Uğur Mumcu (; 22 August 1942 – 24 January 1993)
um:ag was a Turkish investigative journalist for the daily ''

Cumhuriyet ''Cumhuriyet'' (; English: "Republic") is the oldest up-market Turkish daily newspaper. It has been described as "the most important independent public interest newspaper in contemporary Turkey". The newspaper was awarded the ''Freedom of Press ...

''. He was assassinated by a bomb placed in his car outside his home.

Biography

Uğur Mumcu was born the third of four siblings in

Kırşehir Kırşehir, historically known as Mocissus or Mokissos () and Justinianopolis () in ancient times, is a city in Turkey. It is the seat of Kırşehir Province and Kırşehir District.Ankara Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...

and in 1961 attended School of Law at Ankara University. Graduating in 1965 he initially began his career practicing law. In 1969 he ended his legal career to return to his alma mater; working as a teaching assistant until 1972. He started to write during university, first in the magazine ''Yön'' and then in several other leftist periodicals. Between 1968 and 1970, he wrote articles on politics for the newspapers ''

Akşam ''Akşam'' (''Evening'') is a Turkish newspaper founded in 1918, owned by Zeki Yeşildağ's Türk Medya Grup (T Medya Yatırım San. ve Tic. AŞ.) since 2013. In 2013 it had a circulation of around 100,000. History ''Akşams founders in 1918 inc ...

'', ''

'' and ''

Milliyet ''Milliyet'' ( Turkish for "''nationality''") is a daily newspaper published in Istanbul, Turkey. History and profile ''Milliyet'' came to publishing life at the Nuri Akça press in Babıali, Istanbul as a daily private newspaper on 3 May 1950 ...

''. Arrested shortly after the 1971 military coup, he was tortured. He was writing for '' Ortam'', which was a weekly political magazine based in Istanbul when he was arrested. Later, Mumcu wrote that his torturers had told him: "We are the

Counter-Guerrilla Counter-Guerrilla () is a Turkish branch of Operation Gladio, a clandestine stay-behind Anti-communism, anti-communist initiative backed by the United States as an expression of the Truman Doctrine. The founding goal of the operation was to erect ...

. Even the President of the Republic cannot touch us." In 1974, Uğur Mumcu started a career as a columnist, with the daily newspaper ''Yeni Ortam'' and from 1975 on, in the daily ''Cumhuriyet'', which he continued until his death.

Research

Uğur Mumcu is hailed as the first investigative journalist of modern Turkey. He published books on current and historical political issues in Turkey. He was investigating the

Kurdistan Workers' Party The Kurdistan Workers' Party, or the PKK, isDespite the PKK's 12th Congress announcing plans for total organisational dissolution, the PKK has not yet been dissolved de facto or de jure. a Kurds, Kurdish militant political organization and armed ...

's ties with the

National Intelligence Organization loction 39°54'25.0"N 32°39'59.3"E The National Intelligence Organization (), also known by its Turkish language, Turkish initials MIT or MİT, or colloquially as the Organization (), is an intelligence agency of the Turkish government tasked ...

(MİT) at the time of his assassination. Shortly before his death, Mumcu was investigating how 100,000 firearms owned by the

Turkish Armed Forces The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF; , TSK) are the armed forces, military forces of the Turkey, Republic of Turkey. The TAF consist of the Turkish Army, Land Forces, the Turkish Navy, Naval Forces and the Turkish Air Force, Air Forces. The Chief of ...

had ended up in the possession of

Jalal Talabani Jalal Talabani (; ; 1933 – 3 October 2017) was an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as the sixth president of Iraq from 2005 to 2014, as well as the president of the Governing Council of Iraq. Talabani was the founder and secretary-gene ...

, one of the

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish language ** Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) **Central Kurdish (Sorani) **Southern Kurdish ** Laki Kurdish *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern ...

leaders of

Kurdistan Region Kurdistan Region (KRI) is a semi-autonomous Federal regions of Iraq, federal region of the Iraq, Republic of Iraq. It comprises four Kurds, Kurdish-majority governorates of Arabs, Arab-majority Iraq: Erbil Governorate, Sulaymaniyah Governorate ...

, who later held the office of

President of Iraq The President of the Republic of Iraq is the head of state of Iraq. Since the mid-2000s, the presidency is primarily a symbolic office, as the position does not possess significant power within the country according to the Constitution of Iraq, ...

from 2005 to 2014. Twenty-five days after the death of Mumcu, General Eşref Bitlis, who had been investigating the same issue, died in a plane crash, believed to be due to sabotage.Ergenekon linked to Mumcu murder
, ''

Today's Zaman ''Today's Zaman'' (Zaman is Turkish for 'time' or 'age') was an English-language daily newspaper based in Turkey. Established on 17 January 2007, it was the English-language edition of the Turkish daily '' Zaman.'' ''Today's Zaman'' included dom ...

'', 5 August 2008 In his 8 January ''Cumhuriyet'' article, titled ''Ültimatom'', Mumcu emphatically stated that he would soon reveal in a new book the ties between Kurdish nationalists and some intelligence organizations (i.e.,

Abdullah Öcalan Abdullah Öcalan ( ; ; born 4 April 1948 or 1949), also known as Apo (short for Abdullah in Turkish; Kurdish for "uncle"), is a founding member of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Öcalan was based in Syria from 1979 to 1998. He ...

and the National Intelligence Organization).Mumcu: "Yakında yayımlanacak bir kitabımda, Kürt milliyetçileri ile istihbarat örgütleri arasındaki ilişkilere ışık tutacak çok ilginç belgeler açıklayacağım!" Quoted in
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According to his son Özgür, Mumcu had an appointment with retired prosecutor Baki Tuğ on 27 January to learn more about Abdullah Öcalan's suspected ties with the MİT; the state was officially fighting his militant organization, the

. Öcalan was detained on 31 March 1972 while studying political sciences at the

Ankara University Ankara University () is a public university, public research university in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. It was the first higher education institution founded in Turkey after the History of the Republic of Turkey, formation of the Turkish republ ...

. Per clause 16/1 of the 1980 Martial Law (№ 1402), he was sentenced to three months in jail for participating in a

boycott A boycott is an act of nonviolent resistance, nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organisation, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for Morality, moral, society, social, politics, political, or Environmenta ...

. He was released on 24 October 1972 after the National Intelligence Organization forwarded a message to the prosecutor handling the case, Tuğ, that one of the suspects was one of their agents. Tuğ later said that he could not remember whether the agent was Öcalan or one of the other suspects.

Assassination

On the morning of 24 January 1993, Mumcu left his home and was killed by a C-4 plastic bomb as he started his car, a

Renault 12 The Renault 12 is a mid-size family car introduced by French automaker Renault at the Paris Motor Show in October 1969 and produced in France until 1980. Available as a saloon (''Berline'') and estate (''Break''), it was also produced under lic ...

, license numbered 06 YR 245. There are numerous hypotheses over who was responsible for his murder. Given the various links (at an organizational and personal level) between the Turkish deep state and Turkish armed forces,

, Kurdish forces and the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

and

Mossad The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (), popularly known as Mossad ( , ), is the national intelligence agency of the Israel, State of Israel. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with M ...

, the hypotheses are not necessarily mutually exclusive, especially as Mumcu was investigating some of these links.

Deep state hypothesis

One hypothesis is that he was killed to protect state secrets regarding the PKK. PKK supreme council member Mustafa Karasu alleged that Mumcu was killed by the state in order to prevent his publicizing the fact that the PKK was aware it had been infiltrated by the MİT. The mole was Öcalan's pilot, Necati. Karasu alleges that they became aware of his MİT identity in May 1997, and misinformed him. The

deep state Deep state is a term used for (real or imagined) potential, unauthorized and often secret networks of power operating independently of a State (polity), state's political leadership in pursuit of their own agendas and goals. Although the term ori ...

might have contracted the killing out to JITEM (see below).

Iran hypothesis

His assassination was initially pinned on

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

. According to this hypothesis, Iran's Ministry of Intelligence employed the virtually unknown Islamic Movement Organisation () to carry out the assassination. Mehmet Ali Şeker, Mehmet Zeki Yıldırım, and Ayhan Usta were taken into custody. However, it was revealed that the police had falsified the date of their capture. The İstanbul police had been conducting an operation targeting Islamist organizations just before the attack. Its intelligence chief, Hanefi Avcı, said that the attackers left no trace of their affiliation; they seemed to have been well-trained by a state. During the investigation, voluminous documents relating Iran to the

Sunni Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any successor and that his closest companion Abu Bakr () rightfully succeeded him as the caliph of the Mu ...

organisation Kurdish Hezbollah (Kurdish ''Sofîk'') were found. In addition, the Ankara police detained three suspects who were found to have stayed at a hotel in Ankara before the attack: Yusuf Karakuş, Abdülhamit Çelik, and Mehmet Şahin. Karakuş said that two Iranian spies were involved in the bombing: Muhammed Reza and Muhsin Karger Azad. Çelik, a.k.a. "Abdullah Gürgen", said he reported to Muhsin Karger Azad. Azad was ostensibly a consulate employee, but secretly an alleged

Operation Gladio Operation Gladio was the codename for clandestine " stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU; founded in 1948), and subsequently by NATO (formed in 1949) and by the CIA (established in 1947), in ...

member. Azad left Turkey after he was " named and shamed" in the newspapers along with other diplomats alleged to be spies. Former Interior Minister Hasan Fehmi Güneş said that there was no doubt in his mind as to Iran's involvement. The alleged motivation for the Iran hypothesis is that Iran's leaders saw

secularism Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion. It is most commonly thought of as the separation of religion from civil affairs and the state and may be broadened ...

as inimical to

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

and Mumcu had to be killed because he was an outspoken promoter of it. However, others dispute the Iran hypothesis as the assassination coincided with a state visit from Iran to negotiate the passage of the Tabriz–Ankara pipeline, which was then subject to an

embargo Economic sanctions or embargoes are commercial and financial penalties applied by states or institutions against states, groups, or individuals. Economic sanctions are a form of coercion that attempts to get an actor to change its behavior throu ...

by the United States. Tensions flared after the assassination and the $25 billion pipeline deal fell through.

CIA hypothesis

In an earlier investigation, Mumcu had been on the

's trail. Working on the Mehmet Ali Ağca case, he was the first to discover the connection between the Turkish mafia and the Turkish extreme right. In his ''Cumhuriyet'' column, Mumcu named Ruzi Nazar as the CIA's liaison with the far-right Grey Wolves. The CIA's Turkey station chief, Paul Henze, and an American reporter accosted Mumcu to convince him to write that the Pope's assassin worked for Soviets or the Bulgarians, but Mumcu said he would simply follow the information trail. Henze left with an ominous "If you do that, you might find a nice surprise in store", according to his wife, Güldal.

JITEM hypothesis

Abdülkadir Aygan, a

Gendarmerie Intelligence Organization 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 intelligence department of ...

or ''JİTEM'' informant from the

("PKK"), said that the assassination was carried out by JİTEM operatives including Cem Ersever at the behest of General Veli Küçük, who, years later in 2008, was tried for allegedly being a high-ranking member of Ergenekon. Aygan said that he and Aytekin Özen had a briefcase of about 20 kg of C4 obtained from a

Vietnam veteran A Vietnam veteran is an individual who performed active Army, ground, Navy, naval, or Air force, air service in the South Vietnam, Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The term has been used to describe veterans who served in the armed fo ...

, and that they had used some of it to assassinate the President of the

Diyarbakır Bar Association The Diyarbakır Bar Association is an organization of lawyers established in the year 1927. It is one of the 81 members of the Turkish Bars Association. Several of its leaders were prosecuted and one of its presidents was assassinated. The curre ...

, Mustafa Özer. The unnamed American soldier had allegedly given the explosives to the State of Emergency Regional Governorship () in 1991 or 1992. A confidential forensic report, dated 29 January 1993, was prepared by the chief of the Criminal Police Laboratory, Muhittin Kaya. It wrote that the plastic explosive weighed approximately 2.5 kg and contained

RDX RDX (Research Department Explosive or Royal Demolition Explosive) or hexogen, among other names, is an organic compound with the formula (CH2N2O2)3. It is white, odorless, and tasteless, widely used as an explosive. Chemically, it is classified ...

as used in C4. However, it contradicted itself in explaining its origin, saying

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

in the body and the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

in the appendix.

MOSSAD hypothesis

Uğur Mumcu's brother, Ceyhan Mumcu, finds the evidence for the JITEM/Ergenekon allegations weak. He suspects

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

's involvement since it supported Barzani and Talabani in the

Gulf War , combatant2 = , commander1 = , commander2 = , strength1 = Over 950,000 soldiers3,113 tanks1,800 aircraft2,200 artillery systems , page = https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-PEMD-96- ...

. Israel's ambassador to Turkey had repeatedly requested to have lunch with Uğur, the only journalist to write about the dealings. Uğur agreed on the condition that he be allowed to bring a witness. The ambassador rejected the offer, and Mumcu died shortly thereafter. Ceyhan Mumcu said his suspicions were supported by evidence uncovered in the Ergenekon investigation. A report seized from retired General Veli Küçük, dated 2 February 1993 and purportedly emanating from the MİT, says that the CIA and Israel's OADNA were involved.

Personal life

Uğur Mumcu was survived by his wife Güldal, and their children Özgür and Özge Mumcu. Güldal Mumcu and her children established the Uğur Mumcu Investigative Journalism Foundation () in October 1994. Numerous parks, streets and monuments have been named after him.

Bibliography

* ''Mobilya Dosyası'', um:ag (October 1975), 279 p., * ''Suçlular ve Güçlüler'', Tekin (May 1977), 99 p., * ''Sakıncalı Piyade'', um:ag (1977), * ''Bir Pulsuz Dilekçe'', um:ag (1977), * ''Büyüklerimiz'', um:ag (1978), * ''Çıkmaz Sokak'', um:ag, * ''Tüfek İcad Oldu'', um:ag, * ''Silah Kaçakçılığı ve Terör'', um:ag (1981), * ''Söz Meclisten İçeri'', um:ag (1981), * ''Ağca Dosyası'', um:ag (February 1982), 175 p., * ''Terörsüz Özgürlük'', um:ag, * ''Papa - Mafya - Ağca'', um:ag, * ''Liberal Çiftlik'', um:ag, * ''Devrimci ve Demokrat'', um:ag, * ''Aybar İle Söyleşi'', um:ag, * ''İnkılap Mektupları'', um:ag, * ''Rabıta'', um:ag, * ''12 Eylül Adaleti'', um:ag, * ''Bir Uzun Yürüyüş'', um:ag, * ''Tarikat - Siyaset - Ticaret'', um:ag, * ''Kazım Karabekir Anlatıyor'', um:ag, * ''40'ların Cadı Kazanı'', um:ag, * ''Kürt İslam Ayaklanması 1919-1925'', um:ag, * ''Gazi Paşa'ya Suikast'', um:ag, * ''Sakıncalı Piyade'' (play), um:ag, * ''Söze Nereden Başlasam'', um:ag (October 1999), 119 p., * ''Bu Düzen Böyle mi Gidecek?'', um:ag, * ''Bomba Davası ve İlaç Dosyası'', um:ag, * ''Sakıncasız'' (play), um:ag (November 1984), 112 p., * ''Eğilmeden Bükülmeden'', um:ag (2004), 168 p., * ''Kürt Dosyası'', Tekin (August 1993), 107 p.,