Eren Keskin
“A young woman fell victim to a fascist and racist murder just because she was a Kurd and an HDP member. Such assassinations always follow similar patterns. The people used in such assassinations are always picked from among those claimed to be suffering from various psychological disorders.” writes Eren Keskin for Yeni Yaşam.
The death of Deniz Poyraz following the armed assault last week on the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) office in Izmir wounded us all deeply. In particular I am sure that all defenders of human rights in Turkey who lived through the 1990s, who were witness to all the pain of 1990s, will have been taken straight back emotionally.
A young woman fell victim to a fascist and racist murder just because she was a Kurd and an HDP member. Such assassinations always follow similar patterns. The people used in them are always picked from among those claimed to be suffering from various psychological problems such as personality disorders or anxiety. These people are even issued with medical reports before the event, to be used in any future trials.
And now we learn that the racist killer who assassinated Deniz Poyraz received a medical report for an anxiety disorder from an Izmir hospital at the end of last year.
This man is no ordinary person. Although he was a hospital worker, he went to Syria, he fought there, and he posed with weapons known to be a part of the state’s military inventory.
On his return, he shared photos on social media from Syria with the caption “mission complete”, and he also shared racist posts specifically targeting the Kurds. We see once again how biased the judiciary here is. That same judiciary that is so quick to initiate inquiries into social media posts that we share for peaceful purposes and even goes so far as to imprison people, has not bothered to initiate an investigation into the posts of this racist killer.
Actually these murders are a part of the Teşkîlât-ı Mahsûsa tradition. (Literally translating as ‘Special Organisation’, this was a secret paramilitary intelligence organisation of the Ottoman Empire that carried out counter-intelligence, propaganda and assassination duties in line with the Turkish-Islamist ideology of the Committee of Union and Progress [CUP]).
Let us not forget that the Teşkîlât-ı Mahsûsa, which perpetrated the 1915 Genocide, was formed of such profiles. The people who worked as hitmen for this organisation were ex-convicts who had been released from prison. The profile of the killer of Deniz Poyraz is an explicit indicator of the fact that the tradition of Teşkîlât-ı Mahsûsa continues.
This murder took me back to the year 2001. An armed attacker raided the People’s Democracy Party (HADEP) and escaped after wounding one person. After this incident we as human rights activists all went together to visit HADEP’s office in Istanbul’s Şişli district.
After the visit, we returned to the Human Rights Association (IHD) office, we were talking among ourselves, wondering if the attackers would come to us too. We ordered some food and waited for it to arrive. The door bell rang, but as soon as we opened the door, an armed attacker opened fire in all directions.
Before that day, we had been receiving letters containing death threats. So when the assailant came I thought this must be the person who had sent us the letters.
The assailant kept firing in different directions, and told us to lie on the ground. Şaban Dayanan, a very dear friend of mine whom we lost in recent years, caught hold of the assailant and wrested the gun from his hands.
We called the police, but when the police arrived they treated the
attacker, who was named Zeki Genç, with the same lenience as the police later treated the racist murderer of Deniz Poyraz.
Zeki Genç was remanded in custody, but before the next hearing he was released with a “release document completed in court in error”.
The profile of Zeki Genç is the same as that of the killer of Deniz Poyraz. Both are hitmen of Teşkîlât-ı Mahsûsa…
