Turkish government mum about abducted intelligence personnel
Several senior Turkish intelligence officials have been in PKK hands for more than three months, but the government is refusing to share what it knows about them with the parliament.
An undeclared number of senior officers from Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) have been held by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for more than three months, but the government continues to refuse to respond to opposition requests for information on the situation. The refusal of intelligence chief Hakan Fidan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim to appear before the legislature or otherwise provide answers to parliamentary inquiries has led the opposition to conclude that the government is trying to avoid acknowledging that the MIT has been engaged in “activities exceeding its mission.”
Alican Unlu, a representative from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who has filed a parliamentary query, told Al-Monitor that the abducted MIT personnel had been tasked with assassinations, which is why the government is maintaining its silence.
According to the PKK, its forces captured two senior MIT officers on Aug. 3 near Sulaimaniyah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where they were preparing for an operation against senior PKK leader Cemil Bayik. The PKK went public about the abductions on Aug. 30. Pro-government media reported that the MIT officers had been dispatched to capture Bayik, while Kurdish media and PKK publications claimed the goal was to assassinate Bayik.
“The prime minister is not responding to our queries to avoid exposing MIT operations in that region,” Unlu told Al-Monitor. “The PKK had earlier claimed several times that the MIT had attempted assassinations. It said the culprits were caught by the PKK and exposed. This is the first time that MIT’s officials were themselves being used in such an operation instead of freelancers.”
