Ünal Erkan

Ünal Erkan was born in Erzurum in 1942. His father, Mustafa Erkan, was a police officer who had trained at the Yıldız police school in Istanbul and later worked in the General Directorate of Security's sensitive affairs unit, the forerunner of today's intelligence department. The family lived in a rented gecekondu with two rooms and a garden in the Atıfbey neighbourhood of Altındağ, Ankara. He was one of six children, five boys and a girl, and had two older brothers.

In a 2004 interview he recalled a childhood of tight budgets, his father mending the boys' shoes at weekends, and wearing cheap black rubber shoes that let icy water in. He said that as emergency region governor, seeing children in the same shoes made him hand out lined boots and coats.

Erkan entered the Police College in 1958, joining the first class after the college reopened following its closure in the 1950s. His class had 54 students. He went on to the Police Institute, the institution later renamed the Police Academy, and graduated in 1964. Turkish Wikipedia also lists him among alumni of Ankara's Gazi High School. He completed military service as a reserve officer, starting in Polatlı and finishing in Erzurum.

After graduating in 1964 he was posted to Bursa province and sent to İnegöl, where he ran the district police command on an acting basis. He also served in Konya before joining the intelligence unit at police headquarters in Ankara.

In Ankara he led the narcotics branch in 1974 and 1975 and then the public order branch, setting up a programme of up to 90 patrol teams. He was promoted to deputy police director in 1979 and served for nearly a year as Istanbul's deputy police chief during the political violence before 1980. About a week before the 12 September 1980 coup, Interior Minister Orhan Eren had him appointed Ankara police chief at the age of 38. He headed Ankara police until 1984 and Istanbul police from 1984 to 1988.

In 1988 Erkan moved into civil administration as Governor of Edirne, a post he held until 1991. Edirne sits on the Bulgarian border, and his term included the 1989 exodus of ethnic Turks from Bulgaria; a former colleague credited him with managing that migration. In July 1991 he was named Director General of Security, the head of the Turkish National Police and served until February 1992. In the 2004 interview he described stopping favouritism in the Police Academy's graduate posting lottery by intervening at midnight while the draw was under way.

From February 1992 to November 1995 Erkan was governor of the OHAL state-of-emergency region in south-eastern Turkey, based in Diyarbakır, succeeding Necati Çetinkaya. The post carried powers over the provincial governors of the region, including curfews, road closures, removal of officials and, under emergency decrees, the evacuation and resettlement of settlements. His tenure coincided with the most intense phase of the conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK. In 1995 he told The Independent that about 15 police officers had been removed after mistreatment of wounded prisoners. Turkish authorities themselves acknowledged at the time that more than 1,500 villages and hamlets in the south-east had been emptied.

Erkan left the governorship in November 1995 to stand for parliament and was elected a True Path Party (DYP) deputy for Ankara on 24 December 1995, serving in the 20th term of the Grand National Assembly until 1999. He was a Minister of State in the 53rd Government, the ANAYOL coalition led by Mesut Yılmaz, from March to June 1996. He later left the DYP for the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), where he was chief adviser to the party leader and a member of the Central Executive Board until he resigned from the board in 2007. Wikipedia also lists him among politicians of the Democrat Party founded in 2007.

Erkan spoke often about leadership in the police. He argued that success depended on planning, honesty and closeness to staff, that officers' personal troubles were a chief's business, and that unfairness in promotions or admissions did lasting damage to the force. As a former deputy he criticised the dominance of party leaders in Turkish politics and called for more internal party democracy and collective decision making.

Erkan's record drew sustained criticism. Mehmet Eymür's 1987 MİT report named him, alongside officials such as Nevzat Ayaz and Mehmet Ağar, in allegations of links to the Turkish mafia. In January 2013 he gave a statement as a suspect in the investigation into systematic torture at Ankara police headquarters after the 1980 coup, and denied that anyone had been tortured under his command. In September 2019 he appeared as a witness in the JİTEM and Musa Anter trial at the Ankara 6th High Criminal Court, where he denied knowing who was behind the killings of the early 1990s. Kurdish and left-wing outlets marked his death by recalling village evacuations, forced migration, unsolved killings and torture during the emergency rule years.

Erkan was married and had three children. The names of his wife and children have not been widely published. He was a committed Beşiktaş fan and a member of the club's Board of Trustees, and he once joked that critics claimed he painted Ankara's patrol minibuses black and white in the club's colours. He served on the advisory board of the nationalist cultural association Türk Ocakları.

A primary school in Diyarbakır, Vali Ünal Erkan İlköğretim Okulu, and a police helicopter pad he had built as regional governor were named after him. He said he received numerous commendations from presidents, prime ministers and ministers during his career, along with plaques and certificates for achievement in service, outstanding success in counter-terrorism, service to Turkish culture and Turkish sport, and a Bureaucrat of the Year award.

Erkan died in the early hours of 29 October 2026 in a hospital where he had been receiving treatment for health problems for some time. He was 84. The cause of death was not made public. His funeral prayers were set for after the midday prayer on 30 October 2026 at the Ahmet Hamdi Akseki Mosque in Ankara, followed by burial at Gölbaşı Cemetery. National police chief Ali Fidan, İYİ Party leader Müsavat Dervişoğlu, Beşiktaş JK and the Türk Ocakları issued condolences.

Erkan was one of the first graduates of the reopened Police College to rise to the very top of the Turkish state, holding in turn the posts of Ankara and Istanbul police chief, provincial governor, national police chief, emergency region governor, deputy and minister. To admirers he was the super governor of the hardest years of the fight against the PKK and a model police administrator. To critics, his name stands for the human rights abuses of the 1980 coup era and of emergency rule in the Kurdish south-east.