MİT’s fear: what if ‘it’ is revealed
For me, the report is totally a “state scandal…” If it were in a normal democracy, it would have created the Watergate effect. For two days, I was expecting the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) to issue a statement.
The story first appeared the other day on the news website “T24” in full detail.
There was no response… The next day, many newspapers have published it, first and foremost, the daily Radikal. Surprisingly, there was, again, no response from the MİT.
Oddly enough, other papers also covered this incident as if it were a “routine” and normal procedure. I was extremely surprised.
The headline of the story is this, “MİT warned eight months ago about Reza Zarrab…”
The MİT started monitoring the money traffic between Turkey and Iran eight months ago. It ascertained the money traffic among Turkey, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Dubai and China in full detail.
It processed it on April 18, 2013 with its report number 45650928.
Up to this, everything is normal.
The report was also sent to the “Office of the Prime Minister” with a three-page cover letter. This is also normal. However, after this, things started to get a bit strange.
Two Cabinet ministers were also caught in the MİT monitoring. Accordingly, when Zarrab’s gold carrying planes were stopped in Turkey, Economy Minister Zafer Çağlayan stepped in. Meanwhile, information was given that Interior Minister Muammer Güler’s son received money in return for facilitating one of Zarrab’s relation in obtaining Turkish citizenship.
However, the real scandal lies at the end of the report, at the “Conclusion and Evaluations” section…
The expression quoted from the report by the papers goes as such, “In the case that R. Zarrab’s current relationship with Cabinet ministers Zafer Çağlayan and Muammer Güler are disclosed, these aspects in question are assessed as those that can be used against the government.”
What do you think the meaning of this assessment is?
The MİT is openly tipping off the prime minister, “Your ministers are involved in this traffic. If you do not take precautions, this could be used against you…”
Let me write it more clearly: it says, “Take measures, otherwise you will be in trouble.”
For God’s sake, if this is not “covering up the crime and spoliation of evidence,” then what else is?
Anyone who knows the state’s protocol can maybe explain this to me:
Is it listed among the duties of the Republic of Turkey’s intelligence organization to provide such “protective and guiding special service” for the prime minister?
There is also a second dimension to the incident.
Doesn’t the information provided by the MİT eight months ago mean the claims about the ministers that the prosecutors are after are not really a conspiracy prepared by the community?
At the head of the MİT sits Hakan Finan, one of the two or three people the prime minister trusts in Ankara. Fidan, let alone being a man of the community, on the contrary, is a bureaucrat who is at the target of it. If the institution he heads confirms the information concerning the ministers and their sons, then it is not convincing to present the operations in Istanbul as the product of “a parallel structure within the judiciary.” The meaning of this is very clearly, “Covering up of a corruption claim…”
I am curious about this matter also: What did the Prime Ministry do after it received the report? I wonder if after this warning that meant, “You have been caught, run away” was some evidence spoiled.
Or, even if they have received such information eight months ago, nothing was done with the self-assurance of “We have oppressed the media; the justice is my justice; the police are my police. Well, the MİT is also mine. Nothing will happen to me.”
48 hours have passed… I am curiously waiting… What do both the MİT and the Office of the Prime Minister say about “this very special service” of “my MİT”?
Ertuğrul Özkök is a columnist for daily Hürriyet in which this piece was published on Jan 8. It was translated into English by the Daily News staff.