30 years on, Cyprus journalist’s murder remains unsolved

In what was perhaps the most violent summer on the island since 1974, Turkish Cypriot Kutlu Adali was gunned down after reporting on an operation to remove a stash of valuables taken during the invasionExactly 30 years ago on Monday, on July 6, 1996, Turkish Cypriot journalist Kutlu Adali was machine gunned to death outside his home in Nicosia, the first in what was arguably Cyprus’ most violent summer since 1974. Greek Cypriot demonstrators Tassos Isaac and Solomos Solomou, and Turkish soldier Allahverdi Kilic all also met politically charged deaths during that same summer. Unlike in the cases of Isaac, Solomou and Kilic, however, the death of Adali was not fuelled by the heat of the moment, but instead a calculated assassination, with most accounts describing his killing as a planned act carried out in retaliation for a series of articles he had written two and a half months prior. The articles related to an armed robbery carried out at Famagusta’s St Barnabas monastery, during which, according to reports at the time, millions of dollars’ worth of ancient artefacts were stolen, and the tomb of St Barnabus was dug into. Haki Atun Initially, Adali reported in Yeniduzen that around 15 armed assailants had entered the monastery on the evening of March 14, 1996, capturing its security guards. He also disclosed the identities of the vehicles used to transport the assailants to and from the monastery before suggesting that two of them belonged to the Turkish Cypriot civil defence. Additionally, he reported that what was taken from the monastery was likely not a set of artefacts which had belonged to it, but looted property from elsewhere in the north that had been hidden there during and after 1974, while also asking how it could be possible for a group of men “who resembled a small army” to carry out such an operation without being detected at the time. The police were only alerted to the incident at 9am the following day – 14 hours after the robbery had begun and 10 hours after it finished. Meanwhile, the Turkish Cypriot ruling coalition of the day, led by Hakki Atun, as well as the police and the armed forces, made no public statement on the matter for five days. When Atun did eventually make a statement, he described the robbery as a “military operation, prompting Adali to put the pieces together in an article printed in March 23, 1996’s edition of Yeniduzen. “They say that during the operation of July 20, 1974, jewels, gold, silver and diamonds collected from Greek Cypriot houses, churches, banks and jewellery shops were taken by a major and buried in a cave where St Barnabus’ grave was,” he wrote. The grave at Saint Barnabus He added that the major had “intended to come and get them when the war was over”, but was instead promoted to the rank of general, before retiring. “Twenty-one yeas later, he told the people he trusted in Cyprus about the situation and ordered an armed raid. They took the jewels and fled to Turkey by plane the same night,” he wrote. He said Atun “should have jumped on a plane the next day to protest this operation” in Turkey, given that it was “undertaken by disregarding this state, its governments, and its laws”. Sedat Peker “If the TRNC is a state and proud of it, and you, Hakki Atun, are the head of its government, you have the right to complain about and protest what is happening in your own country, those who violate the laws, think themselves above the authorities and the law itself, and those who think they can do everything irresponsibly in this country,” he said. Two and a half months later, he was machine gunned to death. Police investigations into his death proved inconclusive, with no charges ever being brought against any individual for the shooting. In response, his widow, Ilkay Adali, took Turkey to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that the investigation was “inadequate” and “unconvincing”. The court settled in her favour, and awarded her €95,000 in compensation and court expenses. Nonetheless, theories have arisen as to who may have been behind the operation, with some pointing to Turkish nationalist organisation the Grey Wolves, and others to the Turkish Revenge Brigade, another nationalist organisation which had been linked to other attacks in Turkey. In 2021, gang leader Sedat Peker released a series of videos on social media in which he recounted various incidents of violence and controversy in Turkey’s recent past, and said that Adali’s death had been coordinated by Mehmet Agar, Turkey’s justice minister at the time of the robbery and interior minister at the time of the shooting. The slain journalist Kutlu Adali and his wife Ilkay He said lieutenant colonel Korkut Erken, a close associate of Agar, had told him that “there is a man in Cyprus [who] wants to sell Cyprus to the Greek Cypriots”. He said that he had planned to dispatch his own brother, Atilla Peker, to deal with the matter, but that “another team” had killed Adali first. Peker’s claims prompted political calls, led by then opposition party CTP leader and now Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman, for a fresh investigation into the matter to be launched. However, five years on from Peker’s revelations and 30 years on from the assassination, the case remains cold.