Members of the JGK’s elite Gendarmerie Special Law and Order Command (JÖAK), previously planned to be deployed to Tunceli from Ankara, will have their new base in the Black Sea province of Giresun instead. The sharpshooting JÖAK teams will doubtlessly play an effective role in fighting the PKK in the region.
They will be deployed to Giresun by the command of JGK Commander Gen. Atila Işık; the team is composed of commissioned and noncommissioned officers who are experts in sharpshooting and for years had been deployed at regular intervals from Ankara to rural areas in Tunceli, playing an important role in fighting PKK forces there.
Nicknamed the “ghost teams” for their high success rate in counterterrorism operations, JÖAK will be active in rural areas of Giresun and Ordu. Led by a seasoned major, the team consists entirely of high-ranking officers. JÖAK is deployed from Ankara at intervals of two to three months to fight terrorism, previously in Tunceli but now to Giresun and Ordu. JÖAK, whose members are known by their distinctive maroon-colored berets, was established in 1999 in Ankara. The team of more than 800 officers is organized into departments including Operations, Special Operations and Search-and-Rescue and Support of Peace divisions.
A group of PKK terrorists hiding in rural areas of the Black Sea launched an attack in Samsun’s Ladik district on April 17, opening fire on police officers and killing two, Hüseyin Koç and Malik Saykal. A second Black Sea-area attack occurred on April 26 in Giresun’s Dereli district, where a remotely controlled landmine was detonated as a gendarmerie patrol vehicle passed -- the attack killed Staff Sgt. Ahmet Eryılmaz and wounded two other soldiers. Most recently, on May 24, PKK operatives opened fire using long-range weapons on a traffic team entering the Keşat tunnel, wounding police officers Mustafa Poyraz and Cengiz Karadağ.
