Retired Brigadier General Levent Ersöz managed to flee the country two days before major arrests in the Ergenekon investigation took place on 1 July 2008. He left for Russia and is believed to have re-entered the country illegally.

False IDs

Growing a beard and wearing glasses in order to avoid recognition, Ersöz had also procured false ID papers, with which he applied for a prostrate operation at a private clinic in Ankara. He was arrested in the clinic yesterday (15 January) morning by the Ankara Terrorism Police Unit.

According to ntvmsnbc.com, several false identity papers were found on Ersöz’ person. His nephew , who was accompanying him, was also arrested. They have been taken to Istanbul for questioning.

JITEM and the Kurdish provinces

Ersöz is a key figure in the Ergenekon investigation. He is said to have been the right hand of Ergenekon suspect retired Major General Veli Küçük and to have worked as the leader of the Ergenekon organisation’s intelligence unit. He is said to have been a leader of the clandestine JITEM, an illegal gendarmerie intelligence unit.

JITEM has been blamed for hundreds of disappearances and deaths in the Kurdish southeast and east of Turkey.

Kaplan: My family was threatened

According to Radikal newspaper, Hasip Kaplan, MP of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in Şırnak, southeast Turkey, says that Eröz threatened his family members when he was serving in Şırnak in 2001. Kaplan claims that Eröz threatened his nephew with throwing him out of a helicopter so that his body would never be found.

Kaplan says that he left Şırnak after the threats, but that Serdar Danış, another Kurdish politician from Silopi (a district in Şırnak) mentioned by Eröz in his threats disappeared a week later never to be found again.

Disappearances in Silopi

On 25 January 2001, Serdar Danış, the Silopi district chair of the pro-Kurdish HADEP party (which had been closed down), as well as the district secretary Ebubekir Deniz, were called to the Silopi Gendarmerie station. They were never heard of again. Relatives of the disappeared men appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, and Turkey was sentenced to paying 170,000 Euros in damages for not conducting an effective investigation.

Demirtaş: Eröz key to explaining deaths in Kurdish region

For Selahattin Demirtaş, DTP MP for Diyarbakır, Levent Eröz is also a key person in investigating the human rights violations in the southeast and east of the country. He has called on the prosecutors in the Ergenekon trial to search the graveyards of Silopi, claiming that over 200 people were kidnapped, executed and buried secretly.

Demirtaş said that a previous excavation supervised by a prosecutor in Silopi lead to the find of four skeletons in one grave.

Demirtaş also referred to the disappearance of Kamış and Demiz in Silopi, pointing out that Levent Ersöz was then the military authority in the area.The DTP politician said that the Ergenekon investigation had to investigate the human rights violations in this area in order to achieve real democracy. (TK/AG)