Turkish intelligence infiltrated a militant cell in Switzerland
Turkish intelligence agency MIT infiltrated a leftist militant group in Switzerland using a resident-turned-asset there, monitored the group’s recruitment, fundraising and terror plots but did not share the information with Turkish law enforcement agencies or judicial authorities.
In a damning statement to the police on December 6, 2011,
41-year-old Murat Şahin (aka Bayram), a long-time resident of Switzerland,
revealed everything he had done for MIT in Swiss territory, where his handler
operated in disguise out of the Turkish Embassy.
Some time in 2010 MIT asked Murat to infiltrate leftist
terrorist group the Revolutionary Headquarters (Devrimci Karargah, or DK), a
Marxist-Leninist organization that was involved in drug trafficking, illegal
arms trade, gambling and prostitution according to the details of the case file
in Turkey.
Murat managed to gain the trust of key DK figures in
Switzerland, connected with their operatives in Turkey and Iraq where DK had
secret cells and passed all the information he collected to MIT. Yet none of
the vital intelligence tips obtained by the agency was shared with the police,
the main law enforcement agency in Turkey, or judicial authorities, who had
already been investigating the group in a counterterrorism probe.
In fact, according to Murat’s statement, MIT even
facilitated the communication among DK cells in Switzerland, Turkey and Iraq.
The intelligence agency did not act when DK recruited new operatives and moved
them across Turkish borders illegally, funneling cash to its operatives in
order to fund the group’s activities. MIT handlers instructed Murat to keep
information from the police if he got caught. On one occasion MIT even alerted
him to flee a crackdown when it learned that the police would launch an
operation against DK cells.
Murat was no stranger to MIT when he was recruited by the
agency. His father, Yasin Şahin, who had been involved in various militant
leftist groups in Turkey before settling in Switzerland, also worked with Turkish
intelligence and fed information to his handlers from within. Through his
father’s connections Murat was familiar with several militant organizations in
Switzerland. He had been responsible for the external relations of the Maoist
Communist Party (MKP), listed as a terrorist group in Turkey, for years.
According to his statement, Murat experienced a falling out
with the MKP over personal disputes with other members in 2005 and decided to
work with the Turkish Embassy. Mutlu Büyükbay, a Turkish intelligence officer
working under the cover of a diplomat at the Turkish Embassy in Bern, recruited
him as informant. He was paid a monthly allowance of up to 600 Swiss francs
between 2005 and 2011 and was provided with two phones for secure
communication.
In 2009 Büyükbay was replaced by MIT agent Ali Doğan, who
was the new handler working as a diplomat at the embassy. He was gathering
information about leftist militant organizations, their members and finances
and passing it to MIT. He even took the contact list from his father’s phone
and shared it with the agency.
According to Yasin, the the Marist-Leninist Liberation Party
(MLKP) had an organization called the Switzerland Immigrant Workers’ Federation
(Föderation Der Immigrierten Arbeiter In Der Schweiz, or İsviçre Göçmen İşçiler
Federasyonu, İGİF) and an affiliated entity, Bildung und Kultur Zentrum Zürich
(Zürih Eğitim ve Kültür Merkezi, or the Zurich Education and Culture Center).
The MKP runs the Föderation für Demokratische Rechte in der Schweiz
(Switzerland Democratic Rights Federation, Isviçre Demokratik Haklar
Federasyonu or İDHF), and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) had an
organization called the Federation of Kurdish Associations in Switzerland
(Kültür Derrnekleri Federasyonu, or FEKAR).
In 2010 the agency asked him to collect information about
the DK, whose leader, Orhan Yılmazkaya, was killed in a shootout with the
police in the middle of İstanbul on April 27, 2009. The DK was already under
investigation in Turkey, with the police trying to identify its operatives and
prosecutors gathering evidence to file an indictment against its members.
Under a new assignment Murat discovered that a man he had
known as Faruk (real name Şemdin Şimşir) since 1996 was in charge of the DK in
Switzerland. Under the pretext of purchasing a ticket to a commemoration event
for slain DK leader Yılmazkaya, he managed to meet Şimşir and was able to gain
his trust. In time he was given assignments such as running DK publication the
Revolutionary Front (Devrimci Cephe) in Switzerland. He was clearing all his
moves with MIT in the meantime.
He learned that the DK was financed by a man named Şişman
who ran a brothel in the German city of Stuttgart.
Şimşir, now 56, had been going back and forth between
Switzerland and Iraq, where the DK had five or six members trained at a PKK-run
base in the Zap region of Kurdistan. Yasin was also asked whether he was
willing to travel there, but he declined, citing family reasons, when MIT told him
to turn down the offer.
In April 2010 Yasin went to Turkey to take part in the May 1
Labor Day protests and asked Şimşir to arrange a meeting with local DK
militants there. Şimşir told him to drop by the Revolutionary Front magazine
bureau in Istanbul’s Taksim district and act in line with their guidance.
MIT agent Doğan called him from Switzerland while he was in
Istanbul and said MIT headquarters wanted him to go to Ankara. A man picked him
from a park after his arrival in Ankara and took him to a house where a woman,
50 or 60 years old, greeted him. He was told the woman was an intelligence
chief for MIT responsible for monitoring all leftist groups in Turkey.
“Not everyone can come here easily, you’re only the third
person. I don’t meet with everyone,” the woman said. “This matter is special.
You don’t need to be afraid, the [Turkish] state and we [MIT] are behind you,”
she said, Murat recalled of the conversation. “I was told to not give any
statement in the event the police detained me,” he added. He was given 500
euros in cash, and MIT let him go back to Switzerland.
The next year, he went back to Turkey again to attend the
May Day rally in Istanbul but changed his plans at the last minute after a
cryptic phone call from Doğan, who said, “Do not go to the picnic tomorrow.”
When he returned to Switzerland, Doğan told him MIT had learned about a police
raid on DK members and that the agency did not want him to get burned in the
crackdown and did not want MIT in trouble with law enforcement and the judicial
authorities.
Murat also learned that the PKK wanted to cooperate with the
DK in expanding into the Black Sea region in the north of Turkey, a stronghold
of Turkish nationalists, which made it nearly impossible for the PKK to operate
in such a hostile environment. The DK promised to facilitate the PKK actions in
that region according to Şimşir, who met with Cemil Bayık, a senior PKK
commander. Bayık told Şimşir that both the PKK and the DK shared the same fate
and that one cannot survive without the other.
As part of his assignment Murat also acted as a courier
conveying secret messages from Switzerland to DK militants in Turkey, doing so
with the approval and knowledge of the Turkish intelligence agency. On December
3, 2011, when he landed in Istanbul, he was greeted by MIT agents Irfan Aküzüm,
Hüseyin Uğur and Nihat Topçu, who took a copy of the DK message, sealed it
again and instructed Murat to deliver it to a DK militant named Volkan Karakuş (aka
Vural) in Turkey. When the meeting took place, Vural told him he had recruited
a young man who wanted to enlist with the DK and go to the military training
camp in northern Iraq.
Two days later, on the day of his return, he met a MIT agent
again at the airport to hand over the telephone he picked up when he first
arrived in Turkey. After the meeting the police detained him when he was
checking in. He was already flagged by the police when his phone conversation
with DK militant Bayram Akadoğdu (aka Ali Haydar) was intercepted. The wiretaps,
obtained with a court authorization as part of a criminal probe into the DK,
showed him engaging in illegal activities on behalf of the DK.
Murat told the police that he had his own suspicions about
assignments he had with MIT and noticed on several occasions that the critical
information he passed to the intelligence agency did not result in a police
crackdown or the thwarting of a DK plot. The information and contact details of
the DK leaders he obtained and passed on to MIT did not result in any police
action or prosecution, he said.
According to Murat the DK had nothing to with leftist
revolutionary ideas, which were protected by powerful people in branches of
Turkish state security and even had some international support. The DK was
involved with drug trafficking, prostitution and gambling. He said MIT already
knew that a DK militant named Rayif Demir (aka Terzi Rauf) was running an
illegal drug and arms trade on behalf of the organization in Europe.
He said other Turkish leftist groups view the DK
suspiciously and shy away from working together with it. He pointed out that
Şimşir has no leadership skills to run the organization because he was a heavy
drinker and suffered from psychological problems. At one time he even tried to
commit suicide by shooting himself in the head, Murat claimed.
The prosecutor’s office had to separate Murat’s case from
the DK case file under pressure from the government, which had changed the
intelligence bill in 2012 to provide broader immunity for MIT agents from
criminal prosecution. With a new amendment, the prosecution of MIT agents under
the penal code required the permission of then-Prime Minister and current
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In most cases, the government did not allow the
prosecution of intelligence officers even if they were clearly involved in
breaking the law. Saved from legal troubles Murat, who was briefly jailed, returned
to Switzerland.
In Switzerland Murat was questioned by Şimşir about
allegations that he was connected to MIT. He lied and denied the reports.
Şimşir asked for proof and wanted to see his statement. The MIT agent at the
Turkish Embassy did not help, saying he was awaiting instructions from
headquarters on how to proceed. On May 22, 2012 he went to Turkey again to
plead with the police to delete parts of the statement in which he had revealed
his work for MIT and asked them to take a new one, but the police said it
couldn’t do what he was asking.
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