Tag: Hakan Fidan

  • Turkish soldiers inside Syria abducted by Islamist rebels, news reports say

    Turkish soldiers inside Syria abducted by Islamist rebels, news reports say

    Turkish soldiers inside Syria abducted by Islamist rebels, news reports say

    BY ROY GUTMAN

    McClatchy Foreign Staff

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    ISTANBUL — Turkish troops conducting a resupply mission to a small Turkish military post inside Syrian territory were ambushed and detained Wednesday by Islamic extremists affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, according to Turkish media reports.

    The troops were later returned to Turkey, news outlets in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa said. But it wasn’t clear what happened to the four armored personnel carriers they’d been traveling in. One report said ISIS had kept the vehicles, which had been seen flying ISIS flags.

    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday confirmed that a convoy had been sent to the tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire. The tomb lies about 15 miles inside Syria, but Turkey claims sovereignty over the area under a 1921 territory. Erdogan said the convoy had been sent to deliver supplies to the Turkish military contingent assigned to guard the tomb.

    He did not, however, mention the ISIS ambush or the abduction of the Turkish troops, an incident that could put Turkey’s military, widely regarded as the region’s best equipped, on a collision course with ISIS, whose militants are fighting both Syrian government forces and other anti-government rebel groups for control of eastern Syria.

    “Right now, the issue is not about ISIS,” he told reporters in Ankara. “The job of our convoy is to transfer aid to the Suleyman Shah tomb.”

    The Turkish military said the dispatch of the convoy was a planned activity, and nothing out of the ordinary.

    Local news reports said the vehicles crossed into Syria from the Sursitpinar border gate and were ambushed near the town of Manbij. The troops – the exact number was not reported — were then taken to Manbij and later repatriated to Turkey, Sanliurfa.com reported, citing local Syrian sources and another unnamed source.

    The news portal, without naming its source, said that the vehicles, after their capture, were being driven about with ISIS flags on them.

    In mid-March, ISIS demanded that Turkey abandon its military outpost at the tomb and threatened to attack and destroy it. This apparently gave rise to a secret conversation among top Turkish officials about whether Turkey should seize the opportunity to take on ISIS, an Iraq-based offshoot of al Qaida that is also fighting the Iraqi government for control of western Iraq and is considered a serious menace to regional stability. Al Qaida leaders denounced the group earlier this year for disobeying orders to withdraw from Syria, where another rebel group, the Nusra Front, is al Qaida’s recognized affiliate.

    A recording of the secret conversation about a possible incursion into Syria was posted on YouTube and proved deeply embarrassing to the Erdogan government, which launched a major investigation to find the source of the security breach. The government also blocked access to YouTube and Twitter in an effort to halt dissemination of the recording.

    According to news accounts, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu can be heard on the recording saying that “without a strong pretext,” Turkey would not receive support for an intervention into Syria from the United States or other allies. The chief of Turkish intelligence, Hakan Fidan, reportedly responded that “if needed, I would dispatch four men to Syria” and “have them fire eight mortar shells at the Turkish side and create an excuse for war.” He added: “We can also have them attack the tomb of Suleyman Shah as well.”

    If the government was seriously considering doing anything at the time, it was put on hold following the publication of the discussion.

    Based on the scanty details available Wednesday, it wasn’t possible to determine whether the resupply convoy was a genuinely routine operation or a probe to test ISIS’s intentions.

    via ISTANBUL: Turkish soldiers inside Syria abducted by Islamist rebels, news reports say | World | The Sun Herald.

  • Turkey seeks wider spy agency powers amid Erdogan power struggle

    Turkey seeks wider spy agency powers amid Erdogan power struggle

    Gulsen Solaker and Jonny HoggReuters8:42 a.m. CDT, April 10, 2014

    Erdogan addresses members of parliament from his ruling AK Party during a meeting at the Turkish parliament in Ankara (UMIT BEKTAS, REUTERS / April 8, 2014)
    Erdogan addresses members of parliament from his ruling AK Party during a meeting at the Turkish parliament in Ankara (UMIT BEKTAS, REUTERS / April 8, 2014)
    ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s government sought parliamentary approval to boost the powers of the secret service on Thursday, a move seen by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s critics as a bid to tighten his grip on the apparatus of state as he wages a bitter power struggle.

    Control of the NATO member’s security apparatus goes to the heart of a feud between Erdogan and Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally based in the United States whose network of followers wields influence in the police and judiciary.

    Erdogan accuses Gulen’s Hizmet (“Service”) network of orchestrating a plot to unseat him, tapping thousands of phones, including his own, over years and using leaked recordings to unleash corruption allegations against his inner circle in the run-up to a series of elections. Gulen denies involvement.

    According to an initial draft, seen by Reuters, proposals before parliament include giving the National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) more scope for eavesdropping and foreign operations, as well as greater immunity from prosecution for top agents.

    The MIT is run by Hakan Fidan, one of Erdogan’s closest confidantes, who was himself the subject of an inquiry in February 2012 seen by the prime minister’s circle as a challenge to his authority from a Gulen-influenced judiciary.

    Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said the priority was to update existing laws which were decades out of date and to bring Turkey’s spy agency in line with international peers.

    “As with Western examples, the aim is to make the legislation more transparent and bestow the agency with a greater range of options,” he told parliament.

    “With this draft law, the MIT’s activities regarding foreign security, national defence, the struggle against terrorism, counter-intelligence and cyber crime will be intensified.”

    Erdogan’s AK party has a large majority in parliament.

    Erdogan’s response to the corruption inquiry – purging thousands of officers from the police force and reassigning hundreds of prosecutors and judges – has raised concern in Western capitals, including Brussels, which fears the EU candidate nation is moving further away from European norms.

    “Events over the past three months have cast doubt on Turkey’s commitment to European values and standards,” EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele said, citing tightened control of the judiciary and “massive transfers” of police and prosecutors as part of Erdogan’s purging of the bodies.

    Erdogan’s aides says such criticism underestimates the level of threat to national security from what they describe as a “parallel state” seeking to sabotage his government and thwart his ambition to stand in presidential elections in August.

    The latest of the leaked recordings, posted on YouTube days ahead of March 30 local polls which were seen as a referendum on Erdogan’s rule, was of a meeting between Fidan, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the deputy head of the armed forces discussing a possible military operation in Syria.

    It was by far the most damaging security leak in the months-old scandal and access to YouTube has been blocked since then. The BTK telecoms regulator said on Thursday it would not end the ban despite court rulings that it should do so.

    “INTELLIGENCE STATE”

    Declaring victory after his AK Party dominated the electoral map in the municipal polls despite the corruption scandal, Erdogan said he would “enter the lair” of enemies who accused him of graft and leaked state secrets.

    Senior officials have said Turkey will launch a criminal investigation into the alleged “parallel state” backed by Gulen, a crackdown likely to be led by the MIT. Nine police officers were detained in the southern city of Adana on Wednesday in connection with an inquiry into wiretapping, local media said.

    “If the (Gulen) movement is very well represented in the police and the judiciary, you have to have someone to go after them, and it seems it will be the MIT, that seems to be the logic behind this,” said Svante Cornell, Turkey expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

    The draft bill, which could be amended during debate, seeks to impose strict jail terms for the publication of leaked classified documents and protect the intelligence chief from prosecution by all but the country’s highest court of appeal.

    “This law is equipping MIT with authorities it should not have in a state of law. These authorities will turn Turkey into an intelligence state,” said Sezgin Tanrikulu, a deputy from the main opposition CHP party.

    “Under this law, it will become impossible to launch inquiries into all illegal activities conducted by MIT in the past and the future,” he told a news conference, citing controversy over the agency’s recent alleged role in blocking an investigation into shipments of supplies to Syria.

    Local media said the MIT had intervened to prevent gendarmerie officers from searching trucks in the southern province of Adana in January which prosecutors suspected of carrying weapons to Syrian rebel groups.

    The MIT has not commented on the reports but government officials have said the trucks were carrying aid.

    The agency has played a critical role in peace talks with Kurdish militants, an effort to end an insurgency in Turkey’s southeast which has cost 40,000 lives over three decades and hobbled the development of one of its poorest regions.

    “The role it played in running the Kurdish peace process gave Erdogan and the MIT some credibility with Western allies,” said the John Hopkins School’s Cornell. “What you’ve seen is that with Syria policy, MIT has played a very significant role, and a very murky role. In general there has been increasing concern about the role MIT has been playing.”

    (Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Daren Butler in Istanbul, Adrian Croft in Brussels; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Ralph Boulton)

  • Turkey: Spies Like Us

    Turkey: Spies Like Us

    TurkeySpiesLikeUS_CROPPEd

    A Turkish flag flutters near the monument of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at Taksim Square in Istanbul June 24, 2013 (Marko Djurica/Courtesy Reuters).

    by Steven A. Cook

    I co-authored this piece with my friend and colleague, Michael Koplow, author of the blog Ottomans and Zionists.

    Ehud Barak’s political instincts have never been great, but his security instincts are generally top-notch. So when he warned in 2010 that any intelligence information shared with Turkey might be passed on to Iran, his fears may not have been completely unfounded. David Ignatius reported yesterday that in 2012, Turkey deliberately blew the cover of ten Iranians who were working as Israeli agents and exposed their identities to the Iranian government. Ignatius also wrote that in the wake of the incident, which was obviously a large intelligence setback for efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program, the United States did not protest directly to Turkey and instead walled off intelligence issues from broader policymaking.

    There are lots of questions that Ignatius’s report raises, and it will take some time to parse them out and figure out the answers. First and foremost is the report completely accurate? This is a very big deal if true, and it casts increasingly cool U.S. behavior toward Turkey over the past year in a more interesting light, yet it also makes it puzzling to figure out how something like this was kept quiet. Likewise, it is tough to see how and why the United States would separate intelligence issues from larger policy issues in the wake of such a huge betrayal of an important U.S. intelligence ally. Especially when such duplicity amounts to a purposeful blow to joint American-Israeli aims to slow down Iran’s nuclear program.

    Next, who are the sources for this story, and why leak the story now? If this new information came from the United States, then it indicates that someone has finally had it with Turkey turning a blind eye to (if not actively enabling) a growing al Qaeda presence in Syria, and anger over Turkey’s deal to buy a missile defense system from a Chinese firm already under sanctions rather than from NATO. The flip side to this is that if it is a U.S. government source fed up with Turkish behavior, it also does not cast the United States in a great light given the lack of an official reaction following Turkey’s exposure of Israeli intelligence assets. If the leak came from the Israeli side, then the timing is strange since there would have been little reason to hold this information until now, as Israeli-Turkish relations were at their absolute low point. The only plausible reason for Israel to leak this now would be if it came from someone who is disenchanted with Bibi Netanyahu’s efforts to patch things up with Turkey, as these allegations are deeply embarrassing in light of the Mavi Marmara apology.

    Questions aside, and assuming that the veracity of the report– and so far no American or Israeli official has publicly denied it – the bigger picture here is not the future of Israel-Turkey ties, but how the United States views Turkey. It is important to remember that from its earliest days the Obama administration sought to rebuild and strengthen ties with Ankara during a particularly difficult period that coincided with the American occupation of Iraq and the return of PKK terrorism. The Turks got a presidential visit and speech to the Grand National Assembly, Obama punted on his promise to recognize the Armenian genocide, and more broadly brought a new energy and urgency to a partnership that American officials hoped would work to achieve common goals in a swath of the globe from the Balkans to Central Asia.

    What started off well-enough quickly ran into trouble. By the spring of 2010, the Turks had negotiated a separate nuclear deal with Iran (and the Brazilians) that the administration claimed it had not authorized and voted against additional UN Security Council sanctions on Tehran.  Then the Mavi Marmara incident happened, further complicating Washington’s relations with both Ankara and Jerusalem.  A “reset” of sorts occurred on the sidelines of the September 2010 G-20 summit in Toronto with a meeting in which President Obama and Prime Minister Erdogan talked tough with each other and cleared the air, setting the stage for what Turkish officials like to describe as a “golden age” in relations.  Even so, despite the apparent mutual respect—even friendship—between President Obama and Prime Minister Erdogan, there was a sense that the Turks did not share interests and goals as much as advertised.  For example, there was Erdogan’s visit to Tehran in June 2010 when he implicitly justified Iran’s nuclear program. There were also difficult negotiations over a NATO early warning radar system on Turkish territory and after Ankara finally agreed, last minute needless wrangling over Israeli access to the data from the system .

    More recently, Turkey has spurned its NATO allies in order to build a missile defense system with China.  Ankara has also been enormously unhelpful on Syria, even working at cross-purposes against current U.S. aims.  The Turks have complicated efforts to solve the political crisis in Egypt by insisting that deposed President Mohammed Morsi be returned to office and thus only further destabilizing Egyptian politics.  In addition, these new revelations (along with ongoing efforts to get around sanctions on Iranian oil and gas) make it clear that Turkey has been actively assisting Iran in flouting American attempts to set back Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The state-owned Halk Bank was, until recently, involved in clearing financial transactions for Iranian counterparts, though Istanbul’s gold traders continue to do a robust business with Iran. And this all comes on top of the general fallout that has ensued as a result of Turkey doing everything in its power to take shots at Israel (which, no matter if some Turkish analysts want to argue that Ankara is more strategically valuable to the U.S. than Jerusalem, is a critical U.S. ally), whether it be absurdly blaming Israel for the coup in Egypt or preventing Israel from participating in NATO forums.

    Considering Turkey’s record, how can the Obama administration continue to tout Turkey as a “model partner” or even treat it as an ally? Not a single one of its goals for Turkey—anchoring Turkey in NATO and the West; advancing U.S. national security goals such as non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, and promoting democracy; and holding Turkey out a “model” of a secular democracy—have been met. Ignatius’s recent revelation, if true, undermine the first two goals. As for the third, Erdogan’s continuing harsh crackdown on protesters resulting from last summer’s Gezi Park demonstrations, pressure on journalists, efforts to intimidate civil society organizations, and other efforts to silence critics makes Turkey a negative example for countries struggling to build more just and open societies. We have crossed the line of reasonable disagreement and arrived at a point where Turkey is very clearly and very actively working to subvert American aims in the Middle East on a host of issues. That Erdogan and/or his intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, were willing to undermine a broad Western effort to stop Iran’s nuclear development for no other reason than to stick it to Israel should be a wake-up call as to whether the current Turkish government can be trusted as a partner on anything.

  • Turkey’s Spymaster Plots Own Course on Syria

    Turkey’s Spymaster Plots Own Course on Syria

    Hakan Fidan Takes Independent Tack in Wake of Arab Spring

      By

    • ADAM ENTOUS
    • in Washington and

    • JOE PARKINSON
    • in Istanbul

    [image]Official White House Photo by Pete SouzaPresident Obama and John Kerry met with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and Turkish intelligence chief Fidan, second and third from left, in May.

    On a rainy May day, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan led two of his closest advisers into the Oval Office for what both sides knew would be a difficult meeting.

    It was the first face-to-face between Mr. Erdogan and President Barack Obama in almost a year. Mr. Obama delivered what U.S. officials describe as an unusually blunt message: The U.S. believed Turkey was letting arms and fighters flow into Syria indiscriminately and sometimes to the wrong rebels, including anti-Western jihadists.

    Seated at Mr. Erdogan’s side was the man at the center of what caused the U.S.’s unease, Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s powerful spymaster and a driving force behind its efforts to supply the rebels and topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    In the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, Mr. Fidan, little known outside of the Middle East, has emerged as a key architect of a Turkish regional-security strategy that has tilted the interests of the longtime U.S. ally in ways sometimes counter to those of the U.S.

     

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    “Hakan Fidan is the face of the new Middle East,” says James Jeffrey, who recently served as U.S. ambassador in Turkey and Iraq. “We need to work with him because he can get the job done,” he says. “But we shouldn’t assume he is a knee-jerk friend of the United States, because he is not.”

    Mr. Fidan is one of three spy chiefs jostling to help their countries fill a leadership vacuum created by the upheaval and by America’s tentative approach to much of the region.

    One of his counterparts is Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief, who has joined forces with the Central Intelligence Agency in Syria but who has complicated U.S. policy in Egypt by supporting a military takeover there. The other is Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander-in-chief of the Quds Forces, the branch of the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps that operates outside of Iran and whose direct military support for Mr. Assad has helped keep him in power.

    Meet the Middle East’s spymasters. Dubai real estate-palooza. Divers assess the Lampedusa wreck. WSJ tracks stories from around the world in The Foreign Bureau. Photo: Associated Press

    Mr. Fidan’s rise to prominence has accompanied a notable erosion in U.S. influence over Turkey. Washington long had cozy relations with Turkey’s military, the second-largest army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But Turkey’s generals are now subservient to Mr. Erdogan and his closest advisers, Mr. Fidan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who are using the Arab Spring to shift Turkey’s focus toward expanding its regional leadership, say current and former U.S. officials.

    Mr. Fidan, 45 years old, didn’t respond to requests for an interview. Mr. Erdogan’s office declined to elaborate on his relationship with Mr. Fidan.

    The U.S. and Turkey are clashing over Syria, complicating U.S. efforts and highlighting how Middle East turmoil is upending longstanding alliances. Adam Entous reports. Photo: AP.

    At the White House meeting, the Turks pushed back at the suggestion that they were aiding radicals and sought to enlist the U.S. to aggressively arm the opposition, the U.S. officials briefed on the discussions say. Turkish officials this year have used meetings like this to tell the Obama administration that its insistence on a smaller-scale effort to arm the opposition hobbled the drive to unseat Mr. Assad, Turkish and U.S. officials say.

    Mr. Fidan is the prime minister’s chief implementer.

    Since he took over Turkey’s national-intelligence apparatus, the Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, or MIT, in 2010, Mr. Fidan has shifted the agency’s focus to match Mr. Erdogan’s.

    His growing role has met a mixture of alarm, suspicion and grudging respect in Washington, where officials see him as a reliable surrogate for Mr. Erdogan in dealing with broader regional issues—the futures of Egypt, Libya and Syria, among them—that the Arab Spring has brought to the bilateral table.

    Mr. Fidan raised concerns three years ago, senior U.S. officials say, when he rattled Turkey’s allies by allegedly passing to Iran sensitive intelligence collected by the U.S. and Israel.

    More recently, Turkey’s Syria approach, carried out by Mr. Fidan, has put it at odds with the U.S. Both countries want Mr. Assad gone. But Turkish officials have told the Americans they see an aggressive international arming effort as the best way. The cautious U.S. approach reflects the priority it places on ensuring that arms don’t go to the jihadi groups that many U.S. officials see as a bigger threat to American interests than Mr. Assad.

    U.S. intelligence agencies believe Mr. Fidan doesn’t aim to undercut the U.S. but to advance Mr. Erdogan’s interests. In recent months, as radical Islamists expanded into northern Syria along the Turkish border, Turkish officials have begun to recalibrate their policy—concerned not about U.S. complaints but about the threat to Turkey’s security, say U.S. and Turkish officials.

    There is no doubt in Turkey where the spymaster stands. Mr. Fidan is “the No. 2 man in Turkey,” says Emre Uslu, a Turkish intelligence analyst who writes for a conservative daily. “He’s much more powerful than any minister and much more powerful than President Abdullah Gul.”

    Still, he cuts a modest figure. Current and former Turkish officials describe him as gentle and unpretentious. In U.S. meetings, he wears dark suits and is soft-spoken, say U.S. officials who have met him repeatedly and contrast him with Prince Bandar, the swashbuckling Saudi intelligence chief.

    “He’s not Bandar,” one of the officials says. “No big cigars, no fancy suits, no dark glasses. He’s not flamboyant.”

    Mr. Fidan’s ascension is remarkable in part because he is a former noncommissioned officer in the Turkish military, a class that usually doesn’t advance to prominent roles in the armed forces, business or government.

    Mr. Fidan earned a bachelor of science degree in government and politics from the European division of the University of Maryland University College and a doctorate in political science from Ankara’s elite Bilkent University. In 2003, he was appointed to head Turkey’s international-development agency.

    He joined Mr. Erdogan’s office as a foreign-policy adviser in 2007. Three years later, he was head of intelligence.

    “He is my secret keeper. He is the state’s secret keeper,” Mr. Erdogan said of his intelligence chief in 2012 in comments to reporters.

    Mr. Fidan’s rise at Mr. Erdogan’s side has been met with some concern in Washington and Israel because of his role in shaping Iran policy. One senior Israeli official says it became clear to Israel that Mr. Fidan was “not an enemy of Iran.” And mistrust already marked relations between the U.S. and Turkish intelligence agencies. The CIA spies on Turkey and the MIT runs an aggressive counterintelligence campaign against the CIA, say current and former U.S. officials.

    The tension was aggravated in 2010 when the CIA began to suspect the MIT under Mr. Fidan of passing intelligence to Iran.

    At the time, Mr. Erdogan was trying to improve ties with Tehran, a central plank of Ankara’s “zero problems with neighbors” policy. U.S. officials believe the MIT under Mr. Fidan passed several pieces of intelligence to Iran, including classified U.S. assessments about the Iranian government, say current and former senior U.S. and Middle Eastern officials.

    U.S. officials say they don’t know why Mr. Fidan allegedly shared the intelligence, but suspect his goal was relationship-building. After the Arab Spring heightened tensions, Mr. Erdogan pulled back from his embrace of Tehran, at which point U.S. officials believe Mr. Fidan did so, too.

    Officials at the MIT and Turkey’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the allegations.

    In 2012, Mr. Fidan began expanding the MIT’s power by taking control of Turkey’s once-dominant military-intelligence service. Many top generals with close ties to the U.S. were jailed as part of a mass trial and convicted this year of plotting to topple Mr. Erdogan’s government. At the Pentagon, the jail sentences were seen as the coup de grace for the military’s status within the Turkish system.

    Mr. Fidan’s anti-Assad campaign harks to August 2011, when Mr. Erdogan called for Mr. Assad to step down. Mr. Fidan later started directing a secret effort to bolster rebel capabilities by allowing arms, money and logistical support to funnel into northern Syria—including arms from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf allies—current and former U.S. officials say.

    Mr. Erdogan wanted to remove Mr. Assad not only to replace a hostile regime on Turkey’s borders but also to scuttle the prospect of a Kurdish state emerging from Syria’s oil-rich northeast, political analysts say.

    Providing aid through the MIT, a decision that came in early 2012, ensured Mr. Erdogan’s office had control over the effort and that it would be relatively invisible, say current and former U.S. officials.

    Syrian opposition leaders, American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats who worked with Mr. Fidan say the MIT acted like a “traffic cop” that arranged weapons drops and let convoys through checkpoints along Turkey’s 565-mile border with Syria.

    Some moderate Syrian opposition leaders say they immediately saw that arms shipments bypassed them and went to groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party has supported Muslim Brotherhood movements across the region.

    Syrian Kurdish leaders, meanwhile, charge that Ankara allowed arms and support to reach radical groups that could check the expanding power of Kurdish militia aligned with Turkey’s militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

    Turkish border guards repeatedly let groups of radical fighters cross into Syria to fight Kurdish brigades, says Salih Muslim, co-chairman of the Democratic Union of Syria, Turkey’s most powerful Kurdish party. He says Turkish ambulances near the border picked up wounded fighters from Jabhat al Nusra, an anti-Assad group linked to al Qaeda. Turkish officials deny those claims.

    Opposition lawmakers from the border province of Hatay say Turkish authorities transported Islamist fighters to frontier villages and let fighter-filled planes land at Hatay airport. Turkish officials deny both allegations.

    Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, a lawmaker for Hatay’s largest city, Antakya, and a member of the parliament’s foreign-relations committee, says he followed a convoy of more than 50 buses carrying radical fighters and accompanied by 10 police vehicles to the border village of Guvecci. “This was just one incident of many,” he says. Voters in his district strongly oppose Turkish support for the Syrian opposition. Turkish officials deny Mr. Ediboglu’s account.

    In meetings with American officials and Syrian opposition leaders, Turkish officials said the threat posed by Jabhat al Nusra, the anti-Assad group, could be dealt with later, say U.S. officials and Syrian opposition leaders.

    The U.S. added Nusra to its terror list in December, in part to send a message to Ankara about the need to more tightly control the arms flow, say officials involved in the internal discussions.

    The May 2013 White House encounter came at a time when Mr. Obama had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the Turkish leader’s policies relating to Syria, Israel and press freedoms, say current and former U.S. officials.

    Mr. Obama told the Turkish leaders he wanted a close relationship, but he voiced concerns about Turkey’s approach to arming the opposition. The goal was to convince the Turks that “not all fighters are good fighters” and that the Islamist threat could harm the wider region, says a senior U.S. official.

    This year, Turkey has dialed back on its arming efforts as it begins to worry that the influence of extremist rebel groups in Syria might bleed back into Turkey. At Hatay airport, the alleged way station for foreign fighters headed to Syria, the flow has markedly decreased, says a representative of a service company working at the airport.

    In September, Turkey temporarily shut part of its border after fighting erupted between moderate Syrian rebels and an Iraqi al Qaeda outfit, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Turkish President Gul warned that “radical groups are a big worry when it comes to our security.”

    In recent months, Turkish officials have told U.S. counterparts that they believe the lack of American support for the opposition has fueled extremism because front-line brigades believe the West has abandoned them, say U.S. and Turkish officials involved in the discussions.

    In September, Mr. Davutoglu, the foreign minister, met Secretary of State John Kerry, telling him Turkey was concerned about extremists along the Syrian border, say U.S. and Turkish officials. The Turks wanted Mr. Kerry to affirm that the U.S. remained committed to the Syrian opposition, say U.S. officials.

    Mr. Kerry told Turkish officials the U.S. was committed but made clear, a senior administration official says of the Turkish leaders, that “they need to be supportive of the right people.”

    Also in September, Mr. Fidan met with CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, say Turkish and U.S. officials, who decline to say what was discussed.

    A former senior U.S. intelligence official says Mr. Fidan has built strong relationships with many of his international counterparts. At the same time, a current U.S. intelligence official says, it is clear “we look at the world through different lenses.”

    Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com and Joe Parkinson atjoe.parkinson@wsj.com

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    A version of this article appeared October 10, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Turkey’s Spymaster Plots Own Course on Syria.

  • Turkey’s ‘secret-keeper’: spy chief Hakan Fidan

    Turkey’s ‘secret-keeper’: spy chief Hakan Fidan

    Turkey’s ‘secret-keeper’: spy chief Hakan Fidan

    A helicopter of the Turkish army brings back Turkish prisoners over the Habur border crossing, in Sirnak, on the Turkish side, on March 13, 2013 after they were released by the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk, after being held for two years in northern Iraq, in response to a new peace push by Ankara to end a 29-year-old insurgency in southeast Turkey.
    A helicopter of the Turkish army brings back Turkish prisoners over the Habur border crossing, in Sirnak, on the Turkish side, on March 13, 2013 after they were released by the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk, after being held for two years in northern Iraq, in response to a new peace push by Ankara to end a 29-year-old insurgency in southeast Turkey.

    A helicopter of the Turkish army brings back Turkish prisoners over the Habur border crossing, in Sirnak, on the Turkish side, on March 13, 2013 after they were released by the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk, after being held for two years in northern Iraq, in response to a new peace push by Ankara to end a 29-year-old insurgency in southeast Turkey.

    AFP – The head of Turkish intelligence, Hakan Fidan, is the driving force behind the state’s clandestine peace talks with a jailed Kurdish rebel chief that aim to end a bloody three-decade insurgency.

    Low-profile Fidan, 45, was appointed to the top spy seat by close ally Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May 2010.

    Fidan took part in peace talks with senior figures from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Oslo in 2009, which unravelled in 2011 when secret recordings were leaked to the media revealing the talks.

    After the failed negotiations, Erdogan’s government delegated Fidan to hold talks with PKK chief Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence in the isolated prison island of Imrali.

    When state prosecutors last year asked the senior intelligence official to shed light on whose authority the agency held the Oslo talks, Erdogan publicly voiced support for his ally.

    “It was me who sent him to Oslo and to Imrali,” the premier said.

    “He is my secret-keeper, he is the state’s secret-keeper,” Erdogan said, describing Fidan as a “very well-trained bureaucrat.”

    Erdogan’s ruling party later introduced a bill in parliament requiring the prime minister’s authorisation to interrogate the spy agency’s agents, effectively immunising Fidan from any prosecution.

    Details about the spy’s life are largely confidential because of his role at the top of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation (MIT).

    According to a brief resume on the MIT’s official website, Fidan served in the Turkish Armed Forces as a non-commissioned officer. He also worked at NATO’s Germany-based Allied Rapid Reaction Corps.

    The married father-of-three has a bachelor’s degree in political science and government from the University of Maryland University College in the United States. He also earned a master’s and a doctoral degree at Ankara’s private Bilkent University.

    He headed a public agency for development known as TIKA, which is active in the Turkic states and Africa but also in other Muslim countries where Turkey has been trying to gain a foothold as part of its strategy to become a regional power.

    Local media say he fostered ties with an influential Islamic movement headed by Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in the United States, during his four-year tenure at TIKA.

    The Gulen movement, which has dozens of schools abroad, is considered close to Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), in power since 2002.

    Before he was appointed the new head of MIT, Fidan worked in Erdogan’s office as a deputy undersecretary. He is also known to have worked closely with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

    Following Fidan’s MIT appointment in 2010, Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the Israeli defence establishment, particularly Mossad, viewed his promotion with concern, accusing him of steering Turkey away from the Jewish state and closer to Iran.

    The paper cited unnamed Israeli sources as speculating that Fidan, along with Erdogan and Davutoglu, orchestrated a change in Turkish-Israeli ties — which were wrecked after Israeli commandoes raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, killing nine Turks on board.

    In an opinion piece last year, the daily Haber-Turk editor in chief Fatih Altayli claimed that Erdogan was grooming Fidan for the post of prime minister.

    “He (Erdogan) brings Fidan along in many important talks with foreign heads of state. It feels like he is considering Hakan Fidan for an important mission in the future,” Altayli said.

    If Fidan’s efforts bear fruit, the peace talks could lead to the disarmament of some 4,000 rebels in southeast Turkey and in northern Iraq and, ultimately, to the end of a 29-year-old rebellion that has cost some 45,000 lives, mostly Kurdish.

    Ocalan has promised to call a long-sought ceasefire on Thursday, boosting hopes that the end of the conflict is in sight.

    via Turkey’s ‘secret-keeper’: spy chief Hakan Fidan – FRANCE 24.

  • CIA and MOSSAD have offices in Turkey

    CIA and MOSSAD have offices in Turkey

    CIA and MOSSAD have offices in Turkey

    Turkish intelligence officials provided important explanations on a variety of issues including the presence of foreign intelligence units

    mit-fidan

    The National Intelligence Organization (MIT) gave striking answers to the questions of parliamentarian members of the Parliament’s Wiretapping Commission. The MIT responses are summarized as follows:

    VULNERABLE TO HACKING

    If the necessary measures are not taken in today’s world, all kinds of hardware and software means of communication are be monitored by means of technology. In addition transactions conducted over computer networks can be accessed and hacked from remote locations or infiltrated from within through cooperative methods. While such infiltration can occur through vulnerabilities at the institutional level, it can also result from personal mistakes and negligence.

    SEND TO THOSE WHO MUST BE INFORMED

    Formerly named the GES Command, the newly named SIB Electronic Intelligence and Communication executed the task of submitting the obtained information the relevant MIT and Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) units according to the “those who need to know principle.”

    OUR SATELLITES CAN BE MONITORED

    It is possible through technical mean for another country to monitor the communications transmitted through the country’s satellite and so on., and the communications that go or come from abroad independent of the transmission medium.

    While it is important from a strategic perspective that systems using satellite communication are located on national and ground stations in Turkey, due to communications being conducted via air, there is always a risk of being tapped by countries that have the necessary technology.

    WE DO NOT USE TROJAN

    We do not use the Trojan email virus software in our activities. Generally we use open source software in the development of software.

    CIA, MOSSAD HAVE TURKISH OFFICES

    (Can foreign intelligence services open offices in Turkey?) When necessary MIT cooperates with the intelligence services of foreign countries. In this sense, just as our organization has offices in other countries, the offices of other countries can be found in ours.

    BE CAREFUL WITH PROMOTIONAL DEVICES

    It should be taken into consideration that all kinds of electronic devices can be used by hostile elements for hidden listening and monitoring. On a personal basis, the necessary measures should especially be taken with promotional devices.

    THREATS TO NATIONAL PROJECT PERSONNEL

    (How do you assess plot initiatives toward the MILGEM, Milli Geni, and HAVELSAN projects?) We have started implementing the Counter Intelligence concept in order to detect and prevent potential threats to the national projects developed in strategic sectors, and the critical personnel working on said projects.

    via CIA and MOSSAD have offices in Turkey | Politics | World Bulletin.