The Kurds were oil-rich and their leaders were Marxists. And they were violent. Clashes between the PKK and the Turkish government had resulted in the deaths of thirty-seven thousand people.25 The problem with these different and difficult people had to be settled before the strategy of tension could be fully implemented in the new republics. In the weeks before Çatlı’s death, ninety-one leading Kurdish businessmen were murdered, including Ömer Lütfü Topal, the “king of the gambling joints.” Topal was killed on July 28, 1996. Çatlı’s fingerprints were found on the Kalashnikov rifle that was
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