Behçet Cantürk (1950,

Lice Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a resul ...

– January 14, 1994,

Sapanca Sapanca is a town and district in the Sakarya Province in the Marmara region of Turkey near Lake Sapanca. The town's mayor is Özcan ÖZEN ( AKP). Sapanca has recently become a tourist destination, due to its stunning natural environment and i ...

) was a Kurdish

mob boss A crime boss, also known as a crime lord, Don, gang lord, gang boss, mob boss, kingpin, godfather, crime mentor or criminal mastermind, is a person in charge of a criminal organization. Description A crime boss typically has absolute or nearl ...

. His main activity was involvement in the

illegal drug trade The illegal drug trade or drug trafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through ...

1970s

Behçet's mother, Hatun Demirciyan, was an

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

from

district. His father was named Reşit. Starting in 1975, Cantürk became a partner of some smugglers by providing money for them. In 1975, he participated in organizing the protest rally in

Diyarbakır Diyarbakır (; ; ; ) is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province. Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, ...

held by the

Progressive Youth Association The Progressive Youth Organization ( tr, İlerici Gençler Derneği - İGD) was the youth organization of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP). It was founded on 5 January 1976. History The İGD developed close relations with trade unions and oth ...

(İGD) and financially supported the rally. In the same year, he received a medical report through bribes from Konya Military Hospital certifying that he was not suitable for military service. In 1977 he started

arms trafficking Arms trafficking or gunrunning is the illicit trade of contraband small arms and ammunition, which constitutes part of a broad range of illegal activities often associated with transnational criminal organizations. The illegal trade of small ...

1980s

Between 1981 and 1983, he was involved in the smuggling of gold and diamonds with the help of jewelers of Armenian and

Syriac Syriac may refer to: * Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages ...

origin in the Grand Bazaar of İstanbul. In 1983, when

Dündar Kılıç Dündar Kılıç (real name Dündar Alikılıç) (1935 – 10 August 1999) was an infamous boss in the Turkish underworld. He earned himself the nickname of being the ' godfather of godfathers'. Early life and rise in underworld Dündar Kıl ...

and İsmail Hacısüleymanoğlu started to put pressure on the non-Muslim and Diyarbakır-born jewelers in the Grand Bazaar in order to take control of gold and diamonds smuggling, he organized the bombing and an armed attack carried out by ASALA in the Grand Bazaar. As of 1983, he was controlling the heroin market in Diyarbakır and sale of heroin abroad. On June 22, 1984, he was arrested by the Military Court in

Ankara Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, mak ...

for membership 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 sout ...

and the Kurdistan Avantguard Workers Party.

1990s

He and Hüseyin Baybaşin were partners in the smuggling of 3 tons of drugs on the ship MV ''Kısmetim 1'' that sunk in the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on th ...

end of December 1992. In April 1992, along with a person named Iranian Hüsno, he brought six tons of morphine base and five tons of

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in variou ...

from Pakistan. While distributing the drugs, he chose smugglers, who supported the PKK financially. On various dates, he collected money in the name of the PKK from drug smugglers named

Savaş Buldan Savaş Buldan (1961 – 3 June 1994) was a Kurdish businessman in Turkey. He was arrested by Turkish security forces and was found dead on 4 June 1994. Life Savaş Buldan was born in Yüksekova to Şükrü Buldan (father). His brother, Nejdet ...

, Hüseyin Erez, Hasan Erez, Cahit Kocakaya and Eyüp Kocakaya. But it was later announced that he only paid money to PKK and PKK had no relation to any drug deals. After 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 ...

, some information was revealed that the

Tansu Çiller Tansu Çiller (; born 24 May 1946) is a Turkish academic, economist and politician who served as the 22nd Prime Minister of Turkey from 1993 to 1996. She is Turkey's first and only female prime minister to date. As the leader of the True Path ...

government had supplied Canturk with a military helicopter to move drugs from East Turkey to West Turkey. He was abducted by Turkish mobsters dressed like police on 14 January 1994, and his corpse was found the next day in the vicinity of

References

* (contains the Susurluk reports in English)

1970s

1980s

1990s

See also

References

Further reading