List of assassinated people from Turkey explained

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]

• 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]

• 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

See also: Political violence in Turkey, 1970s.

• 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]

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

• 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]}

• 9 June 1977: Turkey's Ambassador to the Holy See Taha Carim was killed by the cross fire of two Armenian gunmen in front of the Embassy's residency in Rome.

Bedrettin Cömert (tr)

• 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.

• 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

• 20 October 1978: Former rector of Istanbul Technical University

• 1 February 1979: Editor of the major national newspaper Milliyet.^[10] Killed in his car in the street, where he lived, by Mehmet Ali Ağca, a member of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves, who would later try to assassinate the Pope John Paul II in 1981.

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

28 September 1979: prosecutor.

Ahmet Benler

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

İlhan Egemen Darendelioğlu

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

• 7 December 1979: Professor of Sociology at Istanbul University, columnist of the newspaper Cumhuriyet. Shot dead at a city bus stop in Istanbul.^[12]

1980s

• 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]

• 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.

• 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.

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

Şarık Arıyak

• 17 December 1980: Turkish chief consul in Sydney. Killed together with his bodyguard Engin Sever. The Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide claimed responsibility.

Kemal Arıkan

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

• 23 August 1982: Turkish military attaché in Canada. Assassinated in his car while driving in Ottawa by the Justice Commandos Against Armenian Genocide.

• 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

• 31 January 1990: Professor of law at Ankara University, Faculty of Political science; author of books on Kemalism; elected head of the Ankara Bar Association 1969, columnist of the newspaper Cumhuriyet. Shot in the back of his head in front of his house.^{[14] [15]}

• 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.

• 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.

• 6 October 1990: Female academic, pro-secular theologist, columnist of the newspaper Cumhuriyet. Killed by a parcel bomb.^{[16] [17]}

Hulusi Sayın

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

Memduh Ünlütürk

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

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

• 1992: Kurdish writer, assassinated in Diyarbakır. European Court of Human Rights fined Turkey for this assassination, allegedly committed by JITEM illegal gendarmerie unit.

• 13 January 1993: Union member of Kurdish origin. His murder led to the European Court of Human Rights case Akkoç v. Turkey (2000).

• 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

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

• 11 January 1995: prominent art critic, writer, poet, columnist for the daily Cumhuriyet and one of the founders of the Istanbul International Film Festival, died of injuries he suffered during a bomb attack perpetrated by PKK at a hotel in Istanbul.^[19]

• 8 January 1996:, 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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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]

• 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.

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

• 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.

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

See 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]

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

İhya Balak (tr)

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

• July 2008: "the victim of what sociologists say is the first gay honor killing in Turkey to surface publicly".^{[25] [26] [27] [28]}

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]}

See 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

See main article: Sinan Ateş.

See also

• List of assassinated people
• List of journalists killed in Turkey
• List of massacres in Turkey
• Attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II

Notes and References

1. Bawer Çakir, Families of Murdered Intellectuals Follow up Dink Murder Case, Bia News, 8 February 2010
2. Web site: Armenian Terrorism against Turkish diplomatic and non-diplomatic institutions - A Chronological List, 1973 - 1986 . 22 March 2007 . https://web.archive.org/web/20070320163811/http://www.atmg.org/ArmenianTerrorism.html . 20 March 2007 . live.
3. Shaw, Stanford J., History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. 2. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 354.
4. Web site: Events. 27 August 2008. ASALA Online. 6 October 2001. https://web.archive.org/web/20080422220402/http://www.armenians.com/asala/index1.html. 22 April 2008. live.
5. Web site: Terrorist Organizations. 20 December 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20141220195739/http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Terrorist.html. 20 December 2014. live.
6. News: News Summary and Index; The Major Events of the Day International National Metropolitan. 27 August 2008. New York Times. 25 October 1975. Ismail Erez, Turkey's Ambassador to France, was fatally shot in Paris by assassins who also killed his chauffeur.. https://web.archive.org/web/20180723212712/https://www.nytimes.com/1975/10/25/archives/news-summary-and-index-the-major-events-of-the-day-international.html. 23 July 2018. live.
7. Adding Up to an Epidemic. 27 August 2008. TIME. 3 November 1975. 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.. https://web.archive.org/web/20100719152947/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913623,00.html. 19 July 2010. dead.
8. Ahmad, Feroz. The Making of Modern Turkey, (London: Routledge, 1993), 171.
9. Web site: 2012-10-14 . Spirits of Doğan Öz and Uğur Mumcu ask about Baykal . 2022-12-25 . https://web.archive.org/web/20121014134625/http://www.todayszaman.com/columnists-198596-spirits-of-dogan-oz-and-ugur-mumcu-ask-about-baykal.html . 2012-10-14.
10. http://www.globaljournalist.org/archive/Magazine/Ipekci-20002q.html Brief biography
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. News: Başlarken.... Milliyet. 24 January 1999. 27 August 2008. Turkish. https://web.archive.org/web/20080915184839/http://www.milliyet.com.tr/1999/01/24/haber/hab00.html. 15 September 2008. live.
13. News: Bir 'Garip' Kaftancıoğlu. 27 August 2008. Kitap. Radikal. 14 July 2006. 11 Nisan 1980'de Mecidiyeköy'de, küçücük çocuğunu okula götürürken, gün ortasında, kızının gözleri önünde katledilen bu değerli aydınımız. Kadir. Aydemir. tr. https://web.archive.org/web/20080608053054/http://www.radikal.com.tr/ek_haber.php?ek=ktp&haberno=5412. 8 June 2008. dead.
14. News: Suspects told the murders. 27 August 2008. Milliyet. 22 May 2000. Gokcer Tahincioglu, Ersan Atar. https://web.archive.org/web/20110604151041/http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2000/05/22/english/cur03.html. 4 June 2011. live.
15. News: Murdered journalist Aksoy commemorated. 27 August 2008. Turkish Daily News. 1 February 2005. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20070930155158/http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?webcat=domestic&enewsid=4885. 30 September 2007.
16. Web site: 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. 17 May 2000. 25 August 2008. Amberin. Zaman. https://web.archive.org/web/20080907015341/http://www.fas.org/news/iran/2000/000517-iran2.htm. 7 September 2008. live.
17. News: Iran accused of aiding Islamist violence in Turkey: report. 27 August 2008. Agence France Presse. Iran Focus. 18 December 2005. https://web.archive.org/web/20110519041249/http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4950. 19 May 2011. live.
18. http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/archives.php?id=1971 Public outrage over Mumcu's murder unabated four years later; Foundation carries on Ugur Mumcu's work
19. News: Yazar Onat KUTLAR, 11 Ocak 1995 de Yaşamını Yitirdi. 27 August 2008. BirGün. 6 January 2008. tr. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20110526143637/http://www.birgun.net/sunday_index.php?news_code=1199551197&year=2008&month=01&day=05. 26 May 2011.
20. News: A tragic loss for the nation. 27 August 2008. Turkish Daily News. 22 September 1999. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20070930155642/http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/archives.php?id=14602. 30 September 2007.
21. Hocaoglu, Selcan. Prominent secularist academic and writer slain in Ankara, Associated Press, 23 October 1999.
22. News: BBC News - EUROPE - Crowds mourn slain Turkish officers. 25 January 2001 . 20 December 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20030126110448/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1136302.stm. 26 January 2003. live.
23. News: BBC NEWS - Europe - Judge dies in Turkey court attack. 17 May 2006 . 20 December 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20141220194932/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4989034.stm. 20 December 2014. live.
24. News: Turkish-Armenian editor shot dead in Istanbul . 27 August 2008. Reuters. 19 January 2007. Paul de Bendern and Thomas Grove.
25. News: Was Ahmet Yildiz the victim of Turkey's first gay honour killing?. Birch. Nicholas. 19 July 2008. The Independent. 15 July 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20110625135723/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/was-ahmet-yildiz-the-victim-of-turkeys-first-gay-honour-killing-871822.html. 25 June 2011. live.
26. News: Soul-Searching in Turkey After a Gay Man Is Killed. Bilefsky. Dan. 25 November 2009. The New York Times. 15 July 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20111006012300/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/world/europe/26turkey.html. 6 October 2011. live.
27. News: Ahmet Yıldız Murder Case Started. Fugitive Defendant: Yıldız's Father. Gençkal. Elif. 9 September 2009. Bianet.org. 15 July 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20111004223302/http://bianet.org/english/gender/116934-ahmet-yildiz-murder-case-started-fugitive-defendant-yildizs-father. 4 October 2011. live.
28. Web site: The killing of Ahmet Yıldız (2008). 20 December 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20130705023135/http://www.tuerkeiforum.net/enw/index.php/The_killing_of_Ahmet_Y%C4%B1ld%C4%B1z_%282008%29. 5 July 2013. dead.
29. Web site: Cihan Hayırsevener . 2022-12-25 . Committee to Protect Journalists.
30. Web site: Wolfe . Lauren . 2009-12-21 . Editor killed by unknown gunmen in Turkey . 2022-12-25 . Committee to Protect Journalists.
31. Web site: Chilling Video Shows Assassin Shoot, Kill Russian Ambassador in Ankara. 8 January 2022. NBC News.
32. News: Arango. Tim. Gladstone. Rick. 19 December 2016. Russian Ambassador to Turkey Is Assassinated in Ankara. The New York Times. 8 January 2022. 0362-4331.
33. Web site: What drove assassin to gun down Russian ambassador?. 8 January 2022. cbsnews.com. 20 December 2016.