Ayhan Çarkın

Ayhan Çarkın (born 1962, Erzurum) is a Turkish policeman who is reported to have played a controversial role in the Susurluk scandal.

Biography

Çarkın grew up in Erzincan. Because he came from an underprivileged family that was unable to fund his education, he dropped out of high school. In 1984, he signed up for the Turkish police force, receiving training in special warfare from Korkut Eken. He was deployed in Diyarbakır underleader of the Special Operations Department , İbrahim Şahin, who named Çarkın as the most fearless policeman he had ever met. He gained a reputation for quickly conducting raids—350 in all— in southeast Turkey from 1986 to 1990.

Later, Şahin took Çarkın to Istanbul to target Dev-Sol militants. He led a raid on July 12, 1991, in which eleven were killed; Relatives of the victims sued him thereafter, and the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey would not be subject to extrajudicial executions in this operation. Çarkın's next raid was on April 16, 1992; three were killed. Twenty people, including Çarkın were sued; this time he was acquitted.

Susurluk scandal

Çarkın was involved in the events that led to the scandal. Specifically, he was part of the elite Police Special Operation Teams department that was responsible for assassinating businessmen suspected of financially supporting the PKK. One of these was allegedly the so-called "casino king", Ömer Lütfü Topal, assassinated in July 1996. Çarkın's associates included Ayhan Akça, Oğuz Yorulmaz, Ercan Ersoy, and the notorious Abdullah Çatlı. Çarkın denies having taken part in the Topal assassination. He claims he has alibis; he was leading a unit of five in Kadıköy at the moment the assassination took place.

After the scandal, the Çiller-Erbakan administration was replaced by the Mesut Yılmaz administration. Çarkın alleges that deputies in the Yılmaz administration offered him a passport to enable him to flee, but he refused, since he believed he was innocent.

Smuggling ring In January 2011, Turkish police announced that, after a nine-month investigation, they had uncovered a smuggling and bribery ring operating in Istanbul that dealt mostly with smuggling cigarettes. Ayhan Çarkın was alleged to be involved in the scheme, along with others suspected of involvement in the Susurluk scandal.