Parliamentary inquiry against public officials over October 10 Ankara Massacre

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Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Ankara MP Filiz Kerestecioğlu has submitted a Parliamentary inquiry and requested a Parliamentary investigation to identify the public officials who had negligence in preventing the bomb attack in the capital city of Ankara on October 10, 2015.

The inquiry of the MP has underlined that no effective investigation or prosecution has been carried out in the five years since the massacre which claimed the lives of 103 people and wounded 570 others.

Kerestecioğlu has stressed that "no progress has been made to identify the public officials who had negligence or involvement" in the incident. Noting that there are several documents in spite of this, she has said:

"There are several allegations, information and documents concerning the negligence of public officials in the massacre." Kerestecioğlu has listed the following examples among a series of others:

"An intelligence note was sent to the security units of 81 provinces 3 days before the massacre, informing them about the suspicion that Yunus Emre Alagöz, one of the persons who carried out the attack, 'might carry out an attack'; or 11 days before the attack, an ISIS member was reported while he was trying to buy ammonium nitrate, which is used to make explosives, from a fertilizer branch in Nizip, but he was not caught despite this report..."

'Conversation of two officials in tapes'

The Parliamentary inquiry of HDP's Filiz Kerestecioğlu has also shared the following information about İlhami Balı:

"There are several files of investigation and prosecution in several places across Turkey against İlhami Balı, who organized the massacre and facilitated the crossings at the Turkey-Syria border, according to the information and documents in the lawsuits filed against him.

"The most important of these cases are the ones filed in Kilis province, where the border crossings are intensively done.

"In the file no. 2016/243 E. going on at the Kilis Heavy Penal Court, there are several conversations in the wiretapped phone call records that shed light on how İlhami Balı did the border crossings.

"It has been detected that among the persons Balı talked to were two public officials; one of them was a soldier and the other one was either a soldier, a police officer or an intelligence officer.

"It is also seen in the wiretapped conversations between Balı and the soldier that the soldier was addressing Balı as 'my sikh', the soldier said that he had no problem with the smuggler establishing the contact between Balı and him, he told Balı, 'we shouldn't harm one another', Balı said that they had also been ordered to not do anything against them, and the soldier said, 'We don't have any problems with you, we have a problem with the PKK'."

According to Kerestecioğlu's Parliamentary inquiry, in another conversation, "it is understood that Balı was bargaining with an official for a soldier who was abducted by ISIS and later turned out to be burned alive." During this bargaining, an official was reportedly asking Balı, 'Whom did you talk to and said, 'I have a guest, and let me send him?' They did you wrong."

Against this backdrop, Kerestecioğlu has underlined that as it is understood from the wiretapped talks, İlham Balı was under technical tracking both during and after the October 10 Massacre in Ankara in 2015.

Accordingly, the MP has demanded that a Parliamentary Investigation Commission be established to identify the public officials who had responsibility in the massacre and to disclose the legal and administrative negligence by examining all information and documents. (AS/SD)