National security file unchanged after 2010

ANKARA

Deputy Prime Minister Bozdağ said the National Security Policy Document was revised in 2010. DHA photo

Turkey’s top-secret national security policy document was most recently updated in 2010, the government has stated, while refusing to reveal the document’s content, which it says is “secret.”

The document, also dubbed the Red Book, lists Turkey’s perceived domestic and external threats, and was assumed to have been regularly updated.

However, as it was last updated in 2010, the document apparently doesn’t include any details with regard to the last few years of the Arab Spring, or the dramatically changing nature of Turkey’s bilateral relations with regional countries, such as Egypt and Syria.

Responding to written motion filed by main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Sezgin Tanrıkulu, Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ stated that the National Security Policy Document was a secret document of the Council of Ministers, which is not posted on the official website of the National Security Council (MGK). The brief response submitted by Bozdağ was actually drafted by the MGK. “The National Security Policy Document was most recently revised in the year 2010,” he said, adding that it as “not possible” to give information about the content of the document as it was classified as a secret document. Back in September 2010, a few months after nine Turkish activists were killed by Israeli military on board of a Gaza-bound aid ship, media said the MGK had revised the document and added Israel to the list of “major threat” countries.