According to Murat Belge of Istanbul Bilgi University, who has reported that he was tortured in 1971 by its founder, Veli Küçük,[4] JİTEM is an embodiment of the deep state.
[6][7] In 2008, long-maintained official denials of JİTEM's existence started collapsing in the courts, as ex-members of Turkey's "deep state" security apparatus testify to their participation in covert and illegal activities over the last few decades as part of the ongoing Ergenekon investigation.
He stated on 22 January 1998 on the Arena program on Kanal D hosted by Uğur Dündar that JİTEM did not exist any longer.
[10] The last declaration about JİTEM's dissolution came in 2004 from the former Commander of the Gendarmerie in the State of Emergency Region (Olağanüstü Hal, OHAL), retired Lieutenant- General Altay Tokat.
Tokat stated in his interview with the newspaper Zaman that JİTEM was a “public disclosure of an intelligence unit that fought against the PKK in the OHAL region” and that it had “fulfilled its role and was dissolved".
[11] The former chair of Diyarbakır Bar Association, Sezgin Tanrıkulu, however claims that JİTEM was not dissolved, but the cadres were not active at the moment.
Önal had learned about it from Veli Küçük after being introduced to him through MIT spy and fellow journalist, Tuncay Güney.
[16][17] Susurluk commission member Fikri Sağlar said that the commanders denied its existence because the Gendarmerie formally acquired the legal capacity to conduct intelligence operations in 2005 (with Law 5397).
The author of the Prime Ministry Inspection Board report, Kutlu Savaş, said JİTEM was created on Gendarmerie Commander Hulusi Sayın's watch (1981–1985).
Revelations have recently come from an informant named Abdülkadir Aygan (a former PKK member recruited by JİTEM,[20] now a political refugee in Sweden[21]) that it was founded by retired general Veli Küçük, who is currently arrested in the Ergenekon investigations.
[22] Other people allegedly involved in its founding are Ahmet Cem Ersever, Arif Doğan,[23][24] Hasan Kundakçı, Hüseyin Kara, Hulusi Sayın and Aytekin Özen, according to Aygan.
[25] After being taken into custody, Arif Doğan admitted to being a founder of the organization, originally known as the Intelligence Group Command (Turkish: İstihbarat Grup Komutanlığı), and that in 1990 he handed the reins to Veli Küçük.
[27] After his release from prison[28] Arif Doğan spoke to journalists of the news channel Habertürk TV in September 2010 and said that he alone had founded JİTEM and had "frozen" it in 1990.
They took their orders from the centre in Ankara and conducted three folded activities: gather intelligence, interrogate and carry out operations.
The inefficiency in the intelligence network made it impossible for land forces to perform specific operations, to prevent terror raids and to develop a strategy against PKK front activities.
[37] Numerous people who claim to be or are purported to be JİTEM operatives have been accused of crimes such as kidnapping, intimidation, and extra-judicial killings of PKK members.
Vedat Aydın, the Diyarbakır branch chairman of the now-defunct People's Labor Party (HEP), was found dead on a road near Malatya on 7 July 1991, two days after armed men had taken him from his home in Diyarbakir.
[47] Only 18 years after the killing the public prosecutor in Diyarbakir opened a file seeking the detention of nine JİTEM members including the Major Aytekin Özen.
[48] Aygan said he had been part of a unit, alongside Cem Ersever and Arif Doğan, which had assassinated 72-year-old Kurdish writer Musa Anter in 1992 in Diyarbakır.
[49] Relying on a document as an attachment to the indictment in the Ergenekon case Fırat News Agency presented background on smuggling of JİTEM staff between 1981 and 1990.
He held the defendants including civil servants, İtirafçı confessors and others responsible for killings, bombings and "disappearances".
[52] An indictment prepared by Diyarbakır Public Prosecutor Mithat Özcan dated 29 March 2005 charged eight PKK İtirafçı confessors, namely Mahmut Yıldırım (aka Yeşil), Abdülkadir Aygan, Muhsin Gül, Fethi Çetin, Kemal Emlük, Saniye Emlük, Yüksel Uğur and Abdülkerim Kırca.
[9] These people were suspected of being JİTEM members and were charged with eight unsolved murders, namely the murders of Harbi Arman, Lokman Zuğurli, Zana Zuğurli, Servet Aslan, Şahabettin Latifeci, Ahmet Ceylan, Mehmet Sıddık Etyemez and Abdülkadir Çelikbilek between the years 1992–1994.
The kidnappers, PKK confessor Mesut Mehmetoğlu and village guards hid in a building reportedly belonging to JİTEM.