Prior to his assassination, Ersever had left the army and began speaking to the press, and said he was in charge of JITEM's south-eastern operations.

In his resignation statement he said "A gang formed inside the authorized organization in the Southeast is preventing the Turkish nation from seeing the real dimensions of the events taking place there.

His interviews with journalist Soner Yalçın were published in Aydınlık, after which the Military Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation, and took a deposition from Ersever.

[3] Ersever's archive went missing after his death, but was later found in the house of Veli Küçük during investigations for the Ergenekon trials.

[8] A report in the 1990s by police chief Hanefi Avcı said that Ersever had been killed by Mahmut Yıldırım (codename Yeşil) on the orders of Veli Küçük.