January 2014. In the far south of the country, very close to the border with Syria, Adana prosecutor Aziz Takçi receives a call in the morning from a police lieutenant from the intelligence cell. It’s too early and Takçi gets angry, but reluctantly agrees to have a brief meeting at his home with the agent, who insists that the urgency and importance of the case requires it .
Already at the prosecutor’s home, the police officer tells him that he has received information concerning a vehicle loaded with explosives. Takçi replies that he cannot do anything with this data alone, but urges him to continue his investigation. A few hours later, already in court, another police officer addressed the prosecutor again and informed him that three trucks were irregularly transporting ammunition and weapons. The police officer even provides him with his license plate number. Now yes. Takçi authorizes the registration of trucks, stopped at the toll booth on the highway which leads to Gaziantep, only a hundred kilometers from Aleppo, and which serves as a gateway to Syria for foreign jihadists, a base of operations for Syrian opponents, diplomats and humanitarian workers and shelters thousands of people displaced by a war that has bled the country for three years.
The head of the truck registration unit calls the prosecutor again and again until he finally receives an answer. There is a problem. A vehicle arrives and its passengers introduce themselves as agents of the Turkish secret service. The new guests drive through the car on the road and try to stop the police from taking the trucks elsewhere. The prosecutor’s phone keeps ringing and he finally decides to show up at the scene of the search. He said he met with the provincial governor, who told him he had received calls directly from Erdoğan and the interior minister asking him to release the trucks. Shortly after Takçi’s arrival, the regional director of the secret services also appeared there. Hours of tough negotiations passed and, finally, Takçi authorized the release of the trucks, which continued on the road with all their cargo.
Meanwhile, authorities establish a perimeter of about five kilometers around stopped vehicles to keep onlookers away. Too late. The news spread quickly in the media and several journalists were detained in the security zone. The authorities only released them after confiscating the memory cards containing photos and videos of the incident.
At first, Erdoğan, irritated by the new scandal, assures that the shipment is a “state secret”, but he then corrects it and emphasizes that it is humanitarian aid intended for the Turkmen population of Syria. Step by step, he repeats the manual of the corruption scandal of December 2013: he accuses the Gülenists of wanting to overthrow the government with false judicial investigations, tries to bury the affair and persecutes those who discovered it.
He also dedicates a few words to Takçi: “Oh, prosecutor of the parallel structure [Movimiento Gülen]. You cannot intervene at MIT without my permission and knowledge. That’s what the law says. What audacity is this? This nation will not forgive him. This nation will not forget him. We will hold everyone accountable for this betrayal; this despicable operation; this espionage.
The new purge is followed by months of calm. Once again, it appears that Erdoğan is dodging the blow. But no. This time, it’s not the American courts [como ocurrió en el escándalo de las sanciones de Irán] those who misrepresent their strategy, but historic newspaper coverage. “These are the weapons that Erdoğan said did not exist.” Straight and to the chin. This is the headline of the Cumhurriyet newspaper of May 28, 2015, accompanied by a photograph of the agents’ recording.
In digital version, the media even offers a video of the police operation. The officers unscrew the huge metal containers from the trucks and inside are several tightly closed boxes. The knife cuts through the cardboard and ultimately reveals dozens of packets of antibiotics. Erdoğan knows what he is talking about when he talks about humanitarian aid. But under these crates of medicine, the police discovered eighty thousand machine gun bullets, a thousand mortar shells and a thousand other 100 mm shells, normally used to destroy tanks.
These weapons are intended for Syrian rebel groups fighting against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. It is impossible to know which of them because the war in Syria has become a network of armed groups in which they eat each other and in which the most radical end up gaining greater influence. The video is false, says the president, while assuring that the situation would not change anything if the trucks carried weapons. This is a Gülenist “betrayal”. And full stop.
This cover, published just ten days before the legislative elections, finds Takçi behind bars. He, three other prosecutors handling the case – dismissed since January – and a police commander were arrested a few days earlier. They are accused, among other things, of having attempted to overthrow the government or to partially or totally prevent it from carrying out its duty by resorting to force and violence. This audacity to intervene in the projects of the all-powerful president cost him a sentence of twenty-six years in prison: six for obtaining secret state documents, eight for making them public and twelve for belonging to the FETÖ. Alongside him, around twenty defendants were convicted for searching the trucks.
For Erdoğan, the messenger was another fundamental cog in the betrayal and Can Dündar, the journalist and editor of Cumhurriyet who published the news, was now in the crosshairs. “I guess he’ll pay a high price for it.” The president makes this statement trying to make it clear that if something happens to Dündar, he will have nothing to do with it. However, his argument instantly collapses: “I won’t let him go.” For Erdoğan, this is a personal matter. A low blow which, according to him, hides his former partner: Fethullah Gülen.
It is the president himself who files a complaint against Dündar and the newspaper. The journalist is said to have participated in a hidden plot hatched by the Gülenist network aimed at giving the impression that Turkey supports terrorist groups. Meanwhile, even if Erdoğan wins the elections, the AKP for the first time loses the absolute majority it has held since 2002.
Dündar did not belong to or sympathize with the Gülen movement, but “I will not let him go” became a reality on November 27, when he was arrested along with the newspaper’s editorial director in Ankara. “We are neither traitors, nor spies, nor heroes. “We are journalists.” Both are accused of espionage, revealing state secrets and membership in a terrorist organization. A few weeks earlier, the president had regained an absolute majority after ordering a repeat of the elections even though a coalition government had not been formed.
The journalist, with his characteristic round, thin-framed glasses resting on a broad, broad nose that narrows a mouth hidden between his gray beard, is sent to Silivri Prison, Istanbul. There, he is seriously disturbed by the ban on colored pencils. He draws flowers and colors them with the liquid he obtains by crushing the fruits he is given to eat.
After 92 days of preventive detention, the Constitutional Court ordered his release until trial and concluded that the detention violated his fundamental rights. Erdoğan is outraged. He sincerely believes that intelligence services should have “infinite” legal power, beyond the reach of prosecutors and small-time journalists. In an onslaught of sincerity in front of several journalists, the president went further: “I do not accept this resolution. “I don’t obey her or respect her.” The days pass and the president gives a new impossible twist to the matter during a trip abroad: “It is the Constitutional Court which violated the Constitution by opening the way to release.” [de Dündar]”. Erdoğan is obsessed with the journalist’s imprisonment and says he is ready to pay compensation if the European Court of Human Rights ends up convicting Turkey in a possible future case.
Dündar leaves the court with his wife while awaiting the judges’ verdict. The sky is clear on May 6, 2016 and the press cameras are pointed towards the doors of the courthouse. Some journalists have just gone live on the news to cover the last hour. Suddenly, just behind, a few meters away, two explosions are heard. The noise is sharp and short. Screaming like a traitor, a man shoots Dündar at point blank range. He is about two meters away, but that does not prevent him from disappearing and hitting another journalist who was trying to protect his colleague. Meanwhile, Dündar walks away, jumping backwards between trot and walk, keeping an eye on his attacker. His wife rushed at the man in the suit so security forces could arrest him and grabbed him with both arms with the help of another person. Several plainclothes officers draw their pistols. Amid the screams and surrounded by dozens of cameras that are no longer pointed at the stairs of the building, the attacker kneels and lies face down on the ground, with several police officers pointing at him.
“I don’t know who he is, I just saw he was pointing at me. What we know is who targeted us,” says Dündar a few minutes later.
The journalist returns to the building to hear the sentence: five years for revealing secrets. Dündar is not required to go to prison until his case is finally resolved, giving him enough time to flee to Germany. They tried to kill him twice in the same day: one bullet and another judicial death. He does not trust the justice system and Turkey is no longer a safe place.
The judges declared him a fugitive and his property was confiscated. Furthermore, he has another case pending under this cover in which he is sentenced in absentia to twenty-seven years in prison for espionage and supporting a terrorist organization – despite his ideological distance from the Gülen Movement. Meanwhile, the man who tried to shoot him twice is ordered to pay fifty euros and three years in prison, which he will not be able to serve if he does not commit another crime within five years. “What good judges,” jokes Dündar from Germany after hearing the sentence handed down to his attacker.
This is an extract from the book ‘They will feel the breath of Turkey on their necks: kidnappings, espionage and dirty war in Erdogan’s country (Peninsula), published on November 27, addresses Erdogan’s accession to power, his authoritarian drift and the persecution of his friends and enemies.
