Turkish Embassy in Madrid spied on critics

The Turkish government used its diplomats in Spain to profile critics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and gather intelligence about them to help forge a criminal case.

Judicial documents have confirmed that seven Turkish nationals in Spain had been profiled by Turkish diplomats and reported to the Foreign Ministry in Ankara. The information was later used in a criminal indictment for a charge of terrorism by notorious Turkish prosecutor Adem Akıncı.

According to a decision dated December 21, 2018, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office launched a separate investigation (file no. 2018/28370) into seven people who were listed in espionage files dispatched by Turkish diplomats in Madrid without any concrete evidence of wrongdoing. They were charged with “membership in a terrorist group” by Akıncı.

Prosecutor Akıncı, who led the investigation into the assassination of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov in December 2016, was accused of suppressing the evidence that the killer had links to various jihadist groups including al-Qaeda and was radicalized by several pro-government imams, including two who worked for the government religious authority, the Diyanet.

Nordic Monitor previously reported that several suspects told the court that Akıncı had forced them to testify during interrogation that the assassination was directed by the Gülen movement. They were later jailed after declining the prosecutor’s request to testify to that in court.