Word: kocero
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Haul. Son of a Kurdish mother and a Turkish father who belonged to the nomadic Kocerli tribe (hence the nickname), Kocero was born 38 years ago in a tiny, ten-house village. For a while he was poor but straight, but in 1950 he killed his brother-in-law in an "affair of honor," stole more than $250 in lire and gold coins and fled for the hills. From then on, Kocero virtually ruled what few roads there were in the southeast. In a single day, he and his band of five or six men looted 200 people by halting...
...confusion that followed Turkey's 1960 military coup, Kocero kept extending his franchise westward, and the government began organizing huge hunting parties to track him down. "Why this display of government forces, army, gendarmery, police?" he once complained. "After all, I am but a simple murderer...
Then Betrayal. The simple murderer proved a difficult man to catch, and Interior Minister Sahir Kurutluoglu came under such intense criticism for failing to do so that he went personally to the southeast, summoned provincial governors, army commanders and police officers to a meeting to chart plans for trapping Kocero. At the moment the meeting was being held, the bandit was nonchalantly holding up eleven autos and buses a scant eight miles away. The laughingstock of Turkey, Kurutluoglu resigned soon afterward...
...took a betrayal to finish Kocero. Early this month he seized a night watchman at a petroleum company camp near the town of Sürt and demanded his help in heisting the camp's monthly payroll. The guard told Kocero that the payroll was not due until the following night, and swore it on the Koran. When Kocero returned with his men for the robbery the next night, the local gendarmes were waiting for them. During the struggle that followed, Kocero was caught by a shotgun's blast, but somehow he managed to stagger off badly wounded...
Among a people who sing folk songs of their bandits, death is likely to make a hero of Kocero. In the Turkish city of Adana, youngsters have already formed a "Kocero Admirers' Club." And despite repeated government statements that he is dead, Kocero lives still for the peasants of southeastern Turkey...