor Abdi İpekçi on 1 January 1979, in Istanbul, and helped Ağca escape from an Istanbul military prison, in 1979. According to investigative journalist Lucy Komisar, Abdullah Çatlı "reportedly helped organize Agca's escape from an Istanbul military prison, and some have suggested Catli was even involved in the 1981 Pope's assassination attempt". In 1998 the magazine Monde diplomatique alleged that Abdullah Çatlı had organized the assassination attempt "in exchange for the sum of 3 million German mark" for the Grey Wolves. In 1985 in Rome, Catli declared to a judge "that he had been contacted by the BND, the German intelligence agency, promised him a nice sum of money if he implicated the Russian and Bulgarian services in the assassination attempt against the Pope".

Çatlı was seen in the company of Stefano Delle Chiaie, an Italian neofascist who worked for Gladio, a secret NATO stay-behind paramilitary organization, while "touring Latin America, and on a visit to Miami in September 1982". He then went to France, where, under the alias of Hasan Kurtoglu, he planned a series of attacks on Armenian interests and on the ASALA, including the blowing up of the Armenian monument at Alfortville on 3 May 1984 and the attempted murder of activist Ara Toranian.

According to founding Counter-Guerrilla Alparslan Türkeş, the founder of the Grey Wolves, "Çatlı has co-operated in the frame of a secret service working for the well-being of the state".

1984 - 1996
Turkish intelligence service (MIT) paid Çatli in heroin, and he was eventually arrested in Paris on 24 October 1984 for drug trafficking. He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and in 1988 he was handed over to Switzerland, where he was also wanted on charges of drug dealing. However, he escaped in March 1990 with the assistance of mysterious accomplices. He returned to Turkey, and was then recruited by the police for "special missions" while he was officially being sought by the Turkish authorities for murder.

Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Çiller declared on 4 October 1993: "We know the list of businessmen and artists subjected to racketeering by the PKK and we shall be bringing their members to account." Beginning on 14 January 1994, almost a hundred people were kidnapped by commandos wearing uniforms and travelling in police vehicles and then killed somewhere along the road from Ankara to Istanbul. Çatli demanded money from people who were on "Çiller’s list", promising to get their names removed. One of his victims, Behçet Cantürk, was to pay ten million dollars, to which Casino King Omer Luftu Topal added a further seventeen million. However, after receiving the money, he then went on to have them kidnapped and killed, and sometimes tortured beforehand.

According to Mehmet Eymür, a team led by Çatlı was responsible for the 1995 deaths of Iranian spies Lazım Esmaeili and Askar Simitko. Çatlı's fingerprint was also allegedly found on the drum of one of the machine guns used to assassinate casino king Ömer Lütfü Topal. In 1996 Çatlı twice kidnapped Mehmet Ali Yaprak.

Death
Çatlı died in a car accident on 3 November 1996 in Susurluk, a town in the province of Balıkesir. With him in the car were Hüseyin Kocadağ (a famous police officer), Sedat Bucak (a Member of Parliament of the True Path Party (DYP) for Şanlıurfa province), and Gonca Us (Abdullah Çatlı's girlfriend). Sedat Bucak, a Kurdish village guards leader, was the sole person to survive the crash. His militia, funded by the Turkish state, was active against the PKK. The Susurluk scandal exposed the "deep state"; the underbelly of the government that some had dismissed as a paranoid conspiracy theory.

At the time of his death, Çatlı was a convicted fugitive, who had been wanted for drug trafficking and murder. The mafia chiefs of the Grey Wolves, and its infamous hit man Mehmet Ali Ağca, paid tribute at his funeral by presenting wreaths, as is traditional in Turkey. Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu of the far right Great Union Party was also present.

Abdullah Çatlı in fiction

 * Bruce Sterling's 2000 novel Zeitgeist includes a major character ("Mehmet Ozbey") loosely based on Çatlı.

Personal life
Çatlı's father was Ahmet Çatlıoğlu; the "-oğlu" suffix is a patronymic. Çatlı had a brother, Zeki. Abdullah Çatlı married his neighbor Meral Aydoğan on 10 August 1974. On 22 May 1975, they had a daughter named Gökçen, who is currently a doctoral student in politics and international relations. Later he had another daughter, Selcen.