Look what you will raise your hand for

I will write this very short, extremely short, so that those who will raise hands to approve this law should be able to read it beforehand and understand it…

Look dear friends, because your party leader wants you to do so, you will again be raising hands to this law also.

You have suspended the Constitution, which was approved by popular vote, and you have put the judiciary under the control of the executive power.

Now, you are getting ready to vote in order to create the most dangerous “parallel organization” in the history of the Republic of Turkey.

Yes, you are about to form a private investigation/detective bureau under the name of the “National Intelligence Organization.”

This is an organization that will be able to eavesdrop on anybody it wants to without any court order.
Moreover, it may even interpret these powers as if it is authorized to enter your house and plant a bug.

By-passing the institution called the Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) that investigates financial crimes, it will have access to all of our bank accounts, all of our credit card spending.
We will not have a private life left or any life in general …

This organization will report only to the prime minister and no one else…

The media will not be able to write a word about it. Nobody will be there to stop it.

Are you aware of what you are doing, my friend? The friend who will raise his or her hand?

You are beginning a “J. Edgar” era in Turkey.

You are about to create an intelligence monster like J. Edgar Hoover in the United States who founded the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

My only advice to you is for you to watch Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” film.
Read what President Harry S. Truman said about him.

Watch it, read it and go and explain it to your leader.

J. Edgar Hoover was the head of the intelligence business in 1924. He stayed in that position for 48 years.

Each president who took office and each minister wanted to take him down from the position, but couldn’t.

Some had the power, but lacked the courage.

Some had the courage, but were short of power.

Because he transferred the FBI, he had set it up into a private detective bureau with special powers like this.

He collected so much information and so many documents, so many wiretaps and images about the private lives of ministers, politicians, the business world and even presidents that everybody was shaking before him.

It was only death that separated him from his post in 1972.

Dear friend, who will raise a hand to pass this law, I am calling on you for the last time.

You are doing a very dangerous thing. This way, you may be able to scare and intimidate the people who oppose you, or those you do not like, that you are irritated with. But, you should know this monster you create will one day come back to you like a boomerang and hit you.

Your private conversations, tapes, images will be put in front of you, because you are about to create the first legal parallel organization in the history of the Republic of Turkey.

Legal, but as dark a parallel organization as the illegal version…

Ertuğrul Özkök is a columnist for daily Hürriyet in which this piece was published on Feb 22. It was translated into English by the Daily News staff.