Colonel Arif Doğan confesses to JİTEM's shocking crimes

In the voice recording, the supposed voice of Doğan confesses to having orchestrated attacks on Turkey's Alevis by what appeared to be religious mobs as well as having purposefully stopped an operation that would have landed terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan in Turkish hands years earlier than he was caught in 1999. The voice speaks of many convoluted and spine-chilling crimes in a calm, almost casual manner.

The voice believed to be Doğan states: “Nobody knows about JİTEM but me. It came into being with me, it will go with me. I am JİTEM. They can't take orders from anybody else but me.” However, Doğan had said in his testimony to the judges at court that JİTEM was established under formal orders of his superiors. The voice also gives information about the structure of JİTEM. He says, “I know his [not clear whose] code name only. Somebody keeps the records. He is a very valuable person, a warrior. These aren't soldiers. There are soldiers, but I don't mean privates. There are officers with ranks. Everybody has an assignment. Everyone knows their duty at least as much as I do but not all of it. If there are 10 assignments, they know of only one not about the other nine. But what I say is the law. When I call someone and question them on why they did something a certain way, the only thing he can do is apologize. Those who deny, I will order to be killed.”

The voice continues, with an out of context phrase: “Because this country has always needed this, will need this in the future and needs this today. Listen I am not using the word ‘state' at all.” He also mentions refusing a meeting with the Chief of General Staff , after which, the higher commanders “made up to him within 24 hours” although the context is not very clear. Here he also says that he threatened them that all hell would break lose if he “talked.”

The voice also says that as JİTEM head, he only informed the General Staff of things that he thought they need to know. “If it wasn’t such information, if they called me and asked me ‘Arif, how is this going?’ I would tell them ‘It’s better if you don’t know.’ One time, one said, ‘Man, are you crazy, I am senior general and you are lieutenant colonel. I said, ‘I don’t care, you can be whatever you are commander. Before everything else, you are a person. I don’t want to get you in this filth.”

JİTEM stopped Öcalan capture

In another excerpt of the recording, the alleged Doğan speaks of a Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) operation in Cemsheref (Syria). “There was a blast in Cemsheref yesterday. 75 PKK members were killed. 15 houses were blown up. Everyone wanted to know what was going on. We of course left fliers around the territory of the Muslim Brothers. Turgut Özal [the President of Turkey between 1989 and 1993 and prime minister before then] at the time was with Haffiz Assad. The translator told him ‘Tell Mr. Prime Minister to extradite members of the Muslim Brothers. And we will try to hand you Abdullah Öcalan [who hid in Syria until he was forced to go out of the country after which he was captured in 1999].? But the prime minister [Özal] didn’t know about the bombing].” The voice later says that Özal asked a National Intelligence Organization (MİT) official who was in Syria along with him, ‘Have you done anything without my orders? The MİT official made a few phone calls and replied. “Sir, JİTEM has retaliated.” The voice says JİTEM retaliated for a PKK attack in Urfa. Terrorists cut off udders of 200 milk cows in the Ceylanpınar district and JİTEM retaliated by killing about 100 people in Cemsheref. The voice says, “Then Özal wondered out loud, ‘Where do these people take their orders from?’ ”

The voice believed to be Doğan’s also refers to former İstanbul Governor Muammer Güler as a “dog.” In the recording, he says he protected Güler from opposing politicians and ministers. He says if Güler complained about a parliamentary deputy, he would have delegates who voted for him beaten up by JİTEM officers. When they asked, they would be told ‘Listen, this deputy says you mistreated him. He asked the commander to retaliate.’ The voice says, “So would they [the beaten delegates] ever vote for him again? These are JİTEM tactics. Only the faithless can deal with the irreligious.”

‘I am not a religious bigot’

In the recording, he also says that he would never vote for the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) because he is not a religious fundamentalist. He says 80 percent of the state hierarchy is comprised of liars, thieves and other categories for which he uses expletives.

The voice also says that he had tens of men under his command with [religious] beards that he used to attack Alevis. In Sivas, 36 Alevis were killed in 1993 by what was believed to be a religious mob. In 1995, 17 people were killed in İstanbul’s Alevi neighborhood Gazi Mahallesi. The voice says, “I had left bearded men everywhere, secret men, so that they would attack Alevi segments. The entire structure in Turkey belonged to me.”

The voice says it was at the helm of a 10,000 man force, the members of which were used in all kinds of illegal crimes.

The speech also involves information on the deaths of Eşref Bitlis, who died in a suspicious plane crash, and Cem Ersever, a gendarmerie colonel and a key person involved in setting up the JİTEM, who later published books as a whistleblower and was subsequently murdered.”