Abdullah Çatlı

Abdullah Çatlı (1 June 1956 – 3 November 1996) was a convicted Turkish secret government agent, and contract killer for the Counter-Guerrilla. He led the Grey Wolves, the youth branch of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) during the 1970s. His death in the Susurluk car crash, while travelling in a car with state officials revealed the depth of the state's complicity in organized crime, in what became known as the Susurluk scandal. He was a hit man for the state, ordered to kill suspected members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia.

Growing up in Nevşehir, a small province in Central Anatolia, Çatlı was familiar with the views of the far right MHP, and Turkish ultra-nationalists, which were strong in this area.

Çatlı was responsible, along with Haluk Kırcı and several other MHP members, for the 9 October 1978 Bahçelievler Massacre in which seven university students, members of the Workers Party of Turkey (TIP), were murdered.

He is also said to have helped Mehmet Ali Ağca murder the left-wing newspaper editor Abdi İpekçi on 1 January 1979, in Istanbul, and helped Ağca escape from an Istanbul military prison, in 1979. According to investigative journalist Lucy Komisar, Abdullah Çatlı "reportedly helped organize Agca's escape from an Istanbul military prison, and some have suggested Çatlı was even involved in the 1981 Pope's assassination attempt". In 1998 the magazine Monde diplomatique alleged that Abdullah Çatlı had organized the assassination attempt "in exchange for the sum of 3 million German mark" for the Grey Wolves. In 1985 in Rome, Çatlı declared to a judge "that he had been contacted by the BND, the German intelligence agency, promised him a nice sum of money if he implicated the Russian and Bulgarian services in the assassination attempt against the Pope".

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