Scenarios explaining the attack on MİT

Merve Büşra Öztürk

The arrest warrants that have been issued for Turkey’s former intelligence chief, his deputy and two other intelligence agents continue to be extensively debated. The warrants were issued a day after Hakan Fidan, the current head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT), rejected a summons to testify in connection with an investigation into a suspected Kurdish terrorist organization.

Many Turkish observers said the judiciary’s move against the current and former spymasters amounts to a power struggle between rival branches of Turkey’s security forces -- the MİT and the police. Some also saw the attempt to force Fidan to testify as a direct challenge to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. There is agreement among Turkish columnists that it is too soon to determine the real motive behind the arrest warrants; however, their columns are still full of possible scenarios.

“Apparently, there is a dispute between the government and judiciary. Until we completely understand what is going on, we can only try to analyze the situation,” says Gülay Göktürk in the Bugün daily. She proceeds to say: “As little is known, most of what we talk about are theories. But the two most reasonable predictions are: Yeni Şafak’s Abdülkadir Selvi has recently written that the government was planning to hold a meeting in May 2012 to discuss resuming dialogue with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party]. Abdullah Öcalan [the jailed PKK leader] also knew about this plan, and he agreed to talk with Fidan before this meeting. If that’s true, then the prosecutor who issued the arrest warrant might be aiming to attack this process of dialogue.” Bugün columnist Gültekin Avcı echoes Göktürk’s second prediction. According to Avcı, just as it would be nonsense to say the investigations into Ergenekon are actually targeting the Turkish Armed Forces [TSK], it is nonsense to call the latest operation into the MİT an investigation into the government’s policies on its fight against terrorism. Avcı says the motive behind the arrest warrants is to reveal the agents within the MİT who work for terrorist organizations and to rid it of deep structures.

Noting that this incident, in a way, served the government by dismissing claims that the government became a state operating in conjunction with the judiciary and the General Staff, Star’s Taha Kıvanç said the motivation behind the current tension between the judiciary and the government might be to hurt the Gülen community, followers of Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen. Kıvanç underscores that the Gülen community may not be the direct target of the attack, but it will most probably damage the Gülen community as well as the government and Erdoğan. After all, he says, with its radical suggestions like providing education in Kurdish and its organization of the Abant Platform, which regularly sponsors roundtable and panel discussions on issues crucial to Turkey, the Gülen community is known to be one of the biggest supporters of the dialogue process.

Published on Today's Zaman, 13 February 2012, Monday