Infamous murderer walks free Monday

On Monday, a man who killed a famous Turkish journalist and later attempted to assassinate the late Pope John Paul II at the Vatican will be released from prison. However, the controversy surrounding the man is unlikely to abate.

Mehmet Ali Ağca is known globally for his attempted assassination of the late pope, though in Turkey he is also seen as a dark figure given to erratic outbursts and as a symbol of one of the country’s most troubled eras. Upon his release, Ağca will have served nearly three decades in prison in Italy and Turkey.

Ağca’s dark star rose following his assassination of veteran journalist Abdi İpekçi on Feb. 1, 1979. At the time, Turkey was torn between polarizing ideologies and in the grips of unpredictable terror. It would be many years before the Turkish public would learn that behind the climate of violence seizing the nation preceding the coup of Sept. 12, 1980 lay a complex lattice of criminal and political interests. Ağca would eventually become the poster boy for the terror that flowed from the convergence of those interests.

His biographer, journalist Saygı Öztürk, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review that Ağca’s involvement in violence began perhaps not with an ideology but with a pivotal moment in his personal history. “Ağca is from Malatya. He came from a poor Anatolian background, but he read a lot,” Öztürk said. “He was especially interested in social commentary coming at that time from sources such as comic magazines Gırgır and Çarşaf.”

As the country was thrown into turmoil, Ağca began studying economics at Istanbul University. According to Öztürk, he mostly kept to himself in his dorm, reading his books. “Back then dorms were like wards [large halls without private space where everyone lived together]. One day, a group of students invited him to a political meeting, but he refused,” the biographer said. “So the students ripped up his comic magazines and tore up his books. After that, his mental state became unstable and he started plotting to do something on his own.”

Ağca also placed great importance on the event, writing about it in testimony he prepared for the investigators of the İpekçi murder. “You were not allowed to read materials from the opposing view and you were not allowed to criticize [...] I was surrounded by people who had right-wing views. I never accepted their views, though I respected them,” he wrote. Nonetheless, although Ağca himself denies any connection to the Grey Wolves, a far-right political group, it is an open secret in Turkey that he acted at their behest.

Extraordinary judicial process

According to his biographer, Ağca’s slew of arrests, convictions, sentences and paroles also testify to changes in the Turkish judicial landscape over the last three decades. Ağca was first sentenced to capital punishment for İpekçi’s murder, a decision approved in 1982 by the Turkish National Security Council but never carried out because he fled prison. Later, Italian authorities convicted him of the attempted murder of the Pope and sentenced him to for 19 years in prison. He was pardoned by President Carlo Ciampi in 2000 and extradited to Turkey, though by that time, Turkey had abolished the death penalty and his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Following a general judicial amnesty, Ağca’s sentence was once again reduced. In 2006, through a legal mix-up, he was paroled from prison before objections filed by the İpekçi family’s lawyer put him back in eight days later. Ultimately, he served almost 10 years for assassinating the journalist.

“He is a good assassin. He gets the job done for the people he works for. He has been before courts, been in prison and has never really revealed the motives or organizations behind him. His silence and his occasional nonsensical statements are all proof of this,” said journalist and author Semih Hiçyılmaz, referring to Ağca’s occasional proclamations of “messiah-hood” and promises to “pen the perfect Bible” to achieve “perfect Christianity.”

“You know now he might get million-dollar deals for films... He’s a good actor,” Hiçyılmaz said, referring to statements made through Ağca’s lawyers last week. “He will get to live out his life as a rich man for holding his tongue.”

Ağca is currently weighing film and book offers for large sums of money while considering marriage and looking for a fiancée, his lawyer said. Another controversy surrounding his release from prison has been the issue of military service. The military will hold hearings to determine whether Ağca is fit to serve.

The ‘deep state’ connection

“Our current fascination with Ağca is pegged to current discussion about the ‘deep state.’ The character of Ağca is typical for these kinds of things. He is an important hitman in the narrative,” said Hiçyılmaz, who added that Ağca is by no means the only one of his kind. “There are more than 20,000 unsolved murders in this country. In some cases, we know who the murderers are, but not in others. In some cases, the murderers could be hidden. In Ağca’s case, this was not possible.”

“What we need to learn now is, who are the people who hid him? Who supported him?” Hiçyılmaz said. “Who made it possible for him to [walk] freely on the streets? Who gave him the order to kill İpekçi?”

These questions and others, such as whether Ağca acted alone in attempting to assassinate Pope John Paul II, may be answered soon, according to a handwritten press statement, in English, that Ağca delivered through his lawyers.

“Some journalists are asking me these kinds of questions,” the statement read. “I will answer all of these questions in the following weeks.”