Susurluk Scandal

The Susurluk scandal was a scandal involving the close relationship between the Turkish government, the armed forces, and organized crime. It took place during the peak of the Kurdish–Turkish conflict, in the mid-1990s. The relationship came into existence after the National Security Council (MGK) posited the need for the marshaling of the nation's resources to combat the separatist, militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The scandal surfaced with a car crash on 3 November 1996, near Susurluk, in the province of Balıkesir. The victims included the deputy chief of the Istanbul Police Department, a Member of Parliament who led a powerful Kurdish clan, and the leader of the Grey Wolves (who was a contract killer on Interpol's red list).

The state had been engaged in an escalating low intensity conflict with the PKK since 1984. The conflict reached an apex when the PKK planned to proclaim their independence by 1994. Towards the end of 1992, a furious debate in the NSC about how to proceed was taking place. Doves such as president Turgut Özal and general Eşref Bitlis favored a non-military solution. However, both of these people died in 1993. The same year, the NSC prescribed a co-ordinated Black Operations campaign using special forces. The Turkish branch of Operation Gladio, the "Counter-Guerrilla", contributed much of these special forces.

Deputy prime minister Tansu Çiller tasked the police force, then under the leadership of Mehmet Ağar, with crippling the PKK and assassinating its leader, Abdullah Öcalan. The police unit responsible for this job was the Special Operations Department (Turkish: Özel Harekat Dairesi, ÖHD). Contract killer Abdullah Çatlı also took part. This caused consternation in the National Intelligence Organization (Turkish: Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı, MİT), which had formerly counted on Çatlı to undertake reprisals against the militant Armenian organization, ASALA. Especially concerned was Mehmet Eymür of the MİT's Operations/Counter-Terrorism Department, who had irreconcilable differences with Ağar. The scandal has hence been pithily described as "the battle of the two Mehmets".

Like many such groups, the PKK was funded at least in part by narcotics. Instead of merely preventing the PKK from profiting from illegal activities, these factions fought over who would take its place. Intelligence expert Mahir Kaynak described the police camp as "pro-European", and the MİT camp as "pro-American". The guilty pocketed billions of dollars in profits from the drug smuggling. This illegal activity on the state's part was partly motivated, or at least justified as such, by the tens of billions of dollars in loss of trade with Iraq due to the Gulf War. To put this into perspective the heroin trade, then worth $50 billion, exceeded the state budget of $48 billion. (Other sources quote the 1998 budget as 62 billion USD and the drug market as 70 billion USD, though only a fraction of this is tapped as commission.)

Although Ağar and Çiller resigned after the scandal, no-one received any punitive sentences. Ağar was eventually re-elected to Parliament (as a leader of the True Path Party, DYP), and the sole survivor of the crash, chieftain Sedat Bucak, was released. Essentially, the perpetrators escaped justice.

Some reforms were made; e.g., the intelligence agency was restructured to end the infighting (with Eymür's department entirely dismantled).

Some hold that the scandal was made possible by the wresting of control of the MİT away from military leadership in 1992.