Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has eliminated the so-called leader of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) terrorist organization in an operation in northern Syria’s al-Hasakah region, the agency announced early Friday.
Zeki Gürbüz, who went by the code-name "Ahmet Şoreş" as the so-called chief of the MLKP's Syrian branch, was killed in a pinpoint operation following intense field monitoring by MIT agents in the region, the agency informed.
Gürbüz had been a top name in the list of terrorists wanted by Türkiye for his role as the instigator and orchestrator of a series of rocket attacks on Turkish troops on the border with Syria on Aug. 16, 2022. He was also the mastermind behind the bomb attack on a vehicle carrying prison guards in the Mudanya district of northwestern Bursa province on April 20, 2022. One of the prison guards, Cengiz Yiğit, was killed in the attack, while four other guards were injured.
One of the perpetrators of the attack, who was also trained for years in the MLKP's Syrian camps, was arrested in October 2022 in the Aegean province of Izmir.
The MLKP, which was founded in 1994, is on Türkiye's list of "primary terrorist organizations." Gürbüz was reportedly appointed as the organization’s so-called Türkiye chief in 2008 after serving in its armed apparatus for years.
In 2012, he left Türkiye through illegal routes to flee to Italy, but he was detained in Greece in February 2013 and sent to prison. Despite Ankara’s demands for his extradition, Athens granted him a supervised release two months later in April 2013.
Following his release, the terrorist moved from Greece to Iraq and then to Syria where he began acting as an MKLP leader. When the group’s former Syria leader Bayram Namaz, code-named "Baran Serhat," was eliminated in March 2019, Gürbüz was promoted from military leader to Namaz’s post as the head of Syrian operations.
He served as the secretary and military zone chief of the MLKP's Syria Executive Committee from 2020 onward. He also supervised the organization’s financial sources and managed monetary transactions in all fields.