İzmir plot

In 1926, the Turkish police arrested dozens of people, including ex-ministers, lawmakers and governors, accused of plotting to assassinate the 1st President of Turkey Mustafa Kemal Pasha on 14 June 1926 in İzmir.

The assassination was planned to take place in the Kemeraltı district of İzmir. As Mustafa Kemal Pasha's car would have slowed down at the crossroads, Ziya Hurşit Bey would have opened fire on him from Gaffarzâde Hotel with Gürcü (Georgian) Yusuf and Laz İsmail throwing bombs and explosives at him from the barber shop under the hotel. Meanwhile, they had planned to escape from the scene with Çopur Hilmi and Giritli (Cretan) Şevki, who would wait in a car on the side street, and then send them to Chios with a motor. However, through the telegram sent to Mustafa Kemal Pasha by İzmir Governor Kâzım Bey on 14 June, the plan was uncovered and the president postponed his trip to İzmir. In the letter written by Giritli Şevki to the Governor of İzmir on 15 June 1926, information on the people who would have carried on the assassination was included. After a while, the four main suspects were arrested and they confessed their crimes.

At the hearings held by the Independence Tribunal who came to İzmir after this incident, it was determined that there were wider opposition groups behind the incident. Of the forty people who were tried in İzmir between 26 June and 13 July, fifteen were sentenced to death with two of them in absentia, and one was exiled. A few weeks later, four of the fifty-seven people on trial in Ankara between 2 and 26 August were sentenced to death, six were exiled and two were sent to prison. A total of one hundred and thirty defendants were questioned, thirty-four of which were released without the need for trial.

Historians Erik-Jan Zürcher and Raymond Kévorkian have stated that there was no plot to assassinate Kemal and the prosecution was a show trial intended to eliminate his political opponents, especially former members of the Committee of Union and Progress.