Ali Gaffar Okkan (1952 – January 24, 2001) was a Turkish police chief who was assassinated in an ambush in Diyarbakır, southeastern Turkey.
[2] Soon after his arrival in Diyarbakır, a center of conflict with Kurdish separatists and guerillas,[3][4] he made an announcement on police radio: "From 3310 (Okkan's badge number) to HQ.
One of his first official activities before assuming office was to unblock the street in front of the police headquarters, which was barred to civilians for security reasons.
He used to hug the players and to run around the field with the club flag in the hand for celebration after a goal scored by the home team.
[2] While Okkan made a significant impression on the citizens through his social projects[6][7] assisting, among others, the elderly, disabled and runaways, critics insisted such activities exceeded the scope of his duties.
[2] His primary target was the illegal fundamentalist pro-Islamic Kurdish Hezbollah,[2][4] which is not related to its namesake group in Lebanon.
Violent acts by Kurdish Hezbollah were directly mainly at the group's opponents, including PKK sympathisers.
[4][5][8][9] On January 17, 2000, the Kurdish Hezbollah's leader Hüseyin Velioğlu was killed in his villa at Beykoz, Istanbul during a raid by the police forces.
Okkan played a major role in the crackdown against the Kurdish Hezbollah,[3] in which hundreds of group members were arrested,[9] and more than 150 bodies of murdered victims were found throughout the country.
[8] On January 24, 2001, Gaffar Okkan left his office at the headquarters for a meeting with the Province Governor Cemil Serhadlı.
Around 17:40 local time, as he was underway in his official car escorted by police cars, the convoy was ambushed by unidentified gunmen at a distance of less than 1 km (1,100 yd) from the headquarters[10][11] in downtown at Sezai Karakoç Boulevard between the Meat & Fish Corp. (Turkish: Et ve Balık Kurumu) building and Eflatun Park.
[3][4][8][10][11] The gunmen opened also the door of Okkan's car, and fired a couple of times at point-blank range in order to be sure of his death.
[3][5][6][8][9][10][15] Following a state memorial in Diyarbakır,[5] where he was appointed three years ago,[9] Okkan's body was transferred to his hometown, and laid to rest in Hendek.
A marketplace salesman wrote in the book "For the first time in our life, we witnessed a police chief gave his mobile phone's number.
"[2] The next day, thousands of mourning Turks and Kurds gathered for an apparently spontaneous mass demonstration in the city to protest the assassination, chanting slogans condemning the attack.
[12] In 2011, a police officer, who was wounded in the 2001 attack as one of Okkan's guards, also suspected JİTEM of staging the assassination.
[8] The investigation culminated with the apprehension of two suspects who were later tried before Diyarbakır's 5th High Criminal Court and, in 2010, found guilty of involvement in the assassination.
The court further stated that the attack was prepared a long time before by professional killers and that the planners as well as their connection abroad could not be traced back.