Turkish court to inquire into secret intel unit

A Turkish court is going to undertake a detailed inquiry into the existence of an overarching intelligence organization within Gendarmerie that allegedly perpetrated hundreds of murders in the country's southeast.

The decision to ask the General Staff about the existence and function of Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counterterrorism center (JITEM) came during the trial of 11 former members-turned-informants of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a village guard and a civilian intelligence agent, according to a report published by Today's Zaman newspaper.

The defendants are accused of murder, bombing vehicles, assassination, abduction and extortion.

The clandestine gendarmerie intelligence unit known as JITEM was founded by the retired major general Veli Kucuk, who was jailed following his capture in a police raid to crack down on Ergenekon operatives. According to Murat Belge at Istanbul's Bilgi University, JITEM is said to be the military wing of underground Ergenekon terror organization.

Abdulkadir Aygan, a former member of the PKK and later a JITEM member, confessed to the media on January, 19 that when retired Colonel Abdulkerim Kirca was the head of JITEM in Diyarbakir, the unit conducted dozens of executions in Turkey's southeastern province. The following day, Kirca committed suicide.

Chief of General Staff General Ilker Basbug, armed forces commanders, and a large number of military officers attended Kirca's funeral.

Aygan claimed that JITEM had executed between 600 and 700 Kurds in the 1990s, adding that “JITEM operations always ended in death… Those who were reported to JITEM as having any relationship with the PKK were executed.”

This is while Kurdish activists have been demanding that the acid wells of BOTAS, the Turkish petroleum company, be emptied, because former Ergenekon members have claimed that JITEM dumped some of its victims in them.

JITEM was subjected to parliamentary scrutiny during the Susurluk scandal when a relationship between Ankara government, the armed forces and organized crime surfaced at the peak of Turkey-PKK conflict in mid-1990s.