Former National Intelligence Organization (MİT) counterterrorism unit head Mehmet Eymür, who was detained over suspected links to several extrajudicial murders committed in the early 1990s, was released on Wednesday after being interrogated by the prosecutor overseeing the investigation. Eymür gave testimony on Wednesday at the Ankara Special Prosecutor's Office, Today's Zaman reported.
Eymür was detained on Tuesday following the testimony in June of a former member of the National Police Department's special operations unit, Ayhan Çarkın, who confessed that he had information about the killing of four men in the 1990s. The victims were Namık Erdoğan, the ex-head of the supervisory board of the Ministry of Health; lawyers Yusuf Ekinci and Faik Candan; and former Altındağ Registry Office head Mecit Baskın. Çarkın said he and some other colleagues took part in the killings.
Eymür was among nine people detained in relation to the investigation including Çarkın, İbrahim Şahin, former deputy head of the National Police Department's special ops unit, and Sedat Peker, a mafia boss.
Meanwhile, Eymür's home in the Sarıyer district of İstanbul was searched for evidence related to extrajudicial killings. The prosecutor demanded a thorough search of all electronic devices in Eymür's home.
A number of unsolved murder cases that occurred in the early 1990s have been reopened in Turkey, in addition to the one in which Eymür is implicated.
Another case reopened this year was the probe into the death of Gen. Eşref Bitlis, who was killed in a plane crash in 1993. The case into Bitlis' death was reopened after former military prosecutor retired Col. Hasan Tüysüzoğlu claimed in 2010 that a file on the Bitlis crash was suspiciously lacking in information. Tüysüzoğlu shared various suspicious details from the initial investigation conducted by military prosecutors after Bitlis' death.
Earlier this week, former Chief of General Staff Gen. Doğan Güreş, who was in charge of the military at the time of Bitlis' death, was called to testify in the Bitlis investigation. Another former general who is expected to testify in the investigation is retired Gen. Armağan Kuloğlu, then commander of the air cadet school of the land forces. Tüysüzoğlu had said in his revelations that Gen. Kuloğlu should have been investigated at the time because the plane that crashed was under his command. He said that instead of being investigated Gen. Kuloğlu was promoted.
Bitlis was a senior general investigating the same issue that journalist Uğur Mumcu had been investigating. Mumcu was assassinated in 1993 for trying to discover what happened to 100,000 firearms that disappeared from the Turkish Armed Forces' (TSK) arsenal. Bitlis died 25 days after Mumcu. Expert reports on the plane accident in which he died indicated that the incident was most likely caused by sabotage.
Just one week before he was killed, Bitlis met with foreign ministers from Syria, Iran and Iraq about trying to put an end to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as part of the plan of President Turgut Özal, who favored a civilian solution to the Kurdish problem. Before Özal even had a chance to see any of his ideas put into practice, he died on April 17, 1993. Several conspiracy theories emerged in the wake of Özal's death.
Evidence included in an indictment into Ergenekon -- a shady gang with links to the media, business, military and bureaucracy that is being accused of having incited a number of political murders and attacks -- suggests that Mumcu was assassinated because of his controversial investigation.
Other cold cases from the same period that are being re-examined include the death of Gen. Bahtiyar Aydın, who was shot in the eye with an automatic rifle, and a gendarmerie major, Kazım Çillioğlu, and Gen. Hulusi Sayın. A constitutional amendment package passed on Sept. 12, 2010, allowing civilian courts to take up cases that previously were under military court jurisdiction, has made it possible to reopen unsolved murders, many of which appear to have been covered up during their initial investigation years ago in the early 1990s.