Arif Doğan (born

Kırıkhan Kırıkhan is a town and district in the northeastern part of Hatay Province, Turkey. The name ''Kırıkhan'' means "broken inn" in the Turkish language, perhaps a reference to one of the many lodgings that once lined the road. The town stands at ...

Hatay Province Hatay Province ( tr, Hatay ili, ) is the southernmost province of Turkey. It is situated almost entirely outside Anatolia, along the eastern coast of the Levantine Sea. The province borders Syria to its south and east, the Turkish province of A ...

, 1945 – 17 October 2014) was a commander in the

Turkish Gendarmerie The Gendarmerie General Command ( tr, Jandarma Genel Komutanlığı) is the national Gendarmerie force of the Republic of Turkey. It is a service branch of the Turkish Ministry of Interior responsible for the maintenance of the public order in a ...

, and said to be one of the founders of the Gendarmerie's

JITEM Jandarma İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele or Jandarma İstihbarat Teşkilatı (abbr. ''JİTEM'' or ''JİT''; English: "Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism" or "Gendarmerie Intelligence Organization") is the unofficial and illegal intel ...

intelligence unit. He was a defendant in the

Ergenekon trials The Ergenekon trials were a series of high-profile trials which took place on 2008–2016 in Turkey in which 275 people, including military officers, journalists and opposition lawmakers, all alleged members of Ergenekon, a suspected secularist ...

, and in August 2013 was sentenced to 47 years in prison. He has stated in court that he founded JITEM in the late 1980s on the orders of Gendarmerie Commander Gen. Burhanettin Bigalı, with the approval of the Chief of Staff (

Necip Torumtay Necip Torumtay (1926 – 28 August 2011) was the 20th Chief of the General Staff of the Republic of Turkey. Career He graduated Turkish Military Academy with the rank of second lieutenant in 1944, and in 1946, he graduated the Army Artillery S ...

) and of the Interior Ministry, and transferred control to

Veli Küçük Veli Küçük (born 9 May 1944, Türkmen, Gölpazarı, Bilecik, TurkeyToday's Zaman, 16 June 2009Ultranationalist Ergenekon suspect is of Armenian origin, magazine reveals/ref>) is a retired Turkish brigadier-general. He is thought to be the foun ...

in 1990. He had previously claimed to have founded JITEM on his own initiative, and to have "frozen" it in 1990. In 2010 a voice recording said to be of Doğan was anonymously posted online, in which Doğan said he had ordered the deaths of Eşref Bitlis and

Cem Ersever Ahmet Cem Ersever (1950 – 4 November 1993) was a commander in the Turkish Gendarmerie, and said to be one of the founders of the Gendarmerie's JITEM intelligence unit. He was assassinated in November 1993.) is a retired Turkish brigadier-general ...

, referring to the death of Bitlis (in a suspicious plane crash) as an "assassination". JITEM informant

Abdülkadir Aygan Abdülkadir Aygan (born Uzunhıdır, Suruç, Şanlıurfa Province, 1958) is a former member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and of the Turkish Gendarmerie's JITEM intelligence unit. He has been described as "the most well-known among PKK mem ...

said that this was true. Doğan said that the voice in the recording was his, but said the recordings had been spliced to incriminate him. On 17 January 2011 Doğan, while testifying in court in the

Ergenekon Ergenekon (sometimes spelled ''Ergeneqon'', mn, Эргүнэ хун, Ergüne khun) is a founding myth of Turkic and Mongolic peoples.

case, declared that he set up Kurdish Hizbollah (Turkey), Kurdish Hizbollah as a

contra Contra may refer to: Places * Contra, Virginia * Contra Costa Canal, an aqueduct in the U.S. state of California * Contra Costa County, California * Tenero-Contra, a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland ...

group to fight and kill militants of the

Kurdistan Workers' Party The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of south ...

(PKK). The organization was originally to be called ''Hizbul-Kontr'' ("Party of the Contras").

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dogan, Arif 1945 births 2014 deaths Turkish Army officers Turkish Gendarmerie personnel People from Kırıkhan JİTEM personnel People convicted in the Ergenekon trials