Çetin Güngör (PKK dissident)

Çetin Güngör (born September 26, 1957 in Tunceli , † November 2, 1985  in Stockholm ) was a PKK dissident. Güngör was one of the founders of the PKK and was a member of the party's central committee. He was shot dead in Stockholm on the instructions of Abdullah Öcalan . His code name was Semir.

Private

Güngör came from Tunceli. He grew up in a family with nine children and had three sisters and five brothers. According to Taner Akçam , who knew him personally, Güngör was of Armenian origin.

PKK

Güngör attended the teachers 'school in Tunceli, broke off his training and joined the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the late 1970s . Güngör was elected to the central committee at the founding congress. After the military coup in Turkey in 1980 , Güngör was in the PKK training camp on the Bekaa plain. In 1981 Güngör was sent to Germany to build up the work of the PKK there.

Conflicts in the PKK

In August 1982 he came to Syria to take part in the 2nd Congress of the PKK, where his ideas for reforming the authoritarian structure and the form of the struggle met with little approval from the delegates and rejection and hostility from Öcalan. Güngör returned to Germany and continued to pursue the goal of reforming the PKK. He made contact with other groups. Abdullah Öcalan increasingly viewed Güngör as a problem and restricted his powers. In isolation, Güngör asked for time to reconsider his role. In 1983 Güngör and PKK activists met in Cologne . The PKK activists accused him of maintaining contact with the defector Şahin Dönmez and arrested him at the apartment. Güngör managed to escape and then went into hiding. He wrote open letters that he would continue to work for the revolution and warned the PKK not to prevent him. The PKK interpreted this as a challenge and declared him a traitor in the Serxwebûn party organ in May 1984 . With the help of friends in Hamburg from the Turkish left, Güngör managed to stay outside the reach of the PKK. He wrote critical texts on the PKK. Die Zeit quoted the following characterization of the PKK by Güngör:

"A mixture of revolutionary pathos, feudal structures with a Stalinist superstructure and the Apo factor."

- Die Zeit: “Murder in the Land of Peace” of March 7, 1986

assassination

At the end of 1984 or beginning of 1985 Güngör applied for asylum in Sweden. During one of Güngör's first public appearances at a Kurdish concert in Stockholm, Güngör was shot from behind with four bullets by a PKK activist. The PKK representation in Europe declared that the “traitor had been brought to justice”. Abdullah Öcalan should later in an interview with Mehmet Ali Birand , which this in his television program “32. Gün ”1992 answered the question of whether he had given the order to kill Güngör as follows:“ Everywhere you saw him, he should be shot. ”Güngör was buried in his homeland. The murderer was sentenced to life imprisonment in Sweden the day before the murder of Olof Palme.

The PKK killed other activists who had worked with Güngör or who stood up for him. These included Saime Aşkın ( code name Delal), Suphi Karakuş ( code name Şoreş), Zülfü Gök (in Rüsselsheim), Enver Ata (in Uppsala) and Murat Bayraklı (in West Berlin). Two of these murders and another attempted murder were tried in the Düsseldorf trial against the PKK.

Abdullah Öcalan dedicated a whole chapter to Çetin Güngör in his 1993 book PKK'ye Dayatılan Tasfiyecilik Ve Tasfiyeciliğin Tasfiyesi (for example: The attempts to liquidate the PKK and the liquidation of these attempts) from page 35 onwards. In it, Öcalan describes Güngör (Semir) as a traitor who tried to undermine the party from within and persuade it to surrender. Semir had made common cause with the traitors Şahin [Dönmez] and [Kesire] Yıldırım .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Akçam in conversation with the Cihan news agency on April 1, 2012.
2. ^ Aliza Marcus: Blood and belief - The PKK and the Kurdish fight for independence. New York University Press, New York / London 2007, 89
3. ^ Serxwebûn special edition 5, May 1984
4. ↑ Die Zeit "Murder in the Land of Peace" of March 7, 1986
5. ↑ Quoted from Aliza Marcus: Blood and belief - The PKK and the Kurdish fight for independence. New York University Press, New York / London 2007, page 93.
6. ^ Mehmet Ali Birand: APO ve PKK. Istanbul 1992, p. 163.
7. ^ Aliza Marcus: Blood and belief - The PKK and the Kurdish fight for independence. New York University Press, New York / London 2007, page 95.
8. ↑ daily newspaper taz of October 21, 1989 .
9. ↑ Abdullah Ocalan: PKK'ye Dayatılan Tasfiyecilik Ve Tasfiyeciliğin Tasfiyesi. Agri-Verlag Cologne, 1993, page 53.
10. ↑ Abdullah Ocalan: PKK'ye Dayatılan Tasfiyecilik Ve Tasfiyeciliğin Tasfiyesi. Agri-Verlag Cologne, 1993, page 58.

literature

• Aliza Marcus: Blood and belief - The PKK and the Kurdish fight for independence. New York University Press, New York / London 2007