• Turkey’s intelligence agency to expand covert operations around the World: President Erdogan

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Monday that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) will gradually increase its capacity to carry out covert intelligence operations around the World.

    “In the near future, we are going to cut down on the inland duties of the Turkish intelligence in order to expand its capacity to carry out covert intelligence operations around the World,” Erdogan said during a speech he delivered during inauguration of a new headquarters for the MİT.

    He also praised the organization for conducting international operations, especially in Syria and now in Libya, the Turkish media reported.

    “In shedding light on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, MİT made our nation proud in the international arena. And now, it’s playing the same kind of role in Libya,” Erdoğan said.

    A Saudi journalist critical to the royal family, Khashoggi was killed at the İstanbul consulate building of Saudi Arabia in Oct. 2018.

    “[MİT] has combined its experience in gathering intelligence with high technology [provided by the government] and performed well in Syria,” he added.

    Turkey has been backing Syrian rebels since the start of the civil war in 2011. In Libya, Ankara supports Fayez al-Serraj’s UN-recognized Tripoli government against Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s forces.

    The new MİT headquarters, a 500-hectare complex, is named “The Castle,” according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.

    The Hürriyet daily had reported that MİT’s budget was increased from $410 million in 2010 to nearly $2 billion in 2017.

    https://turkeypurge.com/turkeys-intelligence-agency-to-expand-covert-operations-around-the-worl
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    ping @etraces

    • Over 100 Gulenists forcibly brought back to Turkey so far: ministry

      More than 100 people allegedly affiliated with Turkey’s Gülen group have been forcibly brought back from abroad so far, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kiran.

      “Over 20 FETO schools [abroad] were taken over . The latest of such incident was in Pakistan. We got some remarkable results in Afghanistan as well. So far, over 100 FETO terrorists were brought back to Turkey. Rest assured that, wherever they are in the world, we will keep chasing these terrorists and take them accountable before the courts for the crimes they committed against humanity while they were in the country,” Kiran told media over the weekend.

      FETÖ [Fethullahist Terrorist Organization] is a buzzword, coined by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to refer the the Gülen group as.

      Turkish government accuses the group of masterminding the July 15, 2016 coup attempt although the latter denies involvement. More than 150,000 people have been detained and some 90,000 were put in pretrial arrest while over 150,000 have lost their jobs amid the government’s post-coup crackdown against people deemed to have ties to the group.

      So far, a number of countries like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Georgia and Myanmar handed over academics, businessmen and school principals upon the Turkish government’s request despite the fact that some of those victims already had refugee status with the United Nations.

      Meanwhile, forced disappearances by law enforcement have become common occurrence within the country, too. On Feb 13, 2019, Yasin Ugan and Ozgur Kaya, the people wanted for their links to the Gulen movement, were removed from their homes in Ankara’s Camlik neighborhood by a group of armed people, claimed to be undercover police officers. According to family records, the armed group put black sacks onto the pair’s heads and forced them into a white van before leaving the scene.

      https://turkeypurge.com/over-100-gulenists-forcibly-brought-back-to-turkey-so-far-ministry