Fethullah Gulen's 'Parallel State' Phone-Tapped Thousands in Turkey: Officials

'Parallel State' Phone-Tapped Thousands in Turkey: Officials
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/02/24/world/europe/24reuters-turkey-inve
stigation.html?ref=world


By REUTERSFEB. 24, 2014, 12:27 P.M. E.S.T.


ANKARA - The network of a U.S.-based cleric illegally tapped thousands of
telephones in Turkey to blackmail and concoct criminal cases as part of a
campaign of covert influence over government, a top adviser to Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday.

A lawyer for preacher Fethullah Gulen, accused by Erdogan of building a
parallel command structure in police and judiciary, described the
accusations as unjust and contributing to an atmosphere of "hatred and
enmity" in Turkish society.

The government accuses Gulen's Hizmet (Service) network of engineering
corruption charges against figures including businessmen close to Erdogan
that came to light with a series of raids on December 17. The scandal has
posed the biggest challenge yet to Erdogan's 11-year-rule.

The government responded by reassigning thousands of police and hundreds of
prosecutors and judges in a bid to purge the influence of Gulen, once an
ally of Erdogan believed to have helped the prime minister rein in the power
of the military.

Hizmet runs a large network of schools, businesses and media groups in
Turkey and across the world. Tension with Erdogan came to light when the
prime minister moved to close the schools, a primary source of Hizmet's
income and influence.

One of the prosecutors named in newspaper reports as being involved in wire
tapping denied the accusation.

"There was definitely no monitoring or phonetapping of thousands of
politicians, writers, NGO representatives and businessmen in the framework
of this dossier in the way that the newspaper stories say," prosecutor Adem
Ozcan said in a statement carried by news websites.

According to Star newspaper, Erdogan adviser Yalcin Akdogan and others
including the interior minister, the national intelligence agency head and
politicians from various parties were among those whose phones were tapped
over three years.

"For years they listened to 7,000 people and were going to open a court case
against them for being a member of an imaginary criminal organization,"
Akdogan told Reuters.

"Completely imaginary crimes are created, a scenario is created based on
phone-tapping...If you listen to somebody for five years you can construct a
crime with imaginary scenarios."

"We are faced with a structure which listens to everybody illegally, follows
everything concerning private life, using it when necessary as blackmail and
fabricating crimes by people," Akdogan said.

Other senior Turkish officials also described widespread illegal
eavesdropping, including of Erdogan himself.

"SELAM TERROR ORGANISATION"

Gulen's lawyer Nurullah Albayrak said in a statement there were "unjust"
efforts to attribute the wiretapping to his client, calling for the matter
to be investigated and saying such media reports were designed to be
exploited politically.

"This situation will serve no purpose other than to provoke further the
hatred and enmity which is being created in society," Albayrak said in a
statement published by media outlets close to Gulen.

Star newspaper said two anti-terrorism prosecutors had obtained court orders
authorizing the phone-tapping as part of an investigation into the "Selam
Terror Organization", a hitherto unheard of group whose name means
'Greeting'.

Journalists, academicians, businessmen and senior members of various
non-governmental originations were among others whose phones were bugged,
the paper said, publishing a full-page list of those targeted.

The Yeni Safak daily, also close to the government, said thousands of people
including Erdogan were bugged.

Energy Minister Taner Yildiz, among those allegedly bugged, said he believed
his phone was tapped for at least 2-1/2 years, describing such wire tapping
as targeting all of Turkey and not just the AK Party.
Continue reading the main story

"I believe this to be extremely wrong and a big insult to the Turkish state
and the government," he told reporters in Ankara. "This is no longer just
the AK Party's problem."

Earlier this month, senior officials said Turkey was launching a criminal
investigation into the alleged "parallel state". A close ally of the cleric
has accused the government of conducting a campaign of 'incitements and
lynchings".

Parliament has passed laws tightening government control over the Internet
and the courts. It has also drafted a law seeking powers for the national
intelligence agency in what his opponents regard as an authoritarian
backlash against the graft inquiry.

Gulen left Turkey and settled in the United States in the 1990s when a
secularist establishment accused him of Islamist activities. He backed
Erdogan's rise to power in 2002, but the two men's paths have diverged,
Gulen criticizing among other things his assertive policy on Israel and the
United States.

(Reporting by Orhan Coskun, Nick Tattersall, Samia Nakhoul and Ozge
Ozbilgin; Writing by Daren Butler; editing by Ralph Boulton)

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