Ankara has been collecting intelligence on specific individuals - Turkish nationals who oppose Erdogan's totalitarian drift - in about 20 countries on several continents for years.
Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization MIT uses journalists as operatives, establishes news outlets to collect intelligence and monitors foreign journalists and their contacts.
The practice, still ongoing today, has certainly undermined the credibility of Turkish journalists and dealt a serious blow to the integrity of news outlets, which are supposed to promote the public interest against the abuse of government power in the surveillance and illegal profiling of unsuspecting people.
Mustafa Özer, a 47–year-old-photojournalist was caught in a counterterrorism sweep launched by the Istanbul prosecutor’s office in December 2011 that targeted the network of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
When he was detained, he revealed his secret identity as a MIT agent in order to save himself from criminal charges and revealed many details of assignments from the spy agency since he was first recruited.
The police also searched his apartment on December 20, 2011 and found a trove of documents, some from the intelligence agency.
Ozer's statements exposed how Turkish intelligence established front media outlets called Bağımsız Haber Ajansı (Independent News Agency, BHA) and Euroasia News Network Photo (ENNPhoto) to conduct spying activities.
The spying activities pursued by Turkish operatives under the journalist cover is part of a worldwide campaign by the Erdogan government to hunt down critics, mainly those from the Gulen movement and the Kurdish opposition political bloc.
Critics of the Erdoğan government abroad, especially members of the movement, have been facing surveillance, harassment, death threats and abduction since President Erdogan decided to scapegoat the group for his own legal troubles.
No comments:
Post a Comment