Turkish Forum

Tag: Hakan Fidan

  • Turkey limits court powers to question state spies

    Turkey limits court powers to question state spies

    Turkey limits court powers to question state spies

    * Law amendment follows summons of intelligence chief

    * Analysts see split on how to end war with Kurd militants

    * Ruling party denies split and unites behind bill

    ANKARA: Turkey’s parliament voted late on Thursday to stop prosecutors questioning spies without the prime minister’s permission, after a row which analysts said revealed divisions inside the state on ending the war with Kurdish militants.

    The governing AK Party hastily introduced the amendment after prosecutors summoned National Intelligence Agency (MIT) chief Hakan Fidan for questioning over secret talks he held with the militant separatists, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Some analysts have interpreted the move against Fidan as a challenge to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan by followers of a rival wing within the ruling AK Party to scupper the prime minister’s secret efforts to end the 27-year-old conflict with the PKK.

    Fidan was working in Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s office at the time of the talks before Erdogan promoted him to lead the MIT. He ignored the summons and the prosecutor who issued it was removed from the case and then put under investigation himself. Fidan and MIT have repeatedly clashed with police over the detention and exposure of undercover agents during the arrests of hundreds of suspected PKK sympathisers, media said.

    Umit Boyner, chairwoman of influential business association TUSIAD spoke in a television interview of her “horror” at what she called “the power struggle within the state”. The AKP denied any split and there was little evidence of it when government deputies swung behind the prime minister and voted to back the amendment to the law on intelligence agencies.

    Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said there was nothing wrong with talking to the PKK and that military, security and intelligence officials had repeatedly spoken with PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan since he was captured by Turkish special forces in Kenya in 1999 and jailed on an island on the Sea of Marmara. “A state that has such a possibility and does not use it to solve such a burning issue must be questioned,” he told parliament.

    Opposition parties said the motion was a further grab for more power by Erdogan. “It’s clearly contrary to the rule of law. It’s not right to give one person this authority,” social democrat opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu told the NTV news channel. This can only happen in a dictatorship.” He said his Republican People’s Party planned to appeal to Turkey’s constitutional court.

    In the past year, Turkey’s courts have become swamped with dozens of often inter-linked cases against hundreds of military officers, journalists and suspected supporters of the PKK, which Ankara, Washington and the European Union all class as a terrorist organisation. The secularist opposition says the judiciary has been filled with officials, until now sympathetic to the government, since Erdogan’s AK Party came to power in 2002.

    The AK Party, which emerged from a series of banned Islamist groups, won its third election last year with a large majority, giving Erdogan a comfortable mandate. In tapes of the talks with the PKK in Oslo and leaked to the media last year, Fidan, then the prime minister’s special envoy, said Erdogan was prepared to take a great political risk to pursue peace talks with the PKK.

    Fighting has since flared up in the mainly Kurdish southeast where Turkish troops are determined to show no signs of letting up in their campaign against the PKK during the winter months when the mountainous region is blanketed under heavy snow. reuters

    via Daily Times – Leading News Resource of Pakistan – Turkey limits court powers to question state spies.

  • Kurdish Question Dominates Turkish Politics

    Kurdish Question Dominates Turkish Politics

    By: Saban Kardas

    Kurdish unrest in Turkey.
    Kurdish unrest in Turkey.

    Having received unequivocal backing from voters in the constitutional referendum, the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) has moved to address Turkey’s structural problems, most notably the Kurdish question, through a combination of domestic measures, as well as regional and international diplomacy.

    The resolution of the Kurdish issue has been one of the main targets of the AKP government. The AKP first sought to address this issue through domestic political reforms in the early 2000’s, also benefiting from the relative calm prevailing in southeastern Anatolia, thanks to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) suspending its operations. However, granting greater cultural rights to the Kurds as part of Turkey’s EU accession process or devising socio-economic policies proved to be ineffective. The threat posed by the PKK’s separatist terrorism lingered, as the organization managed to maintain its manpower in safe havens in Northern Iraq.

    The PKK’s resumption of its campaign of violence in the second half the decade caught Ankara by surprise, triggering a heated debate. Faced with the PKK’s deadly attacks against Turkish military outposts from its bases in Northern Iraq, the AKP bowed to pressure and considered seriously pursuing stronger military measures to tackle this problem. Coordinating its policies with the US and the Northern Iraqi Kurdish authorities, the Turkish army undertook incursions into Northern Iraq in pursuit of PKK militants in the winter of 2007-2008. Greater security cooperation and intelligence sharing between Turkey, the US and Iraq, or the enhanced military operations inside Turkey could put an end to the PKK’s terrorist attacks.

    Meanwhile, the AKP government launched an ambitious “Kurdish opening” in 2009, yet failed to garner popular and political support for the measure. The government’s mishandling of the opening, coupled with the PKK’s and pro-Kurdish parties’ uncooperative attitude turned the entire Kurdish initiative into a near fiasco (Terrorism Monitor, February 19). The government could change the terms of the debate only through its smart moves to table the constitutional amendment package in the first part of 2010, arguing that the Kurdish issue could also be addressed as part of a broader “democratization agenda” (EDM, May 5).

    PKK violence, however, continued throughout the spring and summer, which exposed the failure of the Turkish security apparatus in fighting against the PKK formations inside and outside Turkey (Terrorism Monitor, July 8). The escalation of the conflict could be avoided only through the PKK’s declaration of a unilateral ceasefire prior to the referendum, which was partly facilitated by some civil society organizations. Following the referendum, the PKK sent signals that it would resume its campaign, unless Turkish security forces halted their operations by a self-declared deadline of September 20. A deadly mine explosion killing nine civilians on September 16 reignited the debate on terrorism (www.haber7.com, September 16). Though the PKK denied its involvement in the attack, it was a stark reminder that the PKK remained a potent force that could deal a serious blow to Turkey’s security. The PKK decided to extend the “non-action” period until this week as a goodwill gesture (Radikal, September 20).

    Moreover, the success of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in boycotting the referendum in the Kurdish-speaking provinces reiterated once again that the ethnic Kurdish movement still enjoys substantial support in the region and continues to harbor ambitious demands for greater political rights. Indeed, the BDP representatives even went as far as demanding democratic autonomy (EDM, September 20).

    Faced with this double-edged challenge, the AKP now seeks to address this issue through complex diplomatic traffic. There have been numerous visits undertaken by cabinet members and security bureaucrats. Turkish Interior Minister, Besir Atalay, was in Arbil over the weekend, where Kurdistan Regional Government sources expressed their support for Turkey’s fight against terrorism and the peaceful resolution to the problem (www.trt.net.tr, September 27). He is expected to soon meet his Syrian and Iraqi counterparts. The Head of the Turkish Intelligence Agency, Hakan Fidan, visited Washington last week, and might visit northern Iraq soon. On September 28, a US delegation led by Lloyd James Austin, commanding general of the American forces in Iraq, visited Turkey to discuss the joint efforts (Yeni Safak, September 29).

    These contacts are undertaken within the framework of a joint “action plan” agreed in April to combat the PKK, as a result of the trilateral security mechanism between Turkey, the US and Iraq (IHA, April 11). Through closer cooperation with the US and the Iraqi Kurds, the action plan would have helped Turkey to take stronger military measures to eliminate the threat posed by the PKK, which to date has proved ineffective.

    Although the recent initiatives also seek to address the security aspects of PKK terrorism, security cooperation through the trilateral mechanism might be secondary to the AKP government’s policy of exploring a non-military solution to the problem in a new political setting. The goal of the contacts is to somehow convince the PKK to extend its unilateral ceasefire, halt its operations inside Turkey, and turn its non-action into a permanent truce (Hurriyet Daily News, September 27). Once the guns fall silent, the government hopes to find a suitable environment within which it can address the Kurdish problem through domestic political reforms.

    The crux of the issue is what will happen to the thousands of PKK militants. In this process, the PKK will possibly withdraw its forces from Turkey into Northern Iraq. In the most optimistic scenario, PKK militants might voluntarily turn themselves in and reintegrate themselves into civilian life, if the AKP’s democratic solution succeeds. Since this is highly unlikely, Turkey expects the Iraqi Kurds and the US to take steps towards the disarmament of these PKK militants and eventually end the PKK’s military presence.

    However, given the uncertainty over the future of Iraq and the US military presence in the region, it might be unrealistic to expect either the US or the Iraqi Kurds to demilitarize the PKK. Turkey will still need to maintain its operational capability to carry out operations inside Iraq, as reflected by the government’s decision to table a motion for the extension of the Turkish army’s mandate to do so. It seems that there is no easy choice between the use of force and diplomacy.

    https://jamestown.org/program/kurdish-question-dominates-turkish-politics/

  • Turkey summons Israel envoy over Barak’s remarks

    Turkey summons Israel envoy over Barak’s remarks

    FidanAppointed in May, Fidan was previously a foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

    Turkey’s foreign ministry summoned Israeli ambassador to Turkey on Monday to express uneasiness over Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s remarks about Turkish intelligence chief, diplomats said on Tuesday.

    Ehud Barak, according to leaked media reports, at a meeting of his Labor Party expressed concerns over Hakan Fidan, the new chief of Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT), saying Turkey could share Israeli intelligence secrets with Iran.

    In his “leaked” comments, Barak described Turkey as a “friend and major strategic ally”, however, he called Hakan Fidan a “friend of Iran”.

    “There are quite a few secrets of ours (entrusted to Turkey) and the thought that they could become open to the Iranians over the next several months, let’s say, is quite disturbing,” Barak said in his speech broadcast by the Israeli Army Radio.

    Turkish Foreign Ministry diplomats voiced Turkey’s displeasure of Barak’s remarks at a meeting with Israeli Ambassador to Turkey Gaby Levy, sources said, Anadolu news agency reported.

    Appointed in May, Fidan was previously a foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

    According to Reuters news agency, political sources in Ankara said that Fidan, a former envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, was also involved in a Turkish- and Brazilian-brokered deal on Iran nuclear programme.

    Israel attacked Syria in its 2007 air raid during which Israeli warplanes briefly flew over Turkish territory.

    The Erdogan government was angered by that illegal incursion and has pointed to Israel’s own nuclear arsenal.

    Israel, most experts estimate that it has at least between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, often threatens the Islamic republic with an attack.

    Turkey often calls for “fair” stance from global powers over nuclear activities in the region.

    Ali Nihat Ozcan of the Ankara-based TEPAV think tank saw in Barak’s remarks an effort at “psychological pressure” on Turkey.

    Ankara has not commented publicly on the state of its intelligence ties with Israel. But some Turkish commentators questioned Israeli suspected ties with PKK militants in Iraq.

    Agencies

    , 03 August 2010