The following is an incomplete, chronological list of people from Turkey murdered by assassins mainly on political and religious grounds. Many were critical public servants and intellectuals assassinated by far-right proponents of an army-controlled Turkish Republic. Many of the victims have historically been intellectual proponents of laicism and the strict separation of religion and state in Turkey, as defined in the constitution, and diplomats who were victims of militant attacks outside of Turkey.
- 28 January 1921: Mustafa Suphi was the founder of the Communist Party of Turkey. Suphi and his 14 comrades were assassinated while they were being sent to Erzurum for trial.
- 2 April 1948: Sabahattin Ali was a writer and critical intellectual who was assassinated at the Bulgarian border while fleeing from Turkey. He had been imprisoned by the Turkish government.
1970s
- 27 January 1973: Mehmet Baydar was Turkey's consul general in Los Angeles, and Bahadñr Demir his deputy, in 1973. Shot in a Santa Barbara hotel by Kourken Yanigian who had invited them there on the pretext of a donating a painting to the Turkish government. Yanigian, sentenced to life imprisonment, was amnestied in 1984 and died shortly afterwards.
The event is considered to be the first in a decade-long chain of organized attacks against Turkish diplomats by Armenian militant groups.
- 22 October 1975: Turkey's Ambassador to Austria DaniÃ
 Tunalñgil was murdered by three Armenian gunmen raiding the Embassy in Vienna.
- 24 October 1975: Turkey's Ambassador to France ðsmail Erez and his driver Talip Yener were murdered by Armenian militants in the vicinity of the Embassy in Paris by car bomb.
- 9 June 1977: Turkey's Ambassador to the Holy See Taha Carim was killed by the cross fire of two Armenian gunmen in front of the Embassy's residency in Rome.
- 11 March 1978: Art historian, scholar, literary critic and translator. He was serving on a committee investigating right-wing terror squads at his university. Shot dead in his car with his wife severely wounded by Rñfat Yñldñrñm, ÃÂzeyir Bayraklñ and by another man nicknamed "Ahmet" who were ultra-nationalists and believed to have been directly funded by the Turkish state. A tribunal found Abdullah ÃÂatlñ responsible but nobody was punished as a result.
- 24 March 1978: Public prosecutor who wrote a report for Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit accusing clandestine groups (later named as Ergenekon) of creating chaos in order to lay the ground for a military takeover. Haluk Kñrcñ, a Grey Wolves activist, was implicated in his assassination.
- 23 March 1979: Islamist political and social activist. Shot to death outside of Istanbul's Fatih Mosque by nationalist gunmen while leaving Friday prayers.
28 September 1979: prosecutor.
Ahmet Benler
12 October 1979: son of the Turkish ambassador to the Netherlands, ÃÂzdemir Benler, murderered by ASALA.
ðlhan Egemen DarendelioÃÂlu
- 19 November 1979: journalist and writer. Shot to death by unidentified left-wing militants.
1980s
- 11 April 1980: TV producer, writer and columnist of the newspaper Cumhuriyet. Gunned down in front of his home in Istanbul as he was about to get in his car.
- 27 May 1980: briefly customs and tobacco minister of Turkey and a right wing politician. Murdered in front of his car while putting out baggage. Radical leftist militant group Dev Sol (Revolutionary Left) claimed responsibility for the attack.
- 19 July 1980: Prime Minister of Turkey in 1971-1972, for almost 14 months. Shot to death by two gunmen in Istanbul. Radical leftist militant group Dev Sol (Revolutionary Left) claimed responsibility for the attack.
- 22 July 1980: Socialist trade union leader and left-wing politician. Murdered in front of his home by ultra-right militants.
- 28 January 1982: Turkish diplomat Kemal Arñkan shot to death by two gunmen of Armenian origin in Los Angeles.
- 22 October 1988: Military officer and former internal security chief of Diyarbakñr Prison. Shot dead in a public bus in Istanbul by a PKK militant.
1990s
- 7 March 1990: Journalist, editor-in-chief and chief columnist of the liberal rightist daily Hürriyet. Shot to death in front of his house. Case remains unresolved.
- 4 September 1990: Former member of Islamic clergy who became a critic of Islam and advocate of atheism. Shot to death in front of his house. Case remains unresolved.
- 6 October 1990: Female academic, pro-secular theologist, columnist of the newspaper Cumhuriyet. Killed by a parcel bomb.
- 30 January 1991: Retired lieutenant general. Shot dead in front of his house. Claimed by Dev-Sol.
- 7 April 1991: Retired general. Shot dead at his house by Dev-Sol.
- 29 July 1992: Admiral (retired), former commander of the Turkish Navy. Shot dead in his house.
- 24 January 1993: Research journalist, columnist of the major newspaper Cumhuriyet. Killed in front of his home in Ankara by a bomb installed in his car.
- 4 November 1993: ex-JITEM commander who had begun speaking to the press.
- 8 January 1996: , a left wing journalist of Evrensel was beaten to death by Turkish police while covering civil unrest in the Gazi district of Istanbul. The first case in Turkey where the police were convicted of murder.
- 9 January 1996: Businessman and a member of the Sabancñ family in the second generation. Gunned down in his office in Sabancñ Towers, Levent, Istanbul, by assassins hired by the leftist armed group DHKP-C. The general manager of ToyotaSA and a secretary was also killed. They had been given access to the building by Fehriye Erdal, a female member of DHKP-C, who was an employee at that time.
- 21 October 1999: Academic, writer. politician, former Minister of Culture and columnist of the newspaper Cumhuriyet. Killed in Ankara by a bomb placed on the windshield of his car.
2000s
- 24 January 2001: Diyarbakñr Police Chief, his driver and four policemen escorting him were shot dead in an attack after they left Diyarbakñr Police Department building. Radical Islamic group known as Kurdish Hezbollah was suspected.
- 25 August 2001: A prominent Turkish Jewish businessman and a founding partner of the Alarko group of companies. He was stabbed to death in the cemetery of the historic Istanbul quarter of Eyüp.
- 18 December 2002: A Kemalist historian from Ankara University who was killed in an armed attack near his home in Ankara.
- 5 February 2006: Father Andrea Santoro was a Roman Catholic priest, murdered in the Santa Maria Church in Trabzon where he served as a member of the Catholic Church's Fidei donum missionary program.
On 5 September 2006 he was shot dead from behind while kneeling in prayer in the church. A witness heard the perpetrator shouting "Allahu Akbar". A 16-year-old high school student was arrested two days after the shooting carrying a 9mm pistol. An investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations on stolen weaponry in Iraq revealed that the gun was of the same type used in the supposedly Islamist attack on the Turkish Council of State in 2006.
- 17 May 2006: Council of State member judge. Murdered during a session in the high court in Ankara.
- 19 January 2007: Armenian-Turkish journalist and editor-in-chief of the weekly Armenian and Turkish language newspaper Agos in Istanbul. Shot dead in front of his newspaper's office.
- 18 April 2007. Three Christian leaders assassinated, two Turkish Pastors and a German missionary.
- 16 November 2007. Director of Milli Piyango, the Turkish National Lottery, was assassinated in his office by an ex-inspector of his directorate.
- July 2008: "the victim of what sociologists say is the first gay honor killing in Turkey to surface publicly".
19 December 2009: founder and editor of the daily Güney MarmaraâÂÂda YaÃ
Âam, was shot in a street in Bandñrma, Balñkesir Province and died later that day at a hospital in Bursa. He had reported on corruption charges involving the owners of ðlkhaber, another daily in the town.
19 December 2016: Andrei Karlov, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, was assassinated by Mevlüt Mert AltñntaÃ
Â, an off-duty Turkish police officer, at an art exhibition in Ankara, Turkey
Sinan AteÃ
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See also
References