A statement from the Presidency yesterday said that the president has ordered the DDK, which is under the control of the Presidency, to investigate claims that emerged following the accident regarding the cause of the crash. A helicopter carrying Yazıcıoğlu and five other people crashed in Kahramanmaraş as they were returning from an election rally in March 2009. Thousands of rescue workers tried in vain to find them despite snowstorms and heavy fog and without knowing the exact location of the wreckage in a mountainous area of more than 30 square kilometers. The victims’ snow-covered bodies were eventually found by local villagers 72 hours after the crash. Yazıcıoğlu, BBP Sivas Provincial Chairman Erhan Üstündağ, BBP Deputy Provincial Chairman Yüksel Yağcı, Sivas city council candidate Murat Çetinkaya and İhlas News Agency (İHA) reporter İsmail Güneş, along with pilot Kaya İstektepe, were traveling from Kahramanmaraş to Yozgat.
The fact that the victims were found so many hours after the crash and that Yazıcıoğlu was a prominent pro-democracy figure triggered claims that the crash was the result of an assassination by an illegal group. A suspect in the trial of Ergenekon, a clandestine terrorist organization plotting to overthrow the government, said last year that Yazıcıoğlu’s death was planned in 2008 by the Ergenekon gang. On the other hand, a Transportation Ministry report suggested late last year that the helicopter crash was the fault of the pilot, who insisted on flying even though weather conditions were unfavorable.
