New revelations about Ankara’s espionage activity through secret document – Ankara is also looking for Gulen followers in Norway and the Netherlands
The “hunt” continues by Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime targeting “Gülenists”. The search for those related to the Turkish president’s rival, self-imposed in the US, Fethullah Gulen, has intensified since 2016, when the failed coup led to thousands of purges.
New revelations about Ankara’s espionage activity come to light through classified Turkish government documents, dated June 7, 2022.
As self-exiled journalist Abdullah Bozkurt writes in the Nordic Monitor, Turkish diplomats have not stopped the illegal practice of collecting information on critics and opponents.
Among the new targets, for 2022, as mentioned, are Greece, Norway and the Netherlands.
The document is marked “confidential”. It was issued by the General Directorate of Security (Emniyet), which is under the Ministry of Interior.
The document said the information was forwarded to Emniyet by the Turkish Foreign Ministry on June 2, meaning the ministry gathered the names from reports sent to Turkish embassies and consulates.
The document was signed by Erdogan Kartal, deputy head of Emniyet’s counter-terrorism department, and distributed to 74 Turkish provinces.
In fact, it is pointed out that six people, against whom an investigation was ordered, are in Norway, the Netherlands and Greece.
The people targeted by the Turks are believed to be linked to the Fethullah Yulen movement, which is critical of Erdogan’s regime.
Workers at Turkish embassies and consulates have faced severe reprimands in a number of European states in recent years over spying revelations.
It is recalled that in 2016 two Turkish diplomats in Bern, as it was revealed, had orchestrated the kidnapping of a businessman of Swiss and Turkish origin.
Two years later, in 2018, the Swiss prosecutor’s office issued arrest warrants against the diplomats, while a year earlier criminal investigations had begun against the two.
Turkish diplomats were accused of spying for another state to kidnap the businessman, who had links to the Gulen movement and had lived in Switzerland for 30 years.
