Mehmet Kemal Ağar (born on 30 October 1951) is a Turkish former police chief, politician, government minister and leader of the Democratic Party. He was a police officer who rose to General Director of the General Directorate of Security (effectively national police chief), serving from 1993 to 1995, before entering parliament and serving as a government minister in 1996. Under his reign a close relationship developed between the deep state in Turkey, the Grey Wolves, and the Turkish mafia. It took 15 years until he was tried and sentenced for criminal activities relating to the 1996 Susurluk scandal; he was incarcerated in April 2012 but already released on probation in April 2013.
From 2018 -2021 he managed the luxury marina "Yalikavak Marina" near Bodrum, but was forced to resign after Mafia boss Sedat Peker blew the whistle with his 2021 videos.
Mehmet Ağar was born on October 30, 1951, at the state president's official residence Çankaya Köşkü in Ankara, where his father was serving as security. During his youth, he toured several places across the country due to his father's position as police chief.
He began his high school education in Ankara, continued in Haydarpaşa High School in Istanbul finishing in 1968. He studied finance in the School of Political Science at the University of Ankara on scholarship from the Turkish General Directorate of Security. Graduated in 1972, Mehmet Ağar became a police officer.
Mehmet Ağar, married in 1974 Emel Ağar. The couple has a son Tolga and a daughter Yasemin.[citation needed]
He was appointed the Minister of Justice in 1996. In the next government's coalition cabinet he served as the Minister of the Interior. He resigned from this post on November 8, 1996, protesting Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan's official visit to Libya. At the 1999 general elections, Ağar run for a seat in the parliament as independent deputy from Elazığ, and received the highest number of votes an independent candidate ever achieved.
The True Path Party (DYP) lost the 2002 parliamentary elections and Tansu Çiller resigned as leader of the party and retired from politics. Mehmet Ağar was the only representative of the party elected in the 2002 election from Elazığ and entered the Turkish Grand National Assembly. After Çiller's resignation, Ağar was elected as the new president of the True Path Party (DYP).
On May 5, 2007, it was announced that DYP and the Motherland Party (ANAP) would merge to form the Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti). For that occasion, DYP renamed itself (based on the previous party of the same name), and it was planned that ANAP would join the newly founded DP.
With the Susurluk scandal of 1996, his political career ended for some time when it turned out he had stayed in a hotel with the victims of the Susurluk car crash immediately before the incident. He famously said "I will talk if the deep state wants me to" to a commission investigating the affair. He escaped justice at the time due to his parliamentary immunity, however, he was retried starting on February 9, 2009, at the Ankara 11th High Criminal Court.[2]
The Susurluk report contained the following information:[3]
On 19 October 1984, when he was İstanbul Deputy Chief of Police, he held a meeting with ultra-nationalist activist Celal Adan.
On July 3, 1985, while serving as Public Order Branch Director at İstanbul Police HQ, he contacted owners of a company, İbrahim Aslan and Mahmut Şahin, who were followers of the Süleymancı sect, and gave them the files and other information about the investigation carried out against members of the Süleymancı sect, which should have been kept secret.
On September 4, 1986, ultra-nationalist activist Selim Kaptanoğlu declared that "they had been engaged in collecting of checks and vouchers; they had collected money from the Mafia bosses in the name of Alparslan Türkeş; they had given part of this money to Alpaslan Türkeş and another part to the ultra-nationalist activists in the prisons; and while doing this they had been in close contact to the Deputy Chief of Police, Mehmet Ağar."
Ağar was assigned the post of Minister of Justice in the cabinet of the 53rd Government, the coalition government of Motherland Party (ANAP) and DYP in 1996. He became Minister of the Interior in the 54th Government, the coalition government of Welfare Party (RP) and DYP formed in the same year; and he resigned on November 8, 1996.
Trial, 2008, Sentence 2011 and release 2013
On September 15, 2011, he was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the Susurluk scandal as the leader of a criminal organization. Following the High Court of Appeals's approval of the ruling made by the criminal court in Ankara, he was interned on April 25, 2012, in a small district prison of type K1 in Yenipazar, Aydın, which was chosen for his personal security reasons.[4] After his sentence was reduced to three years and nine months, he was released on probation in April 2013.[5]
2018-present
In 2018, Mehmet Ağar was appointed as manager of the luxury marina "Yalikavak Marina" near Bodrum. He was forced to resign after Sedat Peker blew the whistle with his 2021 videos exposing his connection to Alaattin Çakici, the "Padrone" and rival of Sedat Peker.[6]
Books
Sefa Kaplan (2007), Mehmet Ağar: Geleceği etkileyecek liderler, Doğan Kitapçılık
