Shadowy Turkish operatives are plotting the murders of high-profile Turkish dissidents and religious minority leaders living in exile in a bid to sow further chaos and instability, a prominent Turkish lawmaker warned today. 

Garo Paylan, a member of parliament for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said he had received confirmation from Western officials about Turkish individuals with alleged connections to the Turkish state who are planning to carry out sensational assassinations of several prominent journalists and other government critics. “There is a list of targets,” he told Al-Monitor in a telephone interview.

Paylan emphasized that there is no evidence that the operatives are acting under direct orders from the government. “Rather, in gray and turbulent times such as those we are experiencing today, rogue networks inside the state take matters into their own hands, as we saw with the murder of Hrant Dink,” he said, referring to the Armenian Turkish newspaper editor gunned down outside his Istanbul office on Jan. 19, 2007, by a young man thought to have been put up to the job by ultranationalist security officials.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly lashed out at Western governments that have offered refuge to a growing population of political exiles fleeing possible imprisonment in Turkey for alleged ties to Fethullah Gulen, the Sunni cleric and No. 1 suspect in last year’s failed coup. Others are accused of connections to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).