A Turkish court ordered the exhumation of the body of a newly deceased man in eastern Turkey. The man, who died in Belgium and was buried in the city of Erzincan, was Mahmut Yıldırım. Mahmut Yıldırım, a common name in Turkey, is more famous for his nickname, "Yeşil" (green in Turkish), and his alleged work as a contract killer for Turkey's "deep state," an organization consisting of mafia bosses, military and police officers accused of committing a string of crimes in the 1980s and 1990s in the name of cracking down on terrorist organizations.
The name of the man exhumed by authorities yesterday was Mahmut Özer, a Turkish national who passed away at a hospital in Belgium in July. A friend of Özer had his body transferred to his hometown, Erzincan, where he was buried on July 9. But rumors were circulating that the man in the grave was actually Yeşil. A court - which was hearing the case on the killing of a Kurdish intellectual and shooting of a writer in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır - had ordered the exhumation in the case where Yıldırım was among the defendants, even though he has not been seen for decades, save for a few photos. He allegedly worked for intelligence services in the 1980s. Testimonies regarding a trial on deep state members by former intelligence officers had claimed he was behind countless extrajudicial killings targeting Kurds and PKK members.
