Түрік Жандармериясының Барлау және Террормен Күресу Ұйымы (JİTEM)

Turkish Intelligence Organization

Jandarma İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele or Jandarma İstihbarat Teşkilatı (abbr. JİTEM or JİT; English: "Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter Terrorism" or "Gendarmerie Intelligence Organization") is the intelligence department of the Turkish Gendarmerie. JİTEM was active in the Kurdish–Turkish conflict. It is also said to be the military wing of Ergenekon, an underground Turkish nationalist organization. In 2008, long maintained official denials of JİTEM's existence started collapsing in the courts, as ex members of Turkey's "deep state" security apparatus testify to their participation in covert and illegal activities over the last few decades as part of the ongoing Ergenekon investigation.

The unit was officially founded in 2005, but its unofficial history goes back to the 1980s. Its roots lie further back with the Counter Guerrilla: JİTEM used Counter Guerrilla methods and possibly equipment, and key figures had been involved with the Counter Guerrilla. For example, Murat Belge of Istanbul Bilgi University says he was tortured in 1971 by a key JİTEM figure, Veli Küçük.

JİTEM was active in the Kurdish–Turkish conflict. It has repeatedly been claimed that JİTEM was dissolved. One of the first was Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz. He stated on 22 January 1998 on the Arena program on Kanal D hosted by Uğur Dündar that JİTEM did not exist any longer. The last declaration about JİTEM's dissolution came in 2004 from the former Commander of the Gendarmerie in the State of Emergency Region (Olağanüstü Hal, OHAL), retired Lieutenant General Altay Tokat. Tokat stated in his interview with the newspaper Zaman that JİTEM was a “public disclosure of an intelligence unit that fought against the PKK in the OHAL region” and that it had “fulfilled its role and was dissolved". The former chair of Diyarbakır Bar Association, Sezgin Tanrıkulu, however claims that JİTEM was not dissolved, but the cadres were not active at the moment.

JİTEM was made a legal entity through Article 5 of the Law 2803 on the Establishment, Duties and Jurisdiction of Gendarmerie and Article 4 of the Law Concerning the Transfer of Our Borders, Coasts and Territorial Waters' Protection and Anti Smuggling Activities to the Ministry of Internal Affairs No. 6815.

The first person to write about JİTEM was journalist Ayşe Önal for the Ateş newspaper on 2 July 1994. Önal had learned about it from Veli Küçük after being introduced to him through MIT spy and fellow journalist, Tuncay Güney. Önal and Küçük's meeting did not go well, and Önal vowed to write about it. She followed through, and was promptly fired, along with nineteen of her coworkers. Findings about JİTEM and Ersever were also published by researchers and journalists. Susurluk commission member Fikri Sağlar said that the commanders denied its existence because the Gendarmerie formally acquired the legal capacity to conduct intelligence operations in 2005 (with Law 5397). The author of the Prime Ministry Inspection Board report, Kutlu Savaş, said JİTEM was created on Gendarmerie Commander Hulusi Sayın's watch (1981–1985). The Parliamentary Investigation Committee's report on Unsolved Political Murders in Various Regions of Our Country (10/90) dated 12 October 1995 and the summary by Istanbul National Security Court General Prosecutor dated 30 January 1997 are also worthy of consideration. Investigations into the 1996 Susurluk scandal revealed some role for JİTEM. Former prime ministers Bülent Ecevit, and Mesut Yılmaz accepted the existence of JİTEM. Seven months after the release of the Susurluk Report, a book entitled: Cem Ersever ve JİTEM Gerçeği ("Cem Ersever and the JİTEM Fact"), written by journalist Çetin Ağaşe, a friend of the Ersever family, was published. The appendix of the book contains documents such as the 1994 phone directory of the General Command of Gendarmerie, which contained the numbers of the JİTEM Group Commander and JİTEM units in each city. now a political refugee in Sweden) that it was founded by retired general Veli Küçük, who is currently arrested in the Ergenekon investigations. Other people allegedly involved in its founding are Ahmet Cem Ersever, Arif Doğan, Hasan Kundakçı, Hüseyin Kara, Hulusi Sayın and Aytekin Özen, according to Aygan. Küçük confirmed Aygan's allegations about his cofounding the organization.

After being taken into custody, Arif Doğan admitted to being a founder of the organization, originally known as the Intelligence Group Command (İstihbarat Grup Komutanlığı), and that in 1990 he handed the reins to Veli Küçük. In 2005 he had denied the very existence of such an organization. After his release from prison Arif Doğan spoke to journalists of the news channel Habertürk TV in September 2010 and said that he alone had founded JİTEM and had "frozen" it in 1990. Concerning the structure of JİTEM Colonel Arif Doğan said: "My staff was 10,000, including 620 women. They participated in operations and got 3,000 Lira for each head." Unofficial figures put the number of confessors that were used and paid in the fight against the PKK at 500. the Gendarmerie General Command, the Intelligence Command, the Joint Group Command, the Regional Group Commands (of which there are seven), the Team Commands and small clandestine cells the lawyer Tahir Elçi, who is acting on behalf of victims of JİTEM said:
"It is not possible to completely know the organizational structure of JİTEM; but it is understood that it was organized within the Gendarmerie, the centre being in Ankara and having group commands mostly in the South East within the Regimental Commands of the provinces. They took their orders from the centre in Ankara and conducted three folded activities: gather intelligence, interrogate and carry out operations." JİTEM carried out its activities using the "staff system" (eleman sistemi) and technical stakeout approaches. The information gathered was analysed, became intelligence and submitted to the Intelligence Group Command. Every report was assembled by the Intelligence Group Command and operation teams were dispatched accordingly. They made use of PKK confessors (itirafçı) to kill PKK adherents, raid villages in guerilla dressing, detain, torture or make people "disappear". Intelligence units did not have the necessary mechanisms in place to fight the PKK in open country. The inefficiency in the intelligence network made it impossible for land forces to perform specific operations, to prevent terror raids and to develop a strategy against PKK front activities. Kurdish Turkish politician Abdülmelik Fırat maintained that JİTEM is connected to the PKK, while fighting it at the same time.

Numerous people who claim to be or are purported to be JİTEM operatives have been accused of crimes such as kidnapping, intimidation, and extra judicial killings of PKK members. Former JİTEM operative Aygan estimated that 80% of these killings were done by JİTEM. Tuncay Güney, a former spy for the National Intelligence Organization who infiltrated JİTEM, alleged that Veli Küçük's men, working for JİTEM, killed people using acid and buried the corpses in wells belonging to the state owned Turkish Pipeline Corporation, BOTAŞ. Some have responded to the Şırnak Bar's request for witnesses and families of victims to step forward. Ergenekon defendant Levent Ersöz has also been named in connection with the incidents, in Silopi. There are no clear figures on the number of political killings in South East Anatolia. According to intelligence units, 1550 unsolved murders were committed between 1990 and 2000 although the PKK claims that the accurate number exceeds 2000. Former chair of Diyarbakır Bar Association Sezgin Tanrıkulu put the figures above 4,000, close to 5,000. He stated that one JİTEM operative, Ibrahim Babat, alone had been charged with 61 killings. In a documentary by Mehmet Hatman the figure of 4653 unsolved political killings between 1991 and 2000 was mentioned.

Some murders received a lot of press coverage.

Vedat Aydın, the Diyarbakır branch chairman of the now defunct People's Labor Party (HEP), was found dead on a road near Malatya on 7 July 1991, two days after armed men had taken him from his home in Diyarbakir. The widow Sükran Aydın thinks her husband's murder was a turning point and that there was a sudden increase in the number of unsolved murders in the country's Southeast following his death. She believes that a clandestine unit within the gendarmerie was responsible for the murder. Only 18 years after the killing the public prosecutor in Diyarbakir opened a file seeking the detention of nine JİTEM members including the Major Aytekin Özen.

Aygan said he had been part of a unit, alongside Cem Ersever and Arif Doğan, which had assassinated 72 year old Kurdish writer Musa Anter in 1992 in Diyarbakır. Turkey was found guilty of this murder in 2006 by the European Convention on Human Rights, which fined Turkey for 28,500 euros. Aygan alleges that Arif Doğan and Veli Küçük's superiors in Ankara ordered the assassination in order to take control of JİTEM from Ersever. Its activities were first revealed in 1996, in the aftermath of the Susurluk scandal. Its activities "are only one part of the JİTEM activities" that have been sent to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). All of the local court prison sentences concerning the Yüksekova Gang were cancelled by the High Court of Appeals of Turkey, leading the ECHR to fine Turkey 103,000 Euro for its decisions about the Yüksekova Gang.

İlhan Cihaner, prosecutor in İdil (Şırnak province) was the first to point at JİTEM in an indictment of 1997. He held the defendants including civil servants, İtirafçı confessors and others responsible for killings, bombings and "disappearances". Defendant No. 1 was Ahmet Cem Ersever and defendant No. 2 was Arif Doğan. An indictment prepared by Diyarbakır Public Prosecutor Mithat Özcan dated 29 March 2005 charged eight PKK İtirafçı confessors, namely Mahmut Yıldırım (aka Yeşil), Abdülkadir Aygan, Muhsin Gül, Fethi Çetin, Kemal Emlük, Saniye Emlük, Yüksel Uğur and Abdülkerim Kırca. Earlier the Ministry of Interior had refused to inform the Court of the new names of the defendants. Mehmet Şerif Avşar was abducted in Diyarbakir on 22 April 1994 and two weeks later found dead. The kidnappers, PKK confessor Mesut Mehmetoğlu and village guards hid in a building reportedly belonging to JİTEM. On 20 March 2001 six defendants were convicted for their involvement in the killing. The case was raised with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The court found a violation of Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Abdülkadir Aygan is one of the 11 or 12 defendants charged with having killed Hacı Ahmet Zeyrek (in Silopi 1989), JİTEM staff member Mehmet Bayar (25 June 1990) and Tahsin Sevim, Hasan Utanç and Hasan Caner on 16 September 1989. A criminal court in Diyarbakır ruled in 2006 that the defendants were military personnel and should be tried in a military court. According to the report of Kutlu Savaş PKK İtirafçı confessor Hayrettin Toka had been involved in many killings of JİTEM. He was apprehended in Karamürsel in December 2005 and taken to Diyarbakir. A judge released him on 16 January 2006. In his testimony Toka stated that he had been imprisoned for 12.5 years. Şırnak death well trials: on 11 September 2009 Diyarbakır Heavy Penal Court No. 6 started to hear the case of 7 defendants charged with 20 killings that had been committed between 1993 and 1995 when Colonel Cemil Temizöz had been the commander of Cizre Gendarmerie Station in Şırnak province, Cizre district. On 17 September 2010 the 18th hearing was held. The 2005 Şemdinli incident involved Gendarmerie intelligence personnel and alleged links to JİTEM. Three men were sentenced to 39 years for murder in a grenade attack.