Mehmet Ali Ağca (; born 9 January 1958) is a Turkish assassin and Grey Wolves member who murdered left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi on 1 February 1979, and later shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981, after escaping from a Turkish prison. After serving 19 years of imprisonment in Italy where he was visited by the Pope, he was deported to Turkey, where he served a ten-year sentence. In 2007, he converted to Roman Catholicism and was released from prison on 18 January 2010. Ağca has described himself as a mercenary with no political orientation, although he is known to have been a member of the Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves organization and the state-sponsored Counter-Guerrilla.