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Cihan News Agency (CNA) - Turkey
January 19, 2013 Saturday
Whistleblower reveals foreign policy blunders in Turkey
ISTANBUL (CIHAN)- A highly classified letter sent by an anonymous
officer to the boss of Turkey's spy agency in 2007 was leaked to the
press from the Turkish Parliament this week. The letter, apparently
written by a whistleblower in the Special Forces Command (ÖKK), which
is a special operations unit answerable directly to the General Staff,
reveals shocking plans cooked up by a junta in the military. The ÖKK
often rendered services for the Tactical Mobilization Group (STK),
formerly known as the Special Warfare Department (ÖHD), an equivalent
to the Gladio style stay-behind operation in the Turkish military.
Therefore it is safe to assume that s/he had intimate knowledge of
shady deals planned in this secretive branch of the Turkish military.
The officer wrote six letters in total detailing how he was involved
in dirty schemes devised by a clandestine gang in special ops. They
were sent to the parliamentary Coup and Memorandum Investigation
Commission for examination by the National Intelligence Organization
(MIT). The officer was complaining that the special forces were being
manipulated by a select group of coup-loving junta members who were
determined to oust the democratically elected and popular government
in Turkey despite the fact that the STK was designed to mobilize
national assets in time of war against the external threat. The letter
was addressed to then-Undersecretary of MIT Emre Taner.
It was certainly a hair-raising experience to read the letter leaked
to reporters. According to the whistleblower's account, the ÖKK was
ordered to draw plans to blow up two bridges across the Bosporus in
Istanbul, the Bogaziçi and Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges, the Yalova
ferry and the Bolu Tunnel on the highway connecting Ankara and
Istanbul as well as key crossing points on the Black Sea Ring Highway.
The command's plans also included the bombing of Atatürk's mausoleum,
called Anitkabir, in the country's capital.
The plan also included a series of bombings during massive protests
that were held against the government in 2007, dubbed "republican
rallies" by their organizers, in several provinces of the country. The
attack was supposed to be blamed on religious fundamentalist groups
affiliated with the governing Justice and Development Party (AK
Party). We now learned from the ongoing court cases in Turkey that
these protests were organized with the manipulation of the Ergenekon
terrorist organization, a shadowy network nested within the state with
the aim of overthrowing the government.
Since there is not enough space to detail all plans mentioned in the
letter here, I will dwell on points that involve foreign policy and
Turkey's neighbors. The letter claims that the junta wanted to risk
dragging the country into hot international conflicts just to expand
the maneuvering room of the military in Turkey and to put embarrassing
blemishes on the government's record. Looking back to events in 2007
before and after the June snap elections held because of the
presidential election crisis in Parliament, it is obvious that some of
these plans were actually carried out.
For example, the reports on dogfights between Turkish and Greek jets
over the disputed Aegean airspace sharply increased following the May
2006 incident in which Turkish and Greek F-16 jet fighters collided in
mid-air as they were shadowing each other. The Turkish and Greek
foreign ministries exchanged mutual accusations claiming a violation
of national airspace in March 2007, almost a year after the aviation
incident. According to General Staff, in the first half of 2007
(interestingly in the period leading up to the July elections) Turkish
jets engaged Greek fighters 207 times to prevent incursion into
Turkish airspace. In the same year, cockpit conversations among
Turkish pilots and how they operate during these dogfights were posted
on the YouTube website. These events cannot be coincidental.
This reminds me of Operation Thunderstorm (Oraj) which was a sub-plot
of the Sledgehammer military coup operation that was discovered in
2010 court documents. The plan sees an escalation of the crisis with
Greece by provoking conflict in the air, at sea and on land borders.
However, the ultimate target of the plan was not Greece but the
Turkish government itself. Bringing Turkey to the brink of war with
Greece was a "means to an end" scenario to prepare the groundwork for
an armed military intervention in Turkey. It perfectly fit the
scenarios mentioned by the whistleblower's letter in 2007.
The Oraj plan, dated February 2003, specifically asks for increased
flights over the Aegean and orders commanding officers to instruct
pilots to engage in harassment maneuvers with Greek fighter jets. It
wants Turkish pilots to be more aggressive and even issues new rules
of engagement allowing pilots to take shots at Greek fighters, albeit
unofficially. The plan suggests reorganizing the Special Fleet within
the Turkish Air Forces (THK) with the specific objective of tasking a
Turkish pilot to shoot down a Turkish jet in his own squadron in case
all efforts to provoke a Greek fighter jet to destroy a Turkish one
fail. Fabricated stories would then be planted in the media, saying
that Greece intentionally shot down a Turkish jet. The plotters hoped
that this would create a huge embarrassment for the ruling AK Party
government.
Going back to the letter again, another foreign policy issue the junta
tried to exploit by mobilizing some assets among civil society groups
in order to hammer the government was Cyprus. There was an intensive
campaign in 2007 against the government based on false allegations
that Turkish Cypriots on the divided Mediterranean island were sold
out by the AK Party. Even advocacy groups that have nothing to do with
foreign policy started issuing declarations against the government
that the Turks in Cyprus were left alone in their fight against the
Greek Cypriots. The fact that there are too many examples from 2007 of
this campaign shows how the junta was effective in its planning
through special ops.
2007 was also a year when Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was
shot dead outside his newspaper's office in Sisli in January. Since
the issue of non-Muslims in general and the Armenian genocide in
particular are sensitive topics in Turkey, it would not come as a
surprise that the junta tried to exploit these sensitivities in
Turkish society. Hopefully other documents MIT has referred to in the
parliamentary commission can shed some light on finally resolving the
Dink murder. The same goes for the Malatya massacre case involving the
slaughter of three Christians in 2007, and the case of Father Andrea
Santoro, who was murdered in 2006 in Trabzon. In that same year,
Armenian genocide bill discussions in the US Congress further fueled
nationalist fervor in Turkey, much to the benefit of the junta's aims,
putting more strain on the government.
The Kurdish issue to the extent it linked with the semiautonomous
Kurdistan in northern Iraq was another area in which the junta saw an
opportunity to score against the government. Starting in January 2007,
the government was subjected to an intense campaign of being too
passive when it comes to dealing with northern Iraq. The then-chief of
Turkey's General Staff Gen. Yasar Büyükanit was publicly accusing
Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq of actively backing Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) terrorists, threatening a cross-border incursion.
The military was overstepping into the policy decision-making process,
creating a deep rift between the army and the government. The goal was
to create the impression that the government was simply too weak to
handle a critically important issue on the national agenda when it
resisted the idea of a special military operation into northern Iraq.
The government was able to fend off the pressure until June but was
eventually forced to cave in and allowed the military to go into
northern Iraq.
No doubt that all of these plans require the manipulation of public
opinion through the media, and the ÖKK had plenty signed up for this
job, some voluntarily and others without even knowing they were on the
hook. The whistleblower's letter also exposes this by saying that as a
part of these plans, journalists would be urged to write false news
stories. Therefore some of the journalists accused in the coup cases
are actually co-conspirators in these hideous plans against the nation
and are now responding to charges in a court of law. They have not
performed their public duty by exposing dirty deals to the public but
instead have behaved as pens-for-hire to serve the interests of coup
mongers in Turkey. Those who are keen to advance the press freedom
issue in Turkey need to separate these bad apples from legitimate
infringement on freedom of the press cases in order to help contribute
to the further democratization of Turkey.
ABDULLAH BOZKURT
January 19, 2013 Saturday
Whistleblower reveals foreign policy blunders in Turkey
ISTANBUL (CIHAN)- A highly classified letter sent by an anonymous
officer to the boss of Turkey's spy agency in 2007 was leaked to the
press from the Turkish Parliament this week. The letter, apparently
written by a whistleblower in the Special Forces Command (ÖKK), which
is a special operations unit answerable directly to the General Staff,
reveals shocking plans cooked up by a junta in the military. The ÖKK
often rendered services for the Tactical Mobilization Group (STK),
formerly known as the Special Warfare Department (ÖHD), an equivalent
to the Gladio style stay-behind operation in the Turkish military.
Therefore it is safe to assume that s/he had intimate knowledge of
shady deals planned in this secretive branch of the Turkish military.
The officer wrote six letters in total detailing how he was involved
in dirty schemes devised by a clandestine gang in special ops. They
were sent to the parliamentary Coup and Memorandum Investigation
Commission for examination by the National Intelligence Organization
(MIT). The officer was complaining that the special forces were being
manipulated by a select group of coup-loving junta members who were
determined to oust the democratically elected and popular government
in Turkey despite the fact that the STK was designed to mobilize
national assets in time of war against the external threat. The letter
was addressed to then-Undersecretary of MIT Emre Taner.
It was certainly a hair-raising experience to read the letter leaked
to reporters. According to the whistleblower's account, the ÖKK was
ordered to draw plans to blow up two bridges across the Bosporus in
Istanbul, the Bogaziçi and Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges, the Yalova
ferry and the Bolu Tunnel on the highway connecting Ankara and
Istanbul as well as key crossing points on the Black Sea Ring Highway.
The command's plans also included the bombing of Atatürk's mausoleum,
called Anitkabir, in the country's capital.
The plan also included a series of bombings during massive protests
that were held against the government in 2007, dubbed "republican
rallies" by their organizers, in several provinces of the country. The
attack was supposed to be blamed on religious fundamentalist groups
affiliated with the governing Justice and Development Party (AK
Party). We now learned from the ongoing court cases in Turkey that
these protests were organized with the manipulation of the Ergenekon
terrorist organization, a shadowy network nested within the state with
the aim of overthrowing the government.
Since there is not enough space to detail all plans mentioned in the
letter here, I will dwell on points that involve foreign policy and
Turkey's neighbors. The letter claims that the junta wanted to risk
dragging the country into hot international conflicts just to expand
the maneuvering room of the military in Turkey and to put embarrassing
blemishes on the government's record. Looking back to events in 2007
before and after the June snap elections held because of the
presidential election crisis in Parliament, it is obvious that some of
these plans were actually carried out.
For example, the reports on dogfights between Turkish and Greek jets
over the disputed Aegean airspace sharply increased following the May
2006 incident in which Turkish and Greek F-16 jet fighters collided in
mid-air as they were shadowing each other. The Turkish and Greek
foreign ministries exchanged mutual accusations claiming a violation
of national airspace in March 2007, almost a year after the aviation
incident. According to General Staff, in the first half of 2007
(interestingly in the period leading up to the July elections) Turkish
jets engaged Greek fighters 207 times to prevent incursion into
Turkish airspace. In the same year, cockpit conversations among
Turkish pilots and how they operate during these dogfights were posted
on the YouTube website. These events cannot be coincidental.
This reminds me of Operation Thunderstorm (Oraj) which was a sub-plot
of the Sledgehammer military coup operation that was discovered in
2010 court documents. The plan sees an escalation of the crisis with
Greece by provoking conflict in the air, at sea and on land borders.
However, the ultimate target of the plan was not Greece but the
Turkish government itself. Bringing Turkey to the brink of war with
Greece was a "means to an end" scenario to prepare the groundwork for
an armed military intervention in Turkey. It perfectly fit the
scenarios mentioned by the whistleblower's letter in 2007.
The Oraj plan, dated February 2003, specifically asks for increased
flights over the Aegean and orders commanding officers to instruct
pilots to engage in harassment maneuvers with Greek fighter jets. It
wants Turkish pilots to be more aggressive and even issues new rules
of engagement allowing pilots to take shots at Greek fighters, albeit
unofficially. The plan suggests reorganizing the Special Fleet within
the Turkish Air Forces (THK) with the specific objective of tasking a
Turkish pilot to shoot down a Turkish jet in his own squadron in case
all efforts to provoke a Greek fighter jet to destroy a Turkish one
fail. Fabricated stories would then be planted in the media, saying
that Greece intentionally shot down a Turkish jet. The plotters hoped
that this would create a huge embarrassment for the ruling AK Party
government.
Going back to the letter again, another foreign policy issue the junta
tried to exploit by mobilizing some assets among civil society groups
in order to hammer the government was Cyprus. There was an intensive
campaign in 2007 against the government based on false allegations
that Turkish Cypriots on the divided Mediterranean island were sold
out by the AK Party. Even advocacy groups that have nothing to do with
foreign policy started issuing declarations against the government
that the Turks in Cyprus were left alone in their fight against the
Greek Cypriots. The fact that there are too many examples from 2007 of
this campaign shows how the junta was effective in its planning
through special ops.
2007 was also a year when Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was
shot dead outside his newspaper's office in Sisli in January. Since
the issue of non-Muslims in general and the Armenian genocide in
particular are sensitive topics in Turkey, it would not come as a
surprise that the junta tried to exploit these sensitivities in
Turkish society. Hopefully other documents MIT has referred to in the
parliamentary commission can shed some light on finally resolving the
Dink murder. The same goes for the Malatya massacre case involving the
slaughter of three Christians in 2007, and the case of Father Andrea
Santoro, who was murdered in 2006 in Trabzon. In that same year,
Armenian genocide bill discussions in the US Congress further fueled
nationalist fervor in Turkey, much to the benefit of the junta's aims,
putting more strain on the government.
The Kurdish issue to the extent it linked with the semiautonomous
Kurdistan in northern Iraq was another area in which the junta saw an
opportunity to score against the government. Starting in January 2007,
the government was subjected to an intense campaign of being too
passive when it comes to dealing with northern Iraq. The then-chief of
Turkey's General Staff Gen. Yasar Büyükanit was publicly accusing
Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq of actively backing Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) terrorists, threatening a cross-border incursion.
The military was overstepping into the policy decision-making process,
creating a deep rift between the army and the government. The goal was
to create the impression that the government was simply too weak to
handle a critically important issue on the national agenda when it
resisted the idea of a special military operation into northern Iraq.
The government was able to fend off the pressure until June but was
eventually forced to cave in and allowed the military to go into
northern Iraq.
No doubt that all of these plans require the manipulation of public
opinion through the media, and the ÖKK had plenty signed up for this
job, some voluntarily and others without even knowing they were on the
hook. The whistleblower's letter also exposes this by saying that as a
part of these plans, journalists would be urged to write false news
stories. Therefore some of the journalists accused in the coup cases
are actually co-conspirators in these hideous plans against the nation
and are now responding to charges in a court of law. They have not
performed their public duty by exposing dirty deals to the public but
instead have behaved as pens-for-hire to serve the interests of coup
mongers in Turkey. Those who are keen to advance the press freedom
issue in Turkey need to separate these bad apples from legitimate
infringement on freedom of the press cases in order to help contribute
to the further democratization of Turkey.
ABDULLAH BOZKURT