Prosecutors in Istanbul charged the former police intelligence
officer, Hanefi Avci, with aiding and abetting a left-wing terror
group. Arrested in Ankara in late September, Avci denies the charges.
He also insists that his arrest is the result of a Gulen Movement plot
against him. "This is a [Fethullah Gulen] Movement operation," he told
the daily Radikal in a telephone interview as he was being taken to
Istanbul. His arrest was intended "to camouflage [the Movement's]
crimes," he added.
Avci believes the Gulen Movement's motive is a desire to gain revenge
for the publication of a book this August in which he alleged that the
movement's followers had infiltrated state bodies, including the
police and the judicial system. The book, titled Simons on the Golden
Horn, has been a publishing sensation, selling 600,000 copies in the
first month.
Gulen supporters, meanwhile, deny any involvement, and say it would me
stupid of them to engineer an arrest of a known opponent.
With secularists and Islamists locked recently in a heated struggle
for control of Turkey's political and social agenda, Avci's arrest has
proven to be particularly divisive, and, this being Turkey, time may
never reveal which side is right. In the short term, however, it is
the reputation of the Movement that has taken the biggest beating.
This is due, in large part, to Avci's reputation for integrity. In
1997, the self-confessed former torturer of left-wingers stood up in
front of a parliamentary commission and gave evidence of the state's
involvement with the mafia and murder. Almost everything he said was
later substantiated.
A year later, around the time when the Gulen Movement was coming under
attack from media outlets, Avci publicly defended police
investigations into military operations against Islamic groups,
cementing his truth-teller status. He was then promptly demoted.
The Movement's recent response to Avci's arrest has added to its woes,
including among the party faithful. Writing in the pro-Gulen daily
Star on October 2, the columnist Elif Cakir described watching a news
story on the Movement-owned TV channel STV about how "Avci's forbidden
relationship [with a terrorist group] had disappointed colleagues. A
man who cheats on his wife cheats on everybody, they said."
Quite who "they" were was unclear, Cakir goes on to say: the news item
contained no hint of an interview with any of Avci's colleagues. The
news item "smelled of rage to me," Cakir asserted.
A columnist for the daily Haberturk, Soli Ozel thinks the Gulen
Movement may have gotten carried away with its recent success. "Those
in power have a shared weakness - they do not know where to draw the
line," he commented. "Sooner or later, they make a move which
undermines their power. Increasingly, the Hanefi Avci affair looks
like being [that sort of move]."
On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.