Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Baszn Özeti
Politics - theref~re ultimately deter- . ing CûÎmnnists.Fora -loDgtüne~Posses- 0 .
mines the fate of the economy: "Thrkey sion of even a single doUar was illegal.
is neither a market economy nor a.mar- "Now Mr. Ozal abolished proof of .
:ket sOciety," says economics professor origin for foreign' currency and dis-
Eser Karaka. The price. is high. In bursed lucrative export subsidies," says
.former President Suleyman Demirel's' Mr. Engin. The former encouraged
four decades on the political stage, the money laundering, while the latter not
Thrkish economy has grown at just 1.4 only promoted the export industry, but .
,percent per annum. Thrkey's per capita also fostered a sector' that lived off
income feUbehind Ireland and Greece mock invoices for non-existent exports.
and then far below both. At the same Thus, the Thrkish Mafia quickly
time, .incOme distribution became the gained a place in the international unmost
unequal in Europe.
derworld. Thrkey, which had long been
According toEconomics Minister only a transit country for drugs, be-
Recep Onal, the irrecoverable debt came a producer as of 1982. Today, acheld
by just two of Thrkey's five state cording to U.S. reports, 75 percent of
banks amounts to a tenth of GDP. And the heroin consumed in Europe is
before the state can seU the 11 banks made in Thrkey or passes through the
under its control, it will have to fork out country. Since the, 19808, the Thrkish
even more than expected, probably $15 Mafia therefore established profitable
billion. But some of the inodern bank new lines of business. And by the
robbers are stiU on the run, Cavit Ca- 19908, the Thrkish security forces beglar,
for example, a former economics came their aUy. As a: NATO member,
minister, who is wanted by the police Thrkey possessed a secret organization
for looting Interbank. .
Murat Demirel, a nephew of former
for underground warfare against invad-
. president Deniirel, is already in prison. ing Warsaw Pact troops, similar to
. He behaved as though the customs of (iladio in Italy. Numan Esin, one of the
the Ottoman Empire and the budget of putschists of 1960 who now runs a
the Sultan's family stiU held sway. Un- freight business, published the first defortunately,
he was captured on video scription of t,hese structures .in his
dragging suitcases full of doUar bills short-lived newspaper, Vatan, as retri-
. out of the bank. Builder-turned-banker bution for the torture he suffered after
.Korkmaz Yigit was cleverer. Thrkish the military coup of 1971.
"godfather" Cakici kept rivals off his Until his dismissal in 1998, Mehmet
back during the Thrkbank privatiza-' Eymur was a leading figure in the Thrktion,
while Mr. Yigit relieved Bank Ek- ish secret service. Now based in Washspres
of, $380 million before it feU . ington, he put a detailed description of
under state control. "But that's normal the "Special Forces Commando"
in Thrkey, that's how banking works . (OKK) on his web site in early January.
here," he told the judge. The "Gray Wolves," right-wing extre- .
The state turned a blind eye to these mists involved in the mafia, were active
practices for a long time. They not oIily :in these infamous "Special Units"
,benefited politicians and bureaucrats; (Ozel Tim), which were deployed by
but also saved Thrkey's state enter-the Thrkish state to fight the PKK in
prises from going to the waU. In the Kurdish south-eastern Thrkey and were .
late 1970s, after an overdose of gener- drawn from these "Special Forces."
ous patronage, Mr. Demirel had to This paraUel state" the merging of
admit that Thrkey was ùnable to serv- s~te security forces with organized
. ice its debt. cnme, only came to light through a
In 1979, he appointed an economic road accident on Nov. 3, 1996, when a
wizard; Thrgut Ozal, who had already black luxury limousine got smashed
reorganized industrial companies with under a truck. The driver was a top
unconventional methods. Now Mr. Thrkish police official, and Abdullah
.Ozal had to get hold of foreign cur- Catli, the top godfather of the Thrkish
rency quickly to service the debt. He. underworld. and wanted by Interpol,
had, to find a way to make Thrkey a was amusing himself with a former
modem capitalist country without com- . beauty queen in the back. The third paspletely
giving up the paternal state on. . senger and owner of the car, Sedat
whom somany people had come to deo, Bucak, was the only survivor and sepend.
riously injured. He was the head of a
Mr. Ozal found the money, recalls, Kurdish clan and a deputy of the True
.Aydin Engin, Qne of the country's lead-
Path Party;.then in government.
The accident in Susurluk resUlted in
shocking revelations. Mr. Catli was not
just anybody. He had made a name for
himself as a young leader of the "Gray
Wolves" in Ankara. When the secret
service and police fought over control
of the underworld during the 19808,he
had been the key figure. Mr. CatIi was
the police's man, and Mehmet Agar's.
For many years, Mr. Agar determined
the fate of the Thrkish police - as head
. of police in Istanbul, as general police
director for the whole of Thrkey and as '
interior minister. Mr. Agar had 1,500
guns handed out to the "village militias"
of the pro-State Bucalf:. 'but,
.not trusting the clan chief, askéd Mr.
Catli to monitor the situation. In 1979,
Mr. CatIi organized .Mehmet Ali
Agca's escape from a Thrkish high-security
jail and provided him with international
travel documents. 1\vo years
. later, Mr. Agca made an assassination
attempt on Pope John Paul II.
Interior minister Tantan now works
from the same desk at which Mr. Agar,
under Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan,
once claimed to be serving Thrkish
domestic security, assisted by bureaucrats
like Mr. Temizel, the top supervisor
of Thrkey's banks. That is why
Mr. Koprulu wams against condemning
the Thrkish state as a whole, saying
that there are "good and bad people"
everywhere. .
"The system has entered its ternUnai
phase," says Mr. Koprulu. For a long
time, few people listened to him and his
associates. Now people have understood
that corruption
and fundamentalism.
has fed terror
'
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