March 26, 2014

Former police chief says anti-Hizmet operation to be based on fake evidence

Although Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been threatening a police operation against the faith-based Hizmet movement for several months, he has taken no concrete steps so far, which suggests continuing efforts to fabricate evidence on which to base the would-be probe, according to former İstanbul Police Department Intelligence Bureau Chief Ali Fuat Yılmazer.

“If you are going to launch an operation, you don't say you are going to launch an operation. He [the prime minister] says ‘after the elections.' If there is a file [of evidence], the operation cannot be conducted after the elections. It must be done immediately. You are making preparations, and you tell people about them. This is the first time an operation has been leaked to the media before it's been launched,” Yılmazer said on Tuesday evening on a Bugün TV program.

Yılmazer also said that the operation to be launched against the Hizmet movement, which is inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, will not be based on concrete evidence. “If you insist on launching an operation, then you will do what you have to in order to achieve your purpose,” he said. “The prime minister talks about an operation every morning and evening. But he doesn't have a single piece of concrete evidence. My God, look at the situation this great country has been put in. They [the government] were talking about advanced democracy. Where are you dragging Turkey?” he said, adding that such an operation would have no credibility in the eyes of the international community.

Erdoğan has claimed that the Hizmet movement, which he often calls the “parallel structure,” is behind a major corruption and bribery investigation that went public on Dec. 17, 2013, saying the movement wants to overthrow his powerful Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government. On various occasions, the prime minister has vowed to launch an operation cracking down on the Hizmet movement after the March 30 municipal elections.

“I have been removed from my post three times, and no one has told me why. I have done nothing that is against the law. I have served in the police force for 25 years and I have not committed any crimes. I have not been engaged in any plots, but I know who is plotting,” Yılmazer said, without elaborating.

Yılmazer was removed from his post and reassigned earlier this month in a purge involving thousands of police officers after the Dec. 17 operation, which implicated members of the prime minister's inner circle.

The former police chief attributed his reassignment to pressure from the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan; Yılmazer had coordinated, with the cooperation of former Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin, a series of police operations against the urban wing of the PKK, the terrorist Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK). “Naim was removed from his post for the same reason,” Yılmazer said, adding, “The operations against the KCK began in 2008. All officials fighting the KCK were removed from their posts.”

Yılmazer also addressed an incident in which 35 suspects in an operation against the terrorist KCK, including some mayors, were handcuffed in public in violation of police procedure.

The fact that the suspects in Diyarbakır were handcuffed on their way to give testimony to public prosecutors led to outrage among some segments of society. Yılmazer said the suspects were handcuffed on the orders of then-Interior Minister Beşir Atalay, and that photos of the suspects wearing handcuffs were leaked to the media on Atalay's orders. “The handcuffing incident was a plan of Atalay's. Let him deny this, if he can,” he said.

According to Yılmazer, the Turkish state has given up its fight against the real “parallel structure” -- for him, the terrorist PKK and KCK -- and instead is waging a war against the Hizmet movement. “End your cooperation with bloodthirsty killers instead of calling others [Hizmet] a parallel structure,” he said. “They [state officials] are hushing some things up with their claims of a parallel structure. They are creating a phobia of the [Hizmet] community and have exiled thousands of police officers and prosecutors.”

Since Dec. 17 of last year, as many as 7,000 police officers have been removed from their posts and reassigned. Dozens of prosecutors, including those leading the graft probe, have also been reassigned. The government's critics have accused it of trying to stymie the corruption probe with the massive purge, which has since spread to other government agencies, including the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) and the Ministry of Finance.

MİT trained terrorists in Kandil

In the interview, Yılmazer also claimed that the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) had some uncomfortable connections to terrorist groups. He said a man who took some members of the terrorist organization Devrimci Karargah (Revolutionary Headquarters) to northern Iraq's Kandil Mountains, which host many PKK hideouts, and trained them there, was later revealed in a police investigation to be a MİT official.

The former police chief also claimed that MİT gave a Kalashnikov rifle to a former PKK member and forced him to stage a terrorist attack. But he didn't specify when and where the attack occurred. He also said MİT has failed to prevent terrorist attacks by the PKK and KCK despite having good intelligence.

According to Yılmazer, after İstanbul police captured a suspect who was planning to assassinate AK Party deputy Mehmet Metiner, MİT officials helped the terrorist avoid legal proceedings.

“I cannot carry this burden anymore. I am entrusting all I know to my people. All the deeds of MİT have been leaked to the media. Why don't they remove any MİT officials from duty? If a plot was hatched against the prime minister, an investigation should be launched, but no investigation has been launched yet,” he added.

Published on Today's Zaman, 26 March 2014, Wednesday

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