Turkish intelligence chases, abducts opponents in Europe

Asmaa Al-Batakoshi

Violations committed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan seem to be spreading outside Turkey’s borders, as the Turkish President issued orders to abduct his regime’s opponents in foreign countries.

Early one morning in March 2018, a jet with the tail marking TC-KLE landed in the capital of Kosovo, Pristina. Two hours later it took off with six Turkish citizens, five of them teachers, and later landed at an airbase in Ankara, a joint investigation coordinated by the German news outlet Correctiv found.

They were brought back to Turkey by the country’s intelligence service, MIT.

Also, in September 2018, seven school teachers and managers from the Moldovan-Turkish high school “Horizon” were seized by Moldovan and Turkish security services and immediately transported to Turkey without any due process.

Moreover, in July 2018, Turkish educator, Veysel Akcay, in Mongolia was briefly abducted on Friday, in what appeared to be the latest episode of a global campaign by Turkey’s president to capture suspected allies of the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of plotting a 2016 coup attempt.

Turkish secret agents in 18 countries have seized over 100 Turks suspected of having links to Gulen’s group and returned them to Turkey, according to a senior government official.

Bekir Bozdag, the deputy prime minister, hinted at audacious actions by Turkish intelligence operatives abroad under the increasingly authoritarian government of Erdogan.

A spokesman for Mr. Erdogan, Ibrahim Kalin, said later that the arrests and extraditions had been handled legally and that Turkey intended to carry out more.

The Turkish officials said all of those arrested had been linked to Gulen, the reclusive Turkish Islamic cleric who lives in Pennsylvania.

Editor-in-Chief of the Turkish Zaman newspaper told The Reference in an interview that Erdogan has been abducting his opponents in European and Asia countries because these countries have refused to hand them over to Turkish authorities.

He further added that Turkish intelligence have contacted and paid mercenaries and gunmen in these countries to abduct Turkish opponents, pointing out that people who got abducted are teachers who have nothing to do with politics.

According to their families, these prisoners get accused with terrorism charges as soon as they reach Turkey and then put before special courts formed by Erdogan to ensure their convection.

He also affirmed that Erdogan sought to exploit Gulen’s group and its foundations in 170 countries after the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt in 2012, which what Gulen refused, as he insisted to keep his group away from politics.

Turkish affairs expert Bashir Abdel-Fattah told The Reference that Erdogan fears that Gulen would succeed him, or nominate someone from his group to take over, which pushed him to initiate the abduction series in an attempt to weaken the group.

He added that Erdogan is obsessed with cracking down on his opponents, as he realizes that his policies will not achieve him stability, but will increase his opponents and distort his image in front of the world as a dictator.