Contradictory allegations add mystery to officer's suicide

Tatar was found dead in his home in İstanbul's Beykoz district early Sunday. He had been arrested on suspicion of links to a plot to assassinate admirals at the Naval Forces Command but was released last Wednesday following an appeal by his lawyer.

An İstanbul court issued another arrest warrant for Tatar shortly after his release.

During his funeral his wife, Nilüfer Tatar, said there was no evidence necessitating her husband’s arrest. However, the court had arrested him under the Code on Criminal Procedure’s (CMK) Article 100, which calls for custody when there is enough evidence indicating a crime.

She also alleged at the funeral that the prosecutors in the Ergenekon case were blacklisting all the Alevis in the military. “They’re always detaining Alevi officers, but they have no evidence,” she said. “Whose man are you, Süleyman Pehlivan?” she asked, referring to the prosecutor investigating the alleged assassination plot.

However, though Tatar’s wife claims the Ergenekon prosecution -- not the gang itself -- was set against her husband, a police raid on the office of retired Gen. Veli Küçük, who is currently in jail on charges of membership in Ergenekon, revealed a document classifying Tatar on the basis of his religious and ideological background. The document notes that Tatar is an Alevi and comes from Yuva village in the Gürün district of eastern Sivas province. “Yuva village is known in its region as a hotbed for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK] and anarchists. His mother E., father H. and close relative H.T. were previously convicted of membership in a separatist organization. … He was known to have exerted the utmost effort to push the Naval Forces Command to employ family members during recruitment periods. I am of the opinion that such a dark formation based on denominational cooperation is of high danger for our armed forces,” the document states.

The circumstances behind Tatar’s alleged suicide continue to be a subject of heated debate. According to initial media reports following his death, when police came knocking at Tatar’s door to take him into custody, he asked them for a brief reprieve, during which time he committed suicide. But his wife told the Vatan daily that he had actually written a suicide note upon receiving word in the evening hours on a Friday that a court had ordered his re-detention; he committed suicide the following morning, so stories that he committed suicide when the police showed up are not true, she said.

Well-known journalist Şamil Tayyar asked a number of questions revolving around Tatar’s death in his column earlier this week, echoing the concerns expressed by many observers over another allegation surrounding Tatar’s death, the veracity of which remains unknown. According to Tatar’s wife, the place where the officer was staying was bustling with people the night before his death. Tayyar asks in his column: “Which admiral did Tatar meet with before he decided to commit suicide? Was there a meeting conducted amongst the five or six people who gathered the night before his death? If this is the case, who participated, what was discussed? Could the decision to re-arrest him be the only reason prompting his suicide?”

Questions also remain as to whether or not an autopsy was performed on Tatar’s body to determine if the death was really a suicide.