Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan plans to deploy a secretive and specifically educated unit hooked up to intelligence company MIT to escalate tensions with Greece amidst his escalation of tensions after the creation of a brand new narrative – Greece’s Aegean Islands the truth is belong to Turkey.
The MIT unit, the existence of which has by no means been publicly admitted, is a comparatively new software within the arsenal of Turkey’s intelligence company and shall be put to make use of for the primary time in establishing a clandestine, military-style operation in opposition to Greece, Nordic Monitor reported.
The Stockholm-based outlet defined that plot contains a number of choices, starting from sabotage in Greek islands near the Turkish mainland to elevating a Turkish flag on one or a number of uninhabited islets and rock formations in addition to conducting a false flag operation to justify a Turkish response.
Erdoğan remains to be contemplating the alternate options submitted to him by his confidant, Hakan Fidan, the top of MIT, and has not but determined which plan of action he needs to take.
In accordance with info obtained by Nordic Monitor from sources acquainted with the plot, it will likely be as much as this particular unit created inside the intelligence company to hold out the operation within the Aegean Sea with logistical help from the Turkish navy’s air and naval property.
The plot, stored strictly confidential on a need-to-know foundation inside Erdoğan and Fidan’s shut circle, shall be put into movement someday close to the final election in 2023 to rally the nation behind Erdoğan and produce a windfall vote for his ruling Justice and Improvement Celebration (AKP) and its nationalist allies.
For many years, MIT had no military-type operational functionality, and its mandate had been primarily confined to info gathering operations to offer the perfect intelligence to policymakers in Turkey.
When MIT wanted muscle on the bottom, it used to depend on a number of elite items within the navy akin to Fight Search and Rescue (Muharebe Arama Kurtarma, or MAK), part of the Special Forces Command (Özel Özel Kuvvetler Komutanlığı); the Turkish navy’s Underwater Offense (Su Altı Taarruz, or SAT), the equal of the US Marines; and Underwater Defence (Sualtı Savunma, or SAS).
Often the police division’s Particular Operations Police Power (Özel Harekat Polis) was additionally tapped by the intelligence company to conduct home operations.
That began to vary when Fidan, a hard-core pro-Iran Islamist who had no expertise in intelligence, was appointed to steer the company in Could 2010.
Fidan got down to rework the company according to directions from his boss, transferring new individuals from different authorities companies and at instances recruiting some from the surface, particularly from Islamist teams.
He, who admires Iran’s mullah regime and was groomed in Shiite research circles when he was a younger noncommissioned officer in Ankara, wished to create a Turkish model of the Quds Power inside the company. Fidan instructed his newly recruited employees to make that occur.
Within the meantime, he additionally launched a purge of lots of of brokers from MIT on fabricated prices to make room for the brand new recruits, intimidate his critics inside the company and suppress dissent within the rank and file.
One of many key recruitments Fidan made occur as soon as he took over the reins of MIT was the switch of 57-year-old former soldier Kemal Eskintan, who had some intelligence expertise. Eskintan served as a undertaking officer when he was a significant between July 2006 and June 2007 within the Common Workers Directorate for Counter-intelligence and Safety.
Common Workers doc that exhibits Kemal Eskintan labored as a undertaking officer within the intelligence part of the navy.
Eskintan was initially assigned to the division accountable for offering protecting companies to high-value individuals. In 2014 he was put in command of the Division for Particular Operations (Özel Faaliyetler Dairesi).
The primary vital operation carried out by Eskintan was to coach and equip jihadist teams in Syria. Recognized by his nom-de-guerre Abu Furqan, Eskintan unleashed hundreds of armed jihadists in Syria, many with hyperlinks to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
When Turkey labored with the US on a train-and-equip program till 2016 for what was marketed as help for the reasonable opposition in Syria, the names and teams recognized as candidates by Eskintan for enrollment in this system got here principally from al-Qaeda and ISIS-linked teams. It isn’t stunning that the CIA rejected a lot of them throughout screening of the candidates submitted by Turkey.
The second vital position performed by Eskintan was throughout a false flag coup try in July 2016, which was orchestrated to create a pretext for a mass purge of the Turkish navy, together with the ouster of two-thirds of all flag officers, in addition to to launch a navy operation in Syria, assist Erdoğan turn out to be president with no checks on his powers and stifle dissent and opposition in Turkey.
Eskintan introduced a number of jihadist teams to Turkey in preparation for the false flag and positioned them in Istanbul and several other different key cities with a view to inflicting bloodshed within the streets. In truth, a number of the individuals who had been concerned within the lynching of unarmed cadets who had been ordered to take part in a drill and coaching train and to protect the Bosporus Bridge below the pretext of safety in opposition to a terrorist assault had been Eskintan’s jihadists.
After victims’ households filed felony complaints, prosecutors got down to examine the lynching of the cadets however had been shortly stopped by the Erdoğan authorities’s swiftly drafted decree-law that offered blanket immunity for civilians who participated anti-coup occasions on July 15 and 16. All investigations to establish the perpetrators of the lynching’s had been subsequently dropped.
Regardless of repeated motions filed by defence attorneys in coup trials to convey Eskintan and his aide, Kadir Sazoğlu, a former sergeant within the military, to the witness stand for cross examination to search out out what roles they’d performed through the coup had been rejected by judges below a authorities directive. No clarification was offered by the courts for his or her refusal to problem summons for them to seem within the court docket.
When Turkey was concerned in Libya and despatched Syrian jihadists to battle there, it was Eskintan who had carried out the clandestine operation on behalf of the intelligence company. He made repeated journeys to there to supervise operations.
Since 2016 Eskintan has additionally been concerned in cross-border operations to kidnap Erdoğan critics and opponents in Turkey and amongst diaspora teams to be able to maintain a local weather of concern, and within the intimidation of vital journalists who’re nonetheless exposing the wrongdoings of the Erdoğan authorities below difficult circumstances from exile.
Now he’s in command of the false flag operation in opposition to Greece to intentionally stoke tensions to be able to serve his boss. He’ll depend on this secretive unit groomed inside the intelligence company below his stewardship to be able to make that occur as soon as the ultimate go-ahead is given by Erdoğan.
The concept of creating a stand-alone particular forces unit inside MIT was fleshed out by Eskintan beginning in 2012 according to Fidan’s ambitions to hold out clandestine cross-border operations.
As an alternative of counting on comparable items that exist already within the navy and police, Fidan wished a free hand and didn’t need to face the restrictions the company encountered when utilizing the particular forces of the Turkish navy and police division, which have their very own units of guidelines and are comparatively accountable to the general public and the judiciary, versus MIT, which enjoys carte blanche immunity because of laws pushed via parliament by Erdoğan.
Turkish Navy’s elite particular drive SAS group members had been seen in a 2021 navy drill.
With a purpose to construct the particular forces, MIT approached a number of high-ranking officers inside the Special Forces Command (Özel Kuvvetler Komutanlığı, ÖKK) in 2013 for recruitment in addition to ÖKK retirees. The candidates had been supplied larger pay, extra advantages and extra importantly immunity from prosecution in the event that they had been uncovered.
Lt. Gen. Zekai Aksakallı, the commander of ÖKK who solid shut ties with MIT, inspired the transfers.
MIT additionally began placing its personal brokers via ÖKK coaching, particularly for partaking in sabotage, raids, entrapment, destruction, infiltration and false flag operations as a part of a course formally titled “Unconventional Operations” (Konvansiyonel Olmayan Harp, or KOH). Brig. Gen. Semih Terzi, the quantity two in ÖKK, was not pleased with MIT’s underhanded dealings, particularly in Syria and Iraq, and was staunchly against MIT’s unlawful actions.
Terzi was assassinated in July 2016 by a secret plot concocted by MIT and falsely branded as a putschist to cowl the tracks that led to his homicide.
When his spouse began digging round to be taught extra in regards to the assassination, she was thrown in jail to silence the household from ever revealing what her husband discovered about MIT’s illegal actions in Syria and the way Aksakallı personally profited from battle and arms gross sales.
With no opposition left to intestine the navy’s ÖKK, Eskintan intensified his efforts to spice up MIT’s personal particular forces unit. Lately, the key MIT operations carried out in Syria and Iraq to assassinate and seize senior figures of the Kurdistan Staff’ Celebration (PKK) and its Syrian offshoots had been carried out by this particular forces unit.
MIT usually leaks these operations to the media to be able to promote the company in public and construct political capital in opposition to opponents within the police and navy items.
Now the identical unit is ready to strike Greek property, to not advance Turkey’s strategic aims or tackle pressing nationwide safety issues, however reasonably to advertise an embattled Erdoğan upfront of the final election amid the mounting monetary difficulties voters are going through of their day by day lives.
If and when that occurs, the general public dialogue will transfer past bread-and-butter debates to battle with Greece, and Erdoğan hopes to trip out the vital elections amid a heightened nationalist euphoria.
