Turkey's CHP reveals a document with reference to a 'non-existent intelligence unit'

After a recent board meeting of Turkey’s main opposition CHP (Republican People’s Party) under the leadership of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, party’s deputy chair and spokesperson Bülent Tezcan shared a critical information with the public regarding a reference made in a legal document to a non-existent institution with the name of ‘National Security Unit of the Presidency’.

On behalf of his party, Spokesperson Tezcan called on the chair of ruling party AKP, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, as well as ministers of justice and interior, to provide an explanation for the mentioning of this non-existing state institution in a legal document regarding the investigations into the FETÖ, the alleged group responsible for the failed coup.

In the document revealed by MP Tezcan, this non-existent institution is referred by judiciary members as a source for gathering intelligence.

“As you can see, the members of the judiciary obtain information from another state unit. The name of that unit turns out to be ‘National Security Unit of the Presidency’. The State of Turkey has no such institution. This is quite apparently an act of gathering intelligence illegally. Because, no such institution has been created legally. And, you should know that this is a privatey established organization”, said Tezcan.

Oppoosition MP also reminded that ‘dictators, throughout history, always created such private intelligence units’ and defined current revelation as an indication of ‘a new paralel state structure’ within Turkey’s state.

In response to the CHP MP’s assertions, General Directorate of Security gave a statement claiming the name ‘National Security Unit of the Presidency’ was ‘just a shortened version’ of the ‘Directorate of Unit Fighting Against Crimes Against National Security’, which is a unit established earlier in 2016.

The conclusion of the statement of the head office of the security forces included the following remarks: ‘If Mr. Tezcan had requested this information, we would have extended it to him’.

However, there is no office in Turkey with the Turkish title of ‘presidency’. Although it is referred to as the ‘presidency’ in English, the current positon of President Erdoğan is, in fact, referred to as the ‘Head of the Public’ in Turkish and the office he holds is named as the ‘Office of the Head of the Public’.

The Turkish name stated in the document revealed by MP Tezcan, on the other hand, uses the word in Turkish that is the literal meaning for ‘presidency’.

Front-page article of BirGün published on 10 August 2017, Thursday with the headline of 'Have they created another intelligence unit aside from MİT?'

Source: https://www.birgun.net/haber-detay/paralel-istihbarat-174092.html