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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Abdullah Bozkurt, the leading investigative journalist reporting on Turkey, has been threatened with assassination in Stockholm, Sweden, where he has been living since the July 2016 coup attempt in Istanbul. Bozkurt directs the Nordic Research and Monitoring Network, and publishes the Nordic Monitor.  

The threat to kill was issued on CNN’s television network in Turkey on January 15. “Turkish national intelligence will find him, I’ll tell you that,” declared Mesut Hakkı Caşın, “I don’t know whether MIT [National Intelligence Organisation] will feed him to the fish or the sharks, but traitors always get their punishment some day.”  Caşın is a member of the powerful Security and Foreign Policy Committee which was created in July 2018 by a decree of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (lead image, centre) giving the committee members the role of “proposing new policies, oversee implementation of policies and take macro decisions”.

Caşın, 65, also lectures at Turkish universities. His television remarks have been reported this week in Stockholm in the Nordic Monitor.

In addition to reporting from official Turkish military and police files on Erdogan’s corrupt involvement in the Syrian war, Bozkurt and the Nordic Monitor have published investigations of Erdogan’s involvement in schemes to kill Russians. These include the assassination of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov, shot in Ankara on December 19, 2016; and the ambush of the Russian Sukhoi-24 by Turkish F-16 fighters on the Syrian-Turkish border on November 24, 2015. Erdogan and Hulusi Akar, then chief of the Turkish General Staff, planned the attack on the Sukhoi; Akar then personally congratulated the Turkish pilot who had shot down the Russian aircraft.

Caşın’s threat carries official weight because of his membership of the Security and Foreign Policy Committee.

Left to right:  Mesut Caşın, İbrahim Kalın, Abdullah Bozkurt.

A study of this committee by the NATO-financed Norwegian think-tank, the Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI) of Bergen, reported in 2019: “nine members of the council are academics, and there are also professional advisors and journalists with personal relations to the president. As with all the other presidential committees, the President [Erdogan] is the official chair of the Security and Foreign Policy Committee. However, in practice, İbrahim Kalın, the Chief Advisor to the President, currently acts as the deputy chair… the members of the Security and Foreign Policy Committee are currently preoccupied with pressing foreign policy issues rather than policy planning. If a new Turkish foreign policy doctrine is to be formulated, this group will write it.”

HOW PRESIDENT ERDOGAN PLANS HIS FOREIGN OPERATIONS  

Source: https://www.cmi.no/

“What is worth noticing,” Arne Strand and Siri Neset of CMI wrote, “is the apparent lack of appointed members with formal connections to the MIT, the regular military and former or current diplomats who one would assume to provide valuable information/knowledge on foreign policy developments. Also worth noting is that the Committee has no permanent secretary, meaning that there is no regulative mechanism delivering the Committee’s recommendations to the President in an institutional fashion. We have come to know that the Security and Foreign Policy Committee normally meets every second week, sometimes every week. The appointed members are given work dossiers according to their expertise and are assigned to prepare reports. This work primarily revolves around producing scenarios for future foreign policy developments. However, the members also produce reports on ‘real time issues’. The members are entitled access to all information from all institutions, such as the MFA and MIT. In practice, however, they have to request information and reports from these institutions through the Presidency and rely on whatever report/information is given to them.”

Listen to Caşın issuing his threat against Bozkurt last week:

Source: https://nordicmonitor.com/

Bozkurt’s research reports on Erdogan’s operations against Russia have revealed details of General Akar’s role in the Su-24 ambush which resulted in the beating and killing of the Russian pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Peshkov, after he had parachuted to ground; and  of marine Alexander Pozynich, who was killed in the rescue attempt for Peshkov’s co-pilot.  

The Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Russian General Staff have publicly shown their sentiment towards Akar.   

Source: https://nordicmonitor.com/

For the full Nordic Monitor file of investigations of Erdogan’s anti-Russia operations, click to open.

Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, the Turkish policeman who murdered Ambassador Karlov, and was shot dead himself a few minutes later. For the Nordic Monitor file on official Turkish involvement in the killing, and operations to deceive the Russian investigation, read this.

For Erdogan’s lobby in Moscow, read this.

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