Ali Ömürcan

Ali Ömürcan (* in Pazarcık ; † June 1993 in Barelias ), alias Terzi Cemal, was a leading member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). He was executed by the PKK and is considered a traitor within the organization.

Ali Ömürcan was born in a village in Pazarcık County, Kahramanmaraş Province . When he was doing an apprenticeship as a tailor in Gaziantep in the early 1970s , he came into contact with the group called Kürdistan Devrimcileri (Kurdistan Revolutionaries), a forerunner organization of the PKK led by Abdullah Öcalan . Within the PKK he accepted the nom de guerre Terzi Cemal (Cemal, the tailor). After the military coup in Turkey in 1980, he went through military training in the PKK training camp on the Bekaa plain . When the armed struggle began in August 1984, Eruh, Şemdinli and Çatak were to be attacked. Ömürcan was to lead the attack on Çatak. This attack was not carried out. Until the 3rd Congress, Ömürcan was the commander of the cadre school in Lebanon. Shortly after the 3rd PKK Congress, Ömürcan was arrested by the PKK and sentenced to death in a "trial", but was subsequently pardoned by Abdullah Öcalan. Mustafa Ömürcan (Sarı Ömer), a nephew or, according to other sources, a brother of Ömürcans, was executed by the PKK in 1987 with four other fighters for refusing to give orders, according to former members of the organization. According to the PKK, Sarı Ömer fell in battle and is revered as a so-called May martyr. Ali Ömürcan then served for several years as a guerrilla commander in the armed struggle against Turkey. When numerous guerrilla units were killed in ambushes, Ömürcan, who had meanwhile risen to become a member of the PKK Central Committee, executed 17 prominent guerrilla fighters whom he accused of treason. Because of these murders, Ömürcan was executed by the PKK.

reviews

According to Ali Kemal Özcan, it is unclear whether Ömürcan was smuggled in by the Turkish state or whether he was a deranged but talented person.

The guerrilla fighter Murat Haner writes in his memoir that Ömürcan was an agent of the Turkish state. He was responsible for wiping out the organization's entire southwestern province. Furthermore, Ömürcan was one of three whose death Öcalan had personally ordered.

The PKK dissident Selim Çürükkaya dedicates a chapter to Ömürcan in his book PKK: The Dictatorship of Abdullah Öcalan (original title Apo'nun Ayetleri ). Ömürcan was said to have become Harpagos through his first 10 months of imprisonment, the humiliation and mistreatment he suffered in the meantime, the death sentence and the subsequent pardon , who took revenge on Öcalan as Astyages after his posting as coordinator in the southwest . After Ömürcan had the 17 guerrilla fighters executed after days of torture, Öcalan lured Ömürcan to Syria with false praise. There he was executed and buried. Çürükkaya also describes polemically that Cemil Bayık commissioned him to write a book about Ömürcan. It should show that Ömürcan had been an agent since 1974 and that he had already liquidated two members of the Halkın Kurtuluşu ( THKO split off ) in Gaziantep and then switched to the organization. It should also contain that Ömürcan worked with the traitors Kesire Yıldırım (Öcalan's wife) and Hüseyin Yıldırım. Çürükkaya agreed and found confessions extorted under torture in the documents made available to him.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ali Kemal Özcan: Turkey's Kurds: A Theoretical Analysis of the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan. London, New York 2006, p. 173
2. ↑ Murat Haner: The Freedom Fighter: A Terrorist's Own Story. New York 2018
3. ↑ Selim Cürükkaya: PKK - The dictatorship of Abdullah Öcalan. Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 234ff.