Who killed Sabahattin Ali?

“Cursed be those who prioritize their own interests over the interests of nations, those who strive to keep their nations in chains of slavery, darkness of ignorance, and numbness of fear just to continue eating their unearned bread...”

Sabahattin Ali/Markopaşa, March 10, 1947.

A year after penning the lines above, Sabahattin Ali began making serious plans to go abroad. This was because the writer, whom some described as the Gorky of the country, had been subjected to imprisonment and oppression. According to Zekeriya Sertel, he had become weary and exhausted, especially in his final years, by the police surveillance and the pressure he was subjected to, to the point where he could no longer write anything.

For this very reason, with the guidance of Berber Hasan, whom he met at the Üsküdar Paşakapısı Prison, he began his journey toward the Bulgarian border with Ali Ertekin, a former soldier. Once he crossed the border, he would go to Europe. The calendar showed the final days of March 1948. However, things did not go as planned; moreover, the writer was living his final days. Even today, while his exact date of death is not known, he passed away on April 2 of that same year. He was only 41 years old. His body (the identity of which is also debated) was found about two and a half months later by a shepherd in the Istranca forests within the borders of Kırklareli. However, the writer's lifeless body was subsequently buried again, as if to ensure it would never be found. To this day, he still has no grave.

So, who killed Sabahattin Ali?

The answers to some questions are not as easy as they appear, even when the answers seem obvious. Or rather, the answers that some present to us may not reveal the truth, but rather the true face of the darkness.

The murderer of Sabahattin Ali is one of those dark faces.

According to the research of journalist and author Gökçer Tahincioğlu, the killer came forward on his own six months after the murder and began to recount the crime. News regarding the killing of Sabahattin Ali, however, only reached the press in January 1949.

Ali Ertekin, who claimed to have committed the murder, stated that he did it out of “national sentiment.” According to his account, after crossing the border, Sabahattin Ali was going to go to Russia and then return to Turkey to carry out a communist revolution. The writer had allegedly told all of this to Ali Ertekin, who was supposed to help him cross the border. He claimed he was provoked by this. The judges of the era must have believed this hard-to-believe story, as the killer Ali Ertekin received only a four-year prison sentence. Because there was “provocation” involved...! You take the life of one of Turkey’s most valuable writers and intellectuals, and the sentence you receive is only four years. There is more: thanks to an amnesty, Ali Ertekin served only a few months before being released from prison.

I think it is more meaningful now to repeat the question we posed above: Who really killed Sabahattin Ali?

We know that the killer, Ali Ertekin, had been dismissed from the army in the past for stealing weapons. It is also historical fact that the same person received money from the National Security Service (Milli Emniyet), as it was called at the time, and worked as an informant. This reality lies behind his so-called “national sentiment.” As we said, the person presented as the perpetrator is sometimes a great darkness. Ali Ertekin lived for about 40 more years after the murder with this darkness he created.

This is a deep ache that any minimal conscience would feel.

Asım Bezirci, who was massacred in Sivas, wrote in his book “Sabahattin Ali,” first published in 1972, regarding that ache: “Ali Ertekin now lives in Kadıköy, in Anadoluhisarı Yenimahalle, next to the Göksu Creek, in a cute, two-story, pink-painted house with a telephone and a garden surrounded by roses.

As for Sabahattin Ali, whose works were not published at all from 1947 to 1965, he still does not even have a grave…”

Then it is time to face the darkness of the murder once again.

The prison sentence deemed appropriate for the killer was not a punishment, but almost a reward.

The reduction in the sentence by calling the murder a result of “provocation” was a hostile stance toward the writer and a “friendly” message to the killer.

Therefore, the perpetrator here is not alone; furthermore, the perpetrator may not even be the real perpetrator.

How so?

Rasih Nuri İleri heard from Staff Lieutenant Colonel Talat Turhan, who was imprisoned in the Selimiye Military Prison during the March 12, 1971 period, that Sabahattin Ali was killed at the police headquarters. He wrote two articles on this. His conclusions are as follows:

“1-Sabahattin Ali was not killed by Ali Ertekin at the Bulgarian border.

2-According to the evidence we have, he was captured by the National Security Service at a moment he thought he had crossed the border.

3-He was killed during interrogation at the Kırklareli Police Department while being tortured.

4-This murder, which took place between the last days of March 1948 and the first week of April 1948, was covered up to capture two other people who wanted to escape with him; the body was left near the border and found there by villagers. National Security agent Ali Ertekin then assumed the role of the killer and had himself arrested under this title.”

In 1990, Uğur Mumcu also made the following statement: “I had heard this interpretation of the event from both retired Staff Lieutenant Colonel Talat Turhan and his friend Adnan Çakmak (the nephew of Fevzi Çakmak). One evening in 1973 in Ankara, Adnan Çakmak had told this story at length.”

Again, in 1978, lawyer Mehmet Ali Cimcoz made very striking statements to Kemal Bayram regarding the Sabahattin Ali murder. Hamdi Özdemir, known as “Parmaksız Hamdi” (Hamdi the Fingerless), the Chief of the Communist Desk who investigated the murder of Sabahattin Ali, told lawyer Cimcoz the name of the person who gave the order for the killing. Their conversation went as follows:

-I asked Parmaksız Hamdi. So, who are the ones who killed him?

-He is a man we all know. I cannot tell you his name, excuse me. ‘Hamdi Bey, God will make him suffer,’ he said.

Hıfzı Topuz also includes this event in his book “Eski Dostlar” (Old Friends) but avoids giving names. In a speech he gave, he used the name of Nihat Erim and said: “After Nihat Erim died, Parmaksız became friends with Mehmet Ali. Parmaksız told Mehmet Ali that the murder was not committed by the police, but by the National Security Service. He said that the person who gave the order for the murder was one of the high-level figures of the party, also known for his identity as a journalist and author. He added that this person died in a terrible way.”

Who would want to stop a heart that beats for the oppressed and the poor, and why? And why would they make the Istranca Mountains a grave for the writer? Leaving the name Ali Ertekin aside, I think these are the real questions we should be asking about this murder.

It should not be forgotten that Sabahattin Ali was a figure with a political identity who was oppressed and imprisoned in dungeons for years because of it. The prisons of Aydın, Konya, Sinop, and Istanbul are witnesses to the suffering he endured. His close friends, companions, and comrades are witnesses.

The writer did not suddenly find himself at the border gates. He did not suddenly lose his hope and faith in the country. He was accused of treason, lynching campaigns were organized against him, the magazines he worked for were silenced and shut down, and even his books were confiscated by a Council of Ministers decision.

While he was still alive, the writer was essentially denied the right to live; he was told, “If you are going to live, you must kill your ideas, your thoughts, and your struggle.” Otherwise, the outcome was clear. The black-bound book of history foretold what would happen.

In this respect, the murder of Sabahattin Ali was committed by a collective of perpetrators. Every hostile attitude toward the writer, every unjust and unlawful court decision, every lynching attempt recorded, and political pressures played a role as the preparers of this murder. Because political murders are not committed in an instant; behind the lifeless bodies that fall to the ground lies a collective of killers who led them to death day by day.

The darkness that killed Sabahattin Ali was not a momentary fit of rage at a border, but a plan drawn up at a desk and executed with cold-bloodedness. The ink for this plan was dried in intelligence rooms, and its signature was placed in the shadow of politics.

Files were closed, testimonies were twisted, a killer was created, and the truth was locked away in the deep drawers of the state. Because some murders exist not to be solved, but to be covered up.

Therefore, the issue is not just a matter of a single perpetrator. The issue is the very mind that produces, protects, and rewards the perpetrator.