Turkish PM chairs ‘special security meeting’

ANKARA

AA Photo

As dissidents continued to raise their voices against the controversial new homeland security bill, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu attended a “special security meeting” before chairing a cabinet meeting on Feb. 11.

The two-hour-long closed-door meeting was attended by Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan, Interior Minister Efkan Ala, Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz, Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Güler, Gendarmerie Forces Commander Gen. Abdullah Atay and the new acting head of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT).

Turkish schools abroad, all of which the government plans to gather together under a foundation called the “Education Foundation” (Maarif Vakfı), regional developments, and the recently revealed cyber-attack against Turkish governmental agencies were on the meeting’s agenda.

Hackers from the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), suspected to be linked with the Bashar al-Assad regime, recently published confidential emails and messages from strategic Turkish government agencies. The hackers released a total of 967 email accounts in 14 categories on the Internet, unveiling scores of correspondence made between March 2009 and November 2012.

Elsewhere, deputies from all three opposition parties represented at parliament – the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) – continued to harshly criticize the draft security bill, a day after their leaders slammed the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) over the draft during the weekly meetings of their parties’ parliamentary groups.