Very Strange Goings-on in the Hablemitoğlu Assassination Case

A new scandal-level incident has been added to the strange occurrences in the Necip Hablemitoğlu assassination case, which had finally sparked hope for clarity after exactly 20 years.

Before sharing this scandal, let us summarize what happened during the most recent hearing held between March 4-8 to provide a rough idea.

One of the witnesses heard was Abdurrahman Şimşek, who is still the News Coordinator for the pro-government newspaper Sabah. Interestingly, not a single line of what Şimşek recounted found space in his own newspaper. Yet, Sabah was one of the newspapers that deciphered the "organization" that carried out the assassination name by name and delivered a verdict during the indictment preparation phase. Furthermore, one day after Erdoğan announced on January 27, 2022, that Nuri Gökhan Bozkır, a key figure in the case, had been captured in Ukraine and brought to the country, an interview Abdurrahman Şimşek had conducted with Bozkır in Ukraine was published, and it was stated that this interview "was conducted some time before Bozkır was captured."

During Şimşek's testimony, it emerged that the interview was actually conducted in 2020. Naturally, Şimşek was asked why he had delayed it for so long. Şimşek replied that he did not publish it because he did not find Bozkır's accounts convincing.

Another of Şimşek's claims was that Bozkır said everything during off-the-record meetings. However, Bozkır denied this, stating that he had a listening device on him, that all his meetings were recorded by Ukrainian intelligence, and that the partner of the cafe where they met was even the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine.

DID ŞİMŞEK CALL ANKARA?

At this stage, Bozkır's lawyer asked Şimşek whether he had called any numbers in Ankara while on his way to meet Bozkır. Şimşek stated that he definitely did not. However, we learned that Ukrainian intelligence had informed Bozkır that Şimşek had made three calls to Ankara (with the area code 312) between the airport and the place where they met.

Following both Şimşek's statements and Bozkır's words, "In our 2020 meeting, Şimşek asked questions about names in the file that even I had not heard of or known," questions were raised about how Şimşek was so well-versed in a file that had a confidentiality order, and whether he had met with Prosecutor Zafer Ergün, who was conducting the investigation. Şimşek explained that he had paid a courtesy visit to Prosecutor Ergün once and that he obtained information from police sources and some lawyers, while he saw no harm in saying that some information regarding the defendants was provided by Necip Cem İşçimen, the Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor of the period, who reopened the Hablemitoğlu file after July 15. This time, the defense lawyers stated that many of the topics Şimşek described were not in İşçimen's file, accused him of lying, and requested that a criminal complaint be filed against him.

We investigated; yes, Abdurrahman Şimşek met with İşçimen in 2017 and wrote a story. But the news in question was limited to "the Hablemitoğlu assassination being mentioned in the Eagle communications of FETÖ-linked police officers" and "the testimony taken from Enver Altaylı as a witness."

Let us share the most striking information we reached; during the period he was conducting the investigation, Prosecutor İşçimen was not even aware of the statements given to the Istanbul Counter-Terrorism Unit (TEM) by Nuri Gökhan Bozkır in 2014, and by journalist Zihni Çakır, another important witness in the case and indictment, in 2015, which mentioned Tarkan Mumcuoğlu, who is alleged to be the hitman of the assassination, along with other names. In short; the claim is that Şimşek specifically named İşçimen because there was hostility between them.

It is unknown whether Sabah did not share what its own manager recounted because of these contradictions that emerged, because it was not newsworthy, or because a verdict had already been reached regarding the assassination; but let us move past the Abdurrahman Şimşek chapter and look at another important detail that was involved in the investigation conducted during the Necip Cem İşçimen period but is now not even mentioned.

WHO WAS THAT MIT AGENT?

On September 29, 2016, İşçimen took the statement of Hablemitoğlu's wife, Şengül Hablemitoğlu, as a complainant.

In this statement, Hablemitoğlu said that the heads of the German Conrad Adenauer and Friedrich Ebert foundations had called and threatened her husband, and that the then-Undersecretary of MIT, Şenkal Atasagun, had called from his home phone and said, "Do not write such things. It would be appropriate if you did not bring these up now," due to his writings criticizing MIT for not intervening in the activities of the 'cemaat' (cult) abroad, and his writings claiming that MIT's salary was paid by the CIA/NGO.

Another remarkable section of the statement was, in summary, as follows:

"I know that he attended dinners with T.K., whom we knew worked at MIT and lived in Batıkent. My husband told me that T.K. was the head of a department at MIT at that time and worked in a unit related to FETÖ. It was usually in the evenings, sometimes at lunch. I heard both from my husband and later from people I met who were at the dinner that during such a lunch with my husband, the person named T. made a threatening statement to my husband regarding Fethullah Gülen, saying, 'Look, you are dealing with these people, you will get hurt.' After that date, the person named T. and his family did not contact us. They did not even offer condolences. I encountered the person in question at a gas station at the exit of Bilkent in 2005. The person and his wife saw me, but they did not greet me."

Following this statement, although Prosecutor İşçimen wrote to MIT to take the statement of T.K., there was no response during İşçimen's tenure.

T.K.'s statement as a witness was only taken on February 22, 2018, by Zafer Ergün, who prepared the indictment of the ongoing case and also serves as the prosecutor for the hearing. In response to those statements by Şengül Hablemitoğlu, T.K. explained the following:

"I know Necip Hablemitoğlu from the high school I attended; he is my schoolmate. We had a closeness to the nationalist (ülkücü) group during our school years. Our relationship broke off during university education. I later started working at MIT. During this period, my relationship with all my old school friends had already broken off. In the summer of 1992, I was appointed to the MIT Ankara Presidency. Regarding my duty related to people of Tatar descent, I wanted to contact Hablemitoğlu, thinking that he might have knowledge because he was of Tatar origin. I reached the phone number he used by querying unknown phone numbers. I stated that I wanted to meet with him. We talked and met. I saw that he had no knowledge related to my work. However, because I worked in Ankara and he was my old school friend, and because we were both interested in history, our social meetings continued intermittently. However, I noticed changes in his ideological thoughts. I don't remember the exact date, but it bothered me that a news story was made on the front page of the Aydınlık newspaper of the period with a picture of him together with Doğu Perinçek. Because, by virtue of my profession, it was not right to have a friend who communicates with political figures. I wanted to end my relationship. Of course, this did not happen all at once. In fact, at one point, I came across a discussion program on a channel where former War Academies Commander Kemal Yavuz and Hablemitoğlu were on one side, and a female journalist who interviewed Fethullah Gülen was on the other. Thinking that he had become thoroughly politicized, I cooled and severed my relationship with him. When we met with Hablemitoğlu from time to time, as the complainant stated, we did have dinner. At that time, he was working on a TIKA-linked project regarding countries like Romania, etc., on using the Turkish alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet, and he was stating that he was working on the Turkish alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet for the Turks there and that he would teach them Turkish. He was very ambitious about this. I also spoke to him at the dinner table, saying, 'Oh, you are such a great Turkist, but how many people have you taught Turkish to? Look, how many people are they teaching Turkish to in FETÖ schools?' This conversation of mine was a kind of teasing. He told this conversation to his wife, and he and his wife perceived it as a threat; however, I did not say it with the intention of threatening."

DID MIT INVESTIGATE THE ASSASSINATION?

One of the questions directed at T.K. was, "Was his name mentioned for the MIT Undersecretariat before Hablemitoğlu was killed? Did you hear such a thing?" T.K. gave the following response:

"I did not hear such a thing from him personally. However, a rumor reached my ears within the organization that he had made such a statement outside. I don't know how long before he was killed this was. But it was not a short time; it was a period spanning months."

T.K. also answered the question, "Whether any work was done at MIT regarding the Hablemitoğlu murder," as follows:

"This subject is outside my area of duty. However, it must definitely have been done. In fact, after he was killed, I was asked questions like, 'How do you know this person, what do you think?' I also told what I knew about him in the way I stated above."

As can be seen, both what Şengül Hablemitoğlu recounted regarding the then-MIT Undersecretary Şenkal Atasagun and T.K., and T.K.'s answers are quite important.

Well, has the questioning of the names in question at the hearings and whether MIT conducted any investigation regarding the Hablemitoğlu assassination ever been brought to the agenda?

The defense lawyers requested that Şenkal Atasagun be heard. While the prosecutor gave an opinion that this request should be evaluated in the later stages, the Court has not taken any decision so far. As for T.K., his name has not even been mentioned, so to speak.

Coming to the second topic; we do not know whether MIT conducted any investigation regarding the assassination in 2002 and thereafter; but it contributed quite a bit to the indictment prepared 20 years later, in terms of various intelligence notes and especially the HTS records, which were made the basis of the indictment. Although it was known that these "would not be considered evidence," Prosecutor Zafer Ergün "did not see any judicial harm" in putting those data into the file as evidence.

In the ongoing case, there are two important elements that will reveal whether the defendants on trial carried out the assassination. One of these is the HTS records. The records in question were given to an expert 1 year ago, but the requested report did not arrive. Finally, the Court granted the expert time until March 4. Not only did the report not arrive again, but the expert requested time until March 23. The Court extended the time until April 8.

The second of those elements is the footage of the conference that the late Hablemitoğlu attended in Eskişehir 4 days before he was killed. The scandal-level incident we will tell you about is related to these images.

Let us continue tomorrow.