Mehmet Ali Ağca, the man who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II, has changed his surname, a recent court indictment has revealed, with Ağca’s surname appearing as “Aslan”, which means “lion” in Turkish. A court in Istanbul reportedly used Ağca’s new surname during a trial for which Ağca faces a 15-year prison sentence.
According to the prosecution in that trial, Ağca allegedly appropriated a house belonging to a man named Gökhan Soylu through threats and extortion. Ağca denied the allegations at the trial, claiming that he sold the house to Soylu for well below the market price, and then took it back after receiving threats from another person.
“I bought this property through a person named Ayhan. At Ayhan’s request, I sold the house soon after. After the sale, Ayhan contacted me saying that the house had been sold at a low price, and demanded one million Turkish Liras from me,” Ağca said in court, according to Turkish media reports. “In no way did I threaten the plaintiff. Between 2015 and 2022, I acquired six properties for a total of $1.5 million; I cannot be involved in such a matter over a ruined house. Ayhan involved me in this incident by falsely accusing me,” he claimed.
Ağca was arrested in 1979 for the murder of Turkish journalist Abdi İpekçi; however, he is best known for attempting to assassinate Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on 13 May 1981, hitting him in the hand and abdomen. For the attempted assassination of the Pope, Ağca (or “Aslan”, according to his new surname) was sentenced to life imprisonment in Italy on 22 March 1986; in 2000 he was extradited to Turkey after the Pope pardoned him. He was finally released from prison in 2010 after serving his sentence in Turkey for the murder of İpekçi, and for crimes of robbery and extortion. Since then, Ağca – who went so far as to call himself a kind of “messiah” – has been at the centre of several controversies, such as when he claimed that it was the Vatican itself that commissioned him to kill John Paul II.
VOTE
EDITORIAL TEAM
🧿 About us
.
Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
…
📣 Your ADVERTISING on Hispanatolia
.
🤗 HELP US WITH A DONATION:
💗 Paypal
