Death Comes to Susurluk

Memet Baba was a Turkish gangster who grew up on the mean streets of Izmir on the coast of the Aegean Sea. He had to admit that he liked the sacrilegious ring of his moniker, which meant "Big Daddy Mohammed" in Turkish. He had started his career as a homeless street urchin, but he now controlled most of the drugs and prostitution along the Aegean. He was sitting on top of the world, with a wife and kids, and some investments in respectable enterprises. During the Great Earthquake about a decade ago, he had avoided prosecution because his constructions had all survived the tremblors; he had thought it prudent to follow the building code, though others had successfully bribed the building inspectors with tragic results. Thousands were killed in the earthquake.

Memet Baba also had a mistress, whose name was Tansu. Memet found it amusing that his mistress had the same first name as the Turkish prime minister at the time, Tansu Ciller, who was also a woman, and he often called her "my prime minister." He even deferred to her at times.

As they were driving in his Mercedes Benz down a narrow street along the coast of the Aegean Sea, Tansu nervously said to Memet Baba, "Please slow down, darling. It's raining and the road conditions are bad."

Memet turned to her and said, "It's all right, my prime minister. But for you, I'll slow down."

Memet Baba was scheduled to meet somebody in a restaurant. Tansu didn't know that the balding, middle-aged man was a general in the Turkish army; she thought that he was just another of Memet's partners in organized crime. If Memet had bragged to her that he was about to meet an important military official, she would have thought that he was only bragging, except that Memet didn't brag about things like meeting generals.

The moment that the general saw Tansu, he glared at her. Then he said to Memet angrily, "Why did you bring the girl?"

"Relax, my general," Memet replied. "Tansu is very discrete. Besides, we have to make it look good, don't we?"

Then Memet turned to Tansu and said, "I would like you to meet Ismet Kahve. He's a general in the army."

Tansu understood then that Memet Baba and the general would not be talking about anything illegal. It's likely that some of their business dealings were nefarious, but the general was clearly in no mood to talk about anything to do with vice in front of a woman.

What prompted the meeting was a complaint of the general's in a previous meeting. Memet Baba had casually asked the general "How's it going," and the general had wearily replied, "Not good at all, Memet. The war against the Kurds seems to be without end. There's all this killing and torture, and to what purpose? I tell you, it's the politicians!"

"Maybe I can help, my general," Memet replied. "Maybe I can help..."

As it turned out, Memet Baba was also dealing with someone on the other side who could loosely be called "a freedom fighter." This man was connected with the Kurdish People's Army (PPK), but ideology probably wasn't his main consideration. Sure, he probably dreamed of a homeland for his people, but he had made a fortune smuggling arms from the Turkish military to the Kurdish separatists in Iraq, with Memet Baba as an intermediary. Memet, in turn, bought arms from Saddam Hussein and sold them to the Kurdish separatists in Turkey.

Maybe the Kurdish freedom fighter found it ironic that the Kurds in both countries couldn't unite to fight both Turkey and Iraq, but the Turks and the Iraqis were able to keep the Kurds at each other's throats, even though both countries were guilty of atrocities against the Kurds. Saddam's use of poison gas against the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan is well-documented, but the Turkish army was also torturing and murdering suspected Kurdish separatists.

What separated the Kurds was ideology: the leaders of the PPK in Turkey were Marxists while the leaders of the Ansari i-Islam in Iraq were Muslim. fundamentalists. Then there were men like the Kurdish gangster that General Kahve was meeting for he first time. He probably wasn't into politics or religion very much.

To meet the Kurdish "freedom fighter," Memet Baba, Tansu, and General Kahve had to drive to a restaurant in Antakya on the Mediterranean, just north of the Syrian border, a distance of hundreds of kilometres. The Kurd only introduced himself as "Mr. Berzani." Unlike the general, Berzani wasn't at all troubled by Tansu's presence. Rather, they kissed cheeks, and he smiled and complimented her on her appearance.

Then Berzani said to Memet, "You have always associated with elegant ladies. How do you do it?"

Memet replied, "If everybody knew, ladies like Tansu would be in short supply. But God is great."

The general and the freedom fighter exchanged pleasantries as well. "Diyarbakır is a most beautiful city," General Kahve said to Berzani. Diyarbakır was the capital of Turkish Kurdistan.

"Yes," Berzani replied, "but not as beautiful as your Istanbul."

That night, Memet Baba, General Kahve, and Mr. Berzani avoided the subjects of politics and religion. Instead, they ate a fine meal of lamb with Tansu, and then were entertained by a belly dancer from Lebanon and a female folk singer from the eastern highlands near Armenia. Everybody had a good time, as both the general and the freedom fighter got more than a little soused on Turkish rakı. Rakı is distilled from anise like Greek ouzo, except that the Turks dilute rakı with water and let the dregs sink to the bottom.

"They seem to be hitting if off," Tansu whispered to Memet Baba. "Maybe you should be a diplomat."

However, Memet Baba was fatalistic. "You never know about these things, my dear," he replied. "The Kurds are no better or no worse than the Turks, but they have had centuries to misunderstand each other. Either the general or Berzani could say something wrong, and my efforts could come to nothing."

At the end of the night, Memet Baba and Tansu retired to their hotel, while General Kahve and Mr. Berzani retired also. The general and the Kurd still seemed to be hitting it off.

The next morning, it was raining hard, and Memet Baba and Tansu were supposed to pick up General Kahve and Mr. Berzani at their hotels. "Maybe we should wait until the weather lets up a little," Tansu suggested. "Maybe we should even wait until tomorrow."

Memet Baba shook his head. "The general has to be back in Ankara tomorrow," he said. "Berzani has other business as well. They have to meet this afternoon, or we might have to forget about it indefinitely."

Then Tansu, who was still in bed under the covers, smiled slyly at Memet Baba and murmured, "Come back to bed, darling. There's still time, and it's raining..."

Had it rained the morning after the first night that he slept with Tansu? Memet Baba couldn't remember. He only knew that underneath that hard exterior of hers was a sentimentalist who still remembered things like making love during a morning shower. It was easy to dismiss Tansu as just a gangster's moll, since she had been an escort before he made her his mistress, but he dressed her up in the finest clothes and treated her like a lady in public— and he expected her to behave like one.

Tansu was in her thirties now, tall and blonde, still attractive. The way he treated her, the way he surrounded her with nice things, she couldn't complain if he picked up a young woman in her twenties from time to time. Of course, he had to be discrete about it; it was a question of respect. Memet Baba's mistress, on the other hand, had to be beyond reproach, except maybe in bed.

Memet's wife wasn't even in the picture. He kept her and the kids in a villa on the Aegean Sea and rarely saw them. It was safer that way, because he had enemies.

After they were done, Tansu turned around to go back to sleep, but Memet Baba gently said to her, "Get up, my slothful one. Destiny awaits. We can't keep Berzani and Kahve waiting."

When they picked up the general and Berzani at their hotels, Memet had Tansu searched both of them for cell phones and pagers, as well as tape recorders, because he knew that they could be traced by a satellite. Then Memet Baba drove everybody to an undisclosed location that only he knew about for their next meeting.

As the rain is falling hard among the hills of western Anatolia, Memet Baba takes the curves of the narrow, twisting roads in his Mercedes Benz maybe a little too fast to suit Tansu. Sometimes Tansu wants to shout, "Please slow down— you'll kill us!" But she doesn't want to embarrass him in front of General Kahve and Mr. Berzani. Instead, she murmurs a few times, "You are doing eighty kilometres, my dear, and it's raining. Maybe you should slow down."

However, Memet Baba slows down as he approaches the town of Susurluk, and Tansu breathes a sigh of relief, thinking that maybe the danger of being killed in an automobile accident has passed, or at least lessened.

Then, because visibility is still bad, a car pulls out of the only service station in Susurluk, and Memet Baba has no room to brake. To avoid the other car, he swerves into an oncoming delivery truck from the opposite direction and enters into a collision with it.

Because of the weather, there is some delay before a constable and an ambulance are at the scene of the accident. Memet Baba and Tansu are killed instantly. General Kahve lingers in hospital for a few days before he also expires of his injuries. The only survivor is the Kurdish freedom fighter, Mustafa Berzani, but unfortunately, Berzani suffers amnesia because of the accident, and he can't even remember why he was in Susurluk. Only Memet Baba— and God— knew where they were supposed to meet that day.

God is great.