Repression: Erdogan uses assassinations to eliminate opposition (Part 7)

Mahmoud al-Batakoushi

In the previous parts of the “Repression” series, we discussed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s endless methods and tricks to conquer his opposition. He started by exploiting Turkey’s intelligence services, gangs and mafia leaders to extort opponents, as well as kidnapping them and confiscating their wealth.

In the seventh and last part of this series, we deal with the Turkish regime’s attempts to assassinate its opponents. They apply the saying “the Sultan is either in the palace or in the grave,” so he is not allowed to have a rival.

Those who have followed the Turkish regime’s policies since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) took over the country at the end of 2002 find that there is no place for other opinions. Every vote must be blocked, especially after the scripted July 15, 2016 coup, as the Turkish regime has mastered the art of abusing the opposition, whether at home or abroad.

The Turkish regime’s repressive policies were accused when trying to assassinate Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who poses a direct threat to Erdogan’s throne, because it is generally accepted that whoever rules Istanbul rules the country, as it is the main city in Turkey and has also been the stronghold of the ruling party since it came to power.

The assassination attempt came after the Turkish opposition and dissidents from the ruling AKP, led by former Economy Minister Ali Babacan, established opposition parties in order to disperse the voices that were supporting the ruling party and unify the voices that support the opposition coalition led by Imamoglu, who became the amulet of the Turkish opposition.

It is noteworthy that Imamoglu was subjected to an assassination attempt at the hands of a young man named Ibrahim Aye, aged 27, as he tried to storm the mayor’s office with a razor blade, but the guards prevented him from reaching it.

In another context, the security authorities in Austria thwarted one assassination that the Turkish intelligence services were planning on carrying out in Vienna by targeting Austrian Green Party MP Berivan Aslan after a Turkish intelligence agent, Feyyaz O, confessed to receiving orders from the Turkish intelligence leadership in August to monitor and prosecute the Austrian politician of Kurdish origins, with the aim of assassinating her.

The Turkish agent, who also holds Italian citizenship, admitted that he had been watching Aslan for a long time and that he had booked a room in a hotel where she had been booked in order to monitor all her movements.

The Kurdish politician confirmed that Turkish pro-government media and circles tried to cover up the scandal, portraying the incident as unfounded, but the assassination plot was real, and that Austrian intelligence informed her of the plan.

“We all remember the assassination of three Kurdish activists, including a founding member of the PKK, in Paris in 2013. These people were members of organizations, while I am an independent politician and am not a member of any organization. I never imagined that they would try to assassinate independent European politicians,” Aslan said.

Aslan is active in the field of human rights, specifically the rights of minorities within Austria, and she has revealed several agents of the Turkish intelligence services in several Austrian provinces, including the capital, Vienna.

The Turkish regime was also involved in the assassination attempt against Hasan Cücük, a veteran Turkish reporter who had been working as a journalist in Denmark since the 1990s and is famous for being an opposition journalist known for his criticism of the Erdogan government, which helped fabricate a criminal case against him before the Danish intelligence services rescued him and transferred him to a safe place after discovering a plot to assassinate him.

Perhaps the last revealed assassination attempt was against Turkish journalist Abdullah Bozkurt, a refugee in Sweden, by three professional assassins on September 24, but the dubious plot was uncovered and the perpetrators were arrested.