Intel bill heralds ‘torture chambers’ of ‘71 coup: MHP leader

ANKARA

DHA Photo

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has described the regarding the National Intelligence Agency (MİT) as being “wrong from top to toe.”

In taking this stance, Bahçeli has joined the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), arguing the bill was yet another step taken by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in order to turn the Republic of Turkey into an intelligence state.

“The recreation and rebuilding of locations which would be equally good as the Ziverbey and Erenköy mansions of the 1970s is very close,” Bahçeli said on April 15, referring to the notorious mansions in Istanbul, which were used as torture centers following the March 12, 1971 military coup d’état.

“In real terms, the prime minister considers the arrangements within the MİT Law as an opportunity to mask all illegal, immoral and illegitimate relations from Oslo to İmralı, from aiding terrorist groups at our border [with Syria] to foreign policy choices, which are against our national goals,” Bahçeli said, in a speech delivered at a parliamentary group meeting of his party.

The MHP leader was referring to both government-sanctioned talks, which the MİT leadership held secretly with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Oslo in 2010, and to the government-led ongoing peace process in which PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, serving a life-sentence at İmralı Prison on the Marmara Sea, is playing a central role. The peace or resolution process is aimed at ending the nearly three-decade conflict between Turkey’s security forces and the PKK in a bid to pave the way for a resolution of the age-old Kurdish issue.