MİT appealed the prosecutor’s move to summon Fidan to testify on Thursday, arguing that the prosecutor’s office should have asked permission from the prime minister, but prosecutor Sarıkaya rejected the appeal.
It is widely believed that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is disturbed by this and asked Mr. Fidan not to testify. Yet the prosecutor did not step back and obtained arrest warrants for four retired MİT officials who did not come to testify.
Yet again, we are witnessing a dramatic showdown between two government institutions: prosecutors and MİT. The government in this showdown misread the developments and chose to support MİT over the prosecution. One could even argue that the victorious side on the first day was MİT, given that almost all of the media supported MİT against the prosecutor.
Yet what is reflected in the media is a dangerous illusion that portrays MİT and the government as winning, though this issue will soon come to haunt the government, once people start talking about the substance of the file. Before outlining the details of the file, one needs to mention why the media are pretending that MİT is winning.
For various reasons the media want MİT to win this tug-of-war. This is largely because they want to stop prosecutors from digging into the dirty side of the state, which many mainstream media are members of.
Second, pro-government media think that what the prosecutor is doing, without government approval (as if prosecutors need approval from the government), is a challenge to the government’s authority and therefore want to teach the prosecutors a lesson.
Third, the media find this event an opportunity to show their solidarity with the government, thinking it would help them get along with the government better after this issue is settled.
Despite the fact that the media are trying to present MİT, and therefore the government, as the winner, there is no chance that MİT and the government will win this showdown. The reason why the government and MİT cannot win this war is because the prosecutors have found hard evidence for a link between MİT and the KCK. The prosecutor is accusing MİT of helping to terrorize the streets through the KCK network and MİT has conveyed not a single piece of intelligence to the police so far to arrest KCK members.
Given the fact that many members, and mid-level officials of the KCK network, are also MİT agents, people are now asking why, if it is MİT’s responsibility to stop the violence, and terrorism, it did not help police arrest KCK/PKK members.
Therefore, after this showdown, no matter what the government does, if MİT is not investigated, whenever there is a terrorist attack or street vandalism organized by the KCK/PKK, the people will automatically blame MİT and the government. This will be the case even if only a single incident is linked to MİT. Thus the mainstream media pretend that MİT is winning this confrontation, although there is no chance that MİT will win this game. The only way for MİT to win is to testify, allow the prosecutor to investigate, and come clean, which is unlikely, or remove those who are involved in dirty business. Only then will MİT come out victorious in this tug-of-war.
