Turkey’s intel agency drafts pro-gov’t dailies’ headlines
The publication of photographs of people who it was claimed in pro-government dailies are affiliated with the Gülen movement gave fresh credibility to widespread rumors circulating in the Turkish capital that it is in fact the intelligence agency that drafts the headlines in pro-government media.
The Star and Sabah dailies, which are known as mouthpieces for the government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ran front-page stories on Wednesday titled "World imams of the Hizmet movement," accompanied by photographs of those people.
Most of the photographs were from official documents such as passports, suggesting that state agencies, in particular the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), were also part of the smear campaign against those named in the dailies.
The publication came right after Erdogan told a group of journalists from pro-government media outlets that key names in the Gülen movement -- inspired by the teachings of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and is also known as Hizmet -- in foreign countries would be revealed on Sunday.
The photographs published are from official documents, prompting concerns among society that personal information, considered to be under the protection of the state, was leaked by the state's key agencies to pro-government media outlets, violating fundamental rights.
The involvement of the intelligence agency in disclosing private data of citizens to the pro-government media in order to advance the interests of Erdogan and his allies in the government was exposed last year when a Twitter account leaked a voice recording of a conversation between Erdogan and his son Bilal a day after the Dec. 17, 2013 graft scandal, in which the two discussed the headlines of pro-government newspapers.
In the recording, Bilal tells his father that he met with Berat Albayrak, Erdogan's son-in-law, and Serhat Albayrak, Berat's brother, to decide on the headlines of the pro-government media outlets for the coming day, and that he would wait for confirmation from his father.
“We have to do something to make them [Hizmet] pay the price so that they will know their place. This job will be finished. Something must be done until we reach the one at the top [referring to Gülen],” Bilal tells his father in the recording.
Bilal then asks his father to order the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) to provide a background check on Hizmet, such as documents or inside information about its operation or internal structure. The prime minister answers his son's request by saying that he will take care of it. Bilal says pro-government reporters are finding information via their own sources, but that it would be “very different” and more effective if MIT lent a hand.
In those stories, Hizmet, a voluntary movement spreading interfaith and intercultural dialogue around the world, was portrayed as responsible for the creation of a "parallel state" within the current ruling administration. All these stories were denied by Gülen and the newspapers had to publish official admissions of libel on their pages.
After the biggest corruption scandal in the country's history, Erdogan targeted Hizmet by accusing it of plotting against the government through the graft scandal. Coining the term "parallel state," Erdogan vowed to "uproot" the movement and launch a "witch hunt" against its members at home and abroad.
Independent Taraf daily reported earlier this month that a special operations unit comprising ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) officials, advertising experts, journalists and Erdogan's advisers has been set up to undermine the main figures of the opposition and to undertake smear campaigns via the media.
The report stated that most of the support comes from within a “media unit” in MIT that was formed after Nuh Yilmaz, a journalist, was transferred from the pro-government Star daily to MIT. The intelligence agency has allowed the special operations unit to use its archives, allowing for vast information on the opposition parties and individuals to be used for smear campaigns.
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