Mehmet Ali Ağca
Turkish contract killer (born 1958)
Mehmet Ali Ağca (Turkish: [mehˈmet aˈli ˈaːdʒa]; born 9 January 1958) is a Turkish former hitman for the Grey Wolves. On 1 February 1979, he murdered journalist Abdi İpekçi, known for his leftist views, and was imprisoned, but escaped. He travelled illegally to Vatican City on 13 May 1981, and attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II on the same day. However, the assassination attempt failed, and he was captured and imprisoned by the Italian police.
After being imprisoned for 19 years in Italy where he was visited by the Pope, he was deported to Turkey, where he served a ten-year sentence. Ağca was released from prison on 18 January 2010. He described himself as a mercenary with no political orientation, although he is known to have been a member of the Turkist far-right organisation Grey Wolves, as well as the state-sponsored Counter-Guerrilla.
In 2014, 33 years after his crime, Ağca visited Vatican City to lay white roses on the tomb of the recently canonised John Paul II, and said he wanted to meet Pope Francis, a request that was denied.
Early life
Mehmet Ali Ağca was born on 9 January 1958 in Hekimhan in a poor Turkish peasant family.
As a youth, he became a petty criminal and a member of numerous street gangs in his hometown.
“Mehmet Ali Ağca” enters the record as turkish contract killer (born 1958). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mehmet, Ağca and Turkish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q181938. VIAF identifies the subject as 37719233. The Library of Congress control number is n83157915. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1979, 1981 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mehmet Ali Ağca” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.