10Abdullah Catli

Photo credit: Son Dakika Haberleri

Turkish killer Abdullah Catli made a name for himself as a leader of a far-right nationalist group known as the Grey Wolves. In 1978, he and other members of the group murdered seven students whom they believed to be communist revolutionaries. The students were members of the left-wing Turkish Workers’ Party, and the Grey Wolves raided their apartment expecting to find weapons, but the students were completely unarmed. The militants tied them up and shot them anyway.

Another member of Catli’s Grey Wolves was Mehmet Ali Agca, who tried toassassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981. Two years before that, Agca had been locked up for the murder of a journalist, and Catli got him out of prison. Some believe Catli arranged the assassination attempt on the Pope for money.

After this, Catli was recruited by Turkish intelligence agency MIT. He carried out attacks against the Armenian liberation movement, for which MIT paid him in heroin. Smuggling drugs landed Catli in prison in France in 1984, then in Switzerland in 1988.

He escaped in 1990 and once again became a killer, this time working for the Turkish police. Starting in 1993, the police began kidnapping and executing members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which fought for autonomy for the Kurds in Turkey. Catli not only carried out the killings, he also conned money from his victims by promising to protect them, before having them kidnapped and murdered.

Catli died in a car crash in 1996, an event that caused a scandal in Turkey. He was traveling with a senior police officer and a member of parliament though he was still officially wanted by the police for his murders during the 1970s. The crash revealed the relationship between authorities and the Turkish mafia.

Estimates suggest Catli’s gang murdered 4,000 people whose activities were thought contrary to state interests.