At the same time, this particular development took place during a period when the country’s most important political power, the bureaucracy, was going through an enormously turbulent period. In fact, we are really talking about a period and a process during which societal actors are searching out places for themselves within the bureaucracy and, at the same time, expanding their arenas while doing so.
In the past, it was possible to get an idea of where Turkey stood by simply focusing on the military and scrutinizing the relations between the elected government and the military. But our world is now filled with multiple actors. And then there is the presence of many sub-groups -- either trying to forge alliances with one another, or which are at odds with one another -- within the state and society. The general situation means that new analyses are necessary on a daily basis now, because it is nearly impossible to predict what tactical steps these sub-groups might take. The reality is, however, even more complicated than this because it is only an assumption we are making when we say these sub-groups are homogenous. In fact, a more realistic approach calls for us to base our calculations on the presumption that these sub-groups are not fully in control of their own inner structures, and that their political ventures overlap at many critical junctures.
In the end, we are forced to consider that we inhabit a country whose legal foundation is in fact very weak, a country crumbling under the force of a wave like that of the Kurdish issue, a wave strong enough to shake the state itself. It was against this backdrop that the attempt by prosecutors to open up investigations into some National Intelligence Agency (MİT) agents, including former and new undersecretaries, took place. It now appears that in the police report, which made its way to the prosecutor’s office, there are allegations that MİT itself has maintained a presence in the illegal Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), and that it has supported this organization as well as working as an interlocutor between Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) cadres in the Kandil Mountains. This allegation, which no doubt has a lot of truth to it, can be explained in two ways. The first is that MİT has knowingly staked out a place for itself within the ranks of the KCK with the ultimate objective of creating a substructure that will allow it to destroy the KCK. The second reasoning here is that a sub-group within MİT crossed the professional line in their relations with the KCK, and began acting according to some other sort of volition. It seems most likely that the truth lies in the middle. In other words, it appears that MİT’s operation to infiltrate the KCK wound up being used by a subset group within the ranks of MİT with its own aims in mind.
