Amid the resulting chaos and maelstrom, it is certainly very hard to make sense of the developments and offer an unerring analysis. Still, in light of the information that has been made available to the general public so far, I can put the following bluntly: There is nothing more natural than the prosecutors' resorting to legal procedures for interrogating MİT officials concerning MİT officials who were apprehended for aiding the KCK and based on the evidential documents and information they seized within the scope of the KCK probe. However, it seems to me a scandalous technical/tactical error, if not a legal or principle-based one, to summon MİT Undersecretary Fidan -- who was appointed to this position only one year ago and who is trusted by the prime minister -- to testify as a "suspect" under the same probe without calculating its potential political consequences.
Putting Fidan into the "suspect" category gave way to the emergence of propaganda that the judiciary is attempting to question/prosecute the negotiations that MİT conducted with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Oslo with direct authorization from the government. Unfortunately, this propaganda found incredibly extensive support. However, the Oslo negotiations were nothing new to the judiciary, and the ongoing KCK probe mainly focuses on the ties between MİT and the KCK/PKK, which go well beyond mere intelligence work. The prosecutor's above-mentioned technical/tactical error urged the government and pro-government media to act to protect Fidan, which in turn led to the unwanted creation of protective armor against judicial investigation into seriously suspicious activities of the intelligence organization that by its nature may serves as the center of the most decadent and shady business in the country. It would be more proper for the prosecutor to focus on incidents and activities rather than on Fidan, whose honesty can't be suspected. For instance, he might have consulted Fidan, while summoning other MİT officials to testify as suspects. This would surely have warded off any unnecessary crisis and discussion that would overshadow the very essence of the matter.
Concerning Fidan, I agree with Sedat Laçiner, who's fair-minded and cool-headed articles stand out among the pro-government publications of the Star newspaper that has chosen to lend unconditional support to MİT. Yesterday, Laçiner wrote: "I know Hakan Fidan. I have been monitoring and appreciating his achievements for a long time. He was the best person that could be appointed as MİT's head. However, MİT is not an organization that can be rectified only by appointing him along with a handful of good men. An unreformed, unrestructured MİT would create trouble for anyone who would be appointed as its head. No matter what other people say, this is my view." One cannot agree more with him.
My sincere agreement with Laçiner's comments about Fidan does not imply that I disapprove of the judicial authorities' effort to question and investigate the hardly explicable relations between MİT and the KCK/PKK. Particularly considering the suspicions surrounding the Uludere aerial strike that killed 34 innocent people, we cannot expect the judiciary to turn a blind eye to the fact that these abnormal relations pose a colossal danger. It is a flawed approach to the matter to see it as a conflict between those who want to solve PKK terrorism via police operations -- the judiciary and the police -- and those who seek to solve it though negotiations -- the government and MİT -- as this view ignores the fact that the police and prosecutors, empowered by the government's mandate, have been conducting successful operations against the KCK, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been lending strong support to these operations. Indeed, the government and the prime minister have been strongly backing the prosecutors and the police in their operations against the KCK. Those who accused and removed from office these police officers and prosecutors, what would they expect them to do? I really wonder about it. Should the police officers have just refrained from submitting the evidence and documents they seized concerning the KCK's top positions to the prosecutors? Should the prosecutors have chosen to lend a blind eye to those illegal ties despite such a great volume of evidence against them? Should they have undermined judicial independence by seeking the prime minister's approval for the investigation?
Everyone knows that although it secured strong popular support in being democratically elected to office, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has had a hard time in exerting control over the state's institutions. Despite all its efforts and sagacity, only recently was the AK Party able to attain partial control over the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), the Anatolia news agency, the Student Selection and Placement Center (ÖSYM), the Higher Education Board (YÖK) and many other similar public institutions. While the bitter truth was this concerning these ordinary institutions, how are we supposed to believe that by appointing a reliable person such as Fidan as MİT's boss, the government has been able to exert complete control over and fully sanitize MİT, a century-old institution that is expected to be the center of all sorts of psychological operations, disinformation campaigns, manipulations, traps and conspiracies.
I have noted above that the prosecutors made a formal error, but it is a mistake that relates to the essence of the matter. Therefore, to remove from office the prosecutors and police chiefs who conduct the probe into the KCK is a bigger mistake. Unfortunately, the government has further complicated this mistake by attempting to amend the laws specifically for an individual. Removing prosecutors and police officers from office has not been abolished, but bolstered the shocking claims and questions concerning relations between MİT and the KCK/PKK.
These claims include: One of those who attacked with arms housing units allocated to the prosecutors in charge of the probes into Ergenekon -- a clandestine organization nested within the state trying to overthrow or manipulate the democratically elected government -- and the Sledgehammer (Balyoz) action plan, in Başakşehir, İstanbul, was found to be a MİT member; a MİT member gave two Kalashnikov rifles to Abdullah Uçmak to be used in the assassination of singer İbrahim Tatlıses; and MİT members carried a six-page letter handwritten by PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan on July 6, 2011, to the KCK Executive Council in the Kandil Mountains -- and on July 10 the MİT delegation delivered this letter to Kandil after which the PKK launched a “people's war” on July 14 when 13 soldiers were killed by the PKK in Silvan. Who will investigate these claims?
Should we just dump the information and evidential documents suggesting that, in addition to their ordinary duties of collecting intelligence and information, MİT teams mediated the administration of the PKK/KCK, and they made promises to the KCK that they would ensure the timely completion of the KCK organization? Shouldn't someone examine the claims that MİT failed to take action to prevent the PKK attacks although it received intelligence reports about them in advance and that it also carried the messages about these attacks to Kandil and the PKK militants and that it reached agreement with the PKK about the PKK's being accepted as the police force in autonomous Kurdistan as well as allegedly preparing the ground for a United Nations or NATO intervention into the region.
If some powerful circles are very concerned about the judiciary's examining these claims, then Parliament should set up a fair commission to investigate these scandalous claims and accusations. In this way, questions and suspicions in people's minds should be clarified. But no one should attempt to cover up these dirty affairs revolving around MİT.
