Spotlight on murky killings of Kurds in Turkey

ISTANBUL • Nearly 30 years after Kurdish lawyer Yusuf Ekinci was gunned down and his body dumped by a highway, his lawyer son is still seeking justice in one of hundreds of cases of extrajudicial killings.

The killings, and the murky ties between organised crime and politicians that they pointed to, are firmly back on Turkey's agenda following an appeals court ruling and after allegations made by a convicted mob boss in videos posted on social media that millions of Turks have now watched.

The two unrelated developments have reignited interest in suspected collusion between the Turkish state and criminal gangs as part of Ankara's decades-old fight with militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Last month, an appeals court overturned the 2019 acquittal of former interior minister Mehmet Agar and security force members accused of killing Mr Ekinci and 18 others, mostly Kurdish lawyers, businessmen and civil servants in 1994.

It said the court that handled the case had not considered all available evidence.

The younger Mr Ekinci called for a parliamentary commission to investigate his father's killing, saying state archives and national intelligence files must be opened up for scrutiny.

Agar rejected the case against him as "fantasy".

The ruling has coincided with a series of videos released on YouTube by gang leader Sedat Peker that make uncorroborated allegations against top officials regarding the extrajudicial killings, drug trafficking and other crimes.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed Peker's allegations, but they come at a difficult time for the government, whose popularity has waned in the face of economic woes and the pandemic.

Lawyers, rights groups and a pro-Kurdish opposition party are pushing for a parliamentary inquiry into suspected state-mafia ties stretching back to a 1996 Susurluk scandal, though Mr Erdogan's AK Party remains opposed.

In the 2019 trial, prosecutors accused Agar and other defendants of arranging the extrajudicial killings under the guise of fighting the PKK and those aiding the group.

Turkey and its Western allies designate the PKK as a terrorist group.

Agar was sentenced to five years in prison in 2011 on a charge of forming an armed gang to commit crime in relation to the Susurluk scandal and was released in 2013. But nobody was held responsible for the killings at that time.

REUTERS