Alisan Dogan

Alisan Dogan died in a brawl at the Dostlar Lokali cafe.

He was stabbed.

Over 50 people were involved in the attack at the Dostlar Lokali cafe where Alisan Dogan was helping with building work.

A man was tried for his murder but acquitted.

The brawl was said to have been between members of the Turkish and Kurdish underworld who were involved in a territorial dispute following an earlier attack on a supermarket.

The feud had involved the Kurdish separatist PKK gang and the Bombocalir gang, also known as the Bombacilars and Bombers gang (bomb makers), which was said to be backed by a prominent Kurdish crime family in London.

It was said that the PKK had helped to set up a number of businesses across London and expected protection money from them. It was also said that the shop owners were happy to pay the PKK but not the mafia families. Although the PKK’s armed struggle with Turkey came to an end in 2002 it was heard that they still maintained a hold on the businesses they helped set up in the Green Lanes area. After the PKK ended its armed struggle it had rebranded itself as the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK) but were still active in all other regards.

The National Criminal Intelligence Service said that 70% of the heroin coming into the country, said to be in the tonnes, was brought in by ethnic Turkish gangs and that the feud was related to the heroin trade and racketeering and associated turf wars. The police said that there were about 200 Turkish and Kurdish gang members that were fighting for control of the shops and clubs around the Green Lanes area in London.

It was said that in the summer of 2002, the Kurdish mafia boss started to try and take over control of businesses that were controlled by the PKK (KADEK) gang and used the Bombocalir gang to achieve that objective. The Bombocalir gang was said to have been made up of young people.

The immediate attacks were said to have been triggered when a youth that had joined the Bombocalir gang had tried to leave and was beaten up for doing so, after which he had gone to the PKK for help.

On 9 November 2002, at about 4pm, hooded Bombocalir gang members attacked the Samas Abbas supermarket in Green Lanes which they trashed and assaulted the staff.

However, friends of the store owners, who were described as KADEK sympathisers (PKK), were said to have contacted each other and arranged for a retaliatory attack on the Dostlar Lokali cafe which had recently been owned by the Kurdish crime family.

On the same day, at about 8pm, about 50 people armed with knives, baseball bats and guns arrived at the cafe and started to fight the people there. About 20 people were taken to hospital including Alisan Dogan who later died. It was said that four of the other men that were taken to the hospital were on life support and that the other 20 were those that could not crawl away.

Alisan Dogan had been at the cafe helping to refurbish it and was said to have been an innocent bystander.

The police said that they came up against a wall of silence during their investigation. They carried out a number of raids two months later during which they arrested the man that was tried for Alisan Dogan's murder.

In January 2003, the police carried out an operation named Narita which involved 500 policemen who raided 15 addresses across Haringey, Harrow and Hackney associated with the suspected Turkish mafia members who were described as being involved with heroin trafficking, gun running, extortion rackets and illegal gambling. They arrested 23 people and confiscated £25,000, a semi-automatic pistol, a stun gun, ammunition and drugs.

In the three months after his murder the police made over 300 arrests.

The man tried had been working at the Gokyuzu restaurant which was a few doors away from the Dostlar Lokali on Green Lanes at the time. He said that he had been doing night shifts and had been asleep in the day, and that by the time he had arrived for work, travelling by bus, he had found the street and restaurant cordoned off by the police and had gone home again on the bus.

Alisan Dogan had been a carpenter.