Suicide case extends to Soylu

Ahmet Şık

The judicial and administrative investigation launched into the death of Silivri Police Chief Hakan Çalışkan, who committed suicide in his office last July, has extended to Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu. The incident that drove Çalışkan to suicide is alleged to involve Minister Soylu’s son securing the unlawful release of a friend of his who had been arrested. It is alleged that Istanbul Police Chief Mustafa Çalışkan made a log of the incident on learning of the affair and sought the commencing of official proceedings against Minister Soylu, and Silivri Police Chief Çalışkan committed suicide out of his inability to withstand the ensuing pressure. At the time the interpellation motion the CHP submitted against Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu was being debated in parliament, CHP Deputy Group Chair Özgür Özel made a veiled reference to the matter in the speech he delivered from the dispatch box. Minister Soylu, however, preferred to remain silent over the claims that Özel had raised without naming names.

At the end of last July, a friend of the Interior Minister’s son Engin Levent Soylu was arrested in the course of a routine check made by Counterterrorism Branch teams. The person, against whom an apprehension order was outstanding in respect of a judicial incident, phoned his friend Engin Levent Soylu and requested help. Soylu the son’s friend was delivered to the Police Directorate in Silivri, the area in which he was arrested, and placed in a custody suite. However, a while later, General Directorate of Police Protection Branch Head, Ekrem Gülen, called Silivri Police Chief Hakan Çalışkan and requested that the arrested person be released. With Chief Hakan Çalışkan indicating that the arrest procedure had attained official status and giving a negative reply, he was allegedly instructed, “The individual has ties to the Minister and his release is being sought.”

“Initiate official proceedings”

In compliance with Protection Branch Head Gülen’s instruction, Soylu’s friend was released. However, Istanbul Police Chief Mustafa Çalışkan, who according to claims circulating in the press harboured mutual ill feelings towards Minister Soylu, was notified of the affair. In response, Istanbul Police Chief Mustafa Çalışkan phoned Silivri Police Chief Hakan Çalışkan and, making a log in which he noted Interior Minister Soylu and Protection Branch Head Ekrem Gülen’s responsibility, asked for official proceedings to be initiated into the incident. Silivri Police Chief Hakan Çalışkan, incapable of withstanding the pressure applied by his superiors from both Ankara and Istanbul, committed suicide in his office on the morning of 31 July. According to security camera records, Hakan Çalışkan was in his office in the police directorate building until late in the night stretching from 30 July into 31 July. Police Chief Çalışkan, who was seen online until the early hours on the smartphone messaging service WhatsApp, was found having been shot in the head by police officers assigned to the private secretariat who entered his office at around 10.30 in the morning after he failed to answer the telephone.

With both a judicial and administrative investigation being launched into the incident, senior people from the police directorate allegedly applied pressure on Silivri Repblic Chief Prosecution and tried to close the case. However, thanks to the succession battle the Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu had embarked on against Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, who is also President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law, the probe could not be buried. Within the investigation, the people with whom Hakan Çalışkan had spoken and messaged in the days prior to his suicide were also scrutinised in examinations made of telephone records. Among the information to emerge from these examinations was that Çalışkan had been called by Protection Branch Head Gülen.

Did the Minister arrange for the call to be made?

The inspectors in the administrative investigation into allegations that pressure was brought to bear on Police Chief Hakan Çalışkan with a view to securing the unlawful release of a person who had been arrested for having an apprehension order against them also took statements from Interior Minister Soylu’s bodyguards. It has been learned that the guarding police officers were asked questions about where Minister Soylu was at the time Hakan Çalışkan was phoned and if he himself spoke on the phone. It is also being investigated whether Protection Branch Head Gülen telephoned Silivri Police Chief Çalışkan at Minister Soylu’s behest.

INTERIOR MINISTER SECRETARY:

The chief was called but it had nothing to do with the Minister

Interior Minister General Secretary Türkay Öksüz said in a comment on the matter he made to our paper that Süleyman Soylu or his son had no involvement in the incident in question. Öksüz, arguing that Hakan Çalışkan’s suicide and the securing of the arrested person’s release were two different unrelated incidents, said the following:

 “The mother of the person said to have been arrested you referred to in your report is a citizen who has a serious illness. On the date of the incident, while following an ambulance that was taking his mother to hospital in his own car, he was stopped at a police checkpoint. In fact, his mother also passed away at the hospital. I do not have precise knowledge of the event, but he was summoned to give a statement over an incident involving the judicial authorities to do with the Forestry Law and did not attend. There was an apprehension order against him because of this. With the conducting of arrest procedures proposed, he called our Protection Branch Head, with whom he was previously acquainted, and requested assistance. And our Branch Head called Silivri Police Directorate. They spoke a total of three times, but the time did not exceed two minutes. He explained the hardship the person was suffering due to his mother and asked for assistance to be rendered within the bounds of the law. Our police chief’s suicide is another event. There is absolutely no connection between these two events. In fact, following the suicide incident, our Interior Ministry called Istanbul Police Directorate and obtained information about the matter. And chief police inspectors were assigned to investigate the incident from an administrative point of view pursuant to legislation. A judicial investigation is also ongoing. There are circles who are making mendacious claims portraying our minister’s son as having involvement in this or similar events with the mindset of throwing mud so that some will stick. Never mind intervention, his excellency the Minister or his son did not even have any influence in this process. They are not involved in the incident. Just a phone call was made between the Protection Branch Head and Silivri Police Directorate in which assistance was requested while remaining within the bounds of the law, that is all. Our Protection Branch Head’s statement has not been taken, either. There are citizens who from time to time get through to his excellency the Minister’s or my or our private secretariat’s phones and ask for assistance in various matters. There are various requests and complaints. We investigate whether or not this is legal. We try to assist while remaining within the bounds of the law. And this is what happened here.”

CAME UP IN INTERPELLATION

Özel: He thought he would pass over it but this did not happen

One of those to speak from the dispatch box at the time the CHP submitted an interpellation motion against Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu was CHP Deputy Group Chair Özgür Özel. Özel, who in the lengthy speech he made on 22 December 2017 raised various claims about Minister Soylu’s ties with the Gülen Brotherhood, also squeezed the following sentences into his speech: “Then you would not have telephoned Silivri Police directorate in relation to a car that had been halted and, with that not working, have caused that huge disaster ensuing from pressure and threats on Istanbul Provincial Police Directorate. Perhaps you will engage in self-criticism over this here.”

Nobody dwelt on what Özel had said, with opposition MPs in parliament having pricked up their ears at records and claims that emerged over Soylu’s past relations with the Gülen Brotherhood after he embarked on a power struggle within the party with Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, and, as to the Turkish media, surely for known reasons. Özel, noting that he brought the matter to attention from the parliamentary dispatch box in response to information that the Silivri Police Chief had committed suicide out of being unable to withstand pressure coming from the very top, said, “I addressed numerous questions to Minister Soylu, from his ties to the Gülen Brotherhood right up to the release being secured of certain FETO suspects, but he did not reply to any of them. One of the questions was also the affair raised in your report. However, Minister Soylu, rather than answering the questions, sufficed with putting on a show of his own contrivance. He was unable to reply to any allegation. He thought especially with reference to the section I had referred to as the “huge disaster in Silivri,” as with the others, he would ignore it and pass over it in silence. But, this did not happen.”

Calls brought under surveillance

We carried a report on 12 April on the mobile telephones of Minister Süleyman Soylu, who according to claims circulating in the press has for some time been embroiled in a succession battle with Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, being unlawfully monitored by police officers under his command. Six police officers in Ankara and Istanbul were appointed to fresh posts in the investigation launched into the affair. With the quarrel between him and Alabayrak having come to light, Minister Soylu made some speeches in past months in which he vented his anger. It is also alleged that Soylu wanted to resign but was prevented from doing so by President Erdoğan himself. Minister Soylu’s son Engin Levent Soylu’s car was halted and searched for drugs by the Istanbul police even though he was accompanied by bodyguards. It is claimed that, despite Minister Soylu getting involved as the search of his son’s car was continuing, Istanbul Police Chief Mustafa Çalışkan did not answer the Minister’s calls.

MUSTAFA ÇALIŞKAN: I AM A PARTY TO THE INCIDENT

Istanbul Police Chief Mustafa Çalışkan, whom we wished to consult for his views on the affair, said, “Investigations into this matter are ongoing. I am a party to the incident and it would be incorrect for me to say anything. It would be more correct for you to gather information from places apart from me. I am sure you will reach an intimate conviction as to whether the information in the section of the report pertaining to me is correct. Let me also say that the late police chief was a successful person whom we knew to have absolutely no problem that would drive him to suicide.”