Anti-terrorism raids on homes across Melbourne this morning were part of a national effort, with properties in Sydney and Perth also targeted.

In a joint blitz, police executed a number of search warrants as part of their investigation into organisations funding overseas terrorists.

The counter-terrorism teams include the Australian Federal Police, and officers from New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.

The raids are part of an investigation into the funding of terrorist organisations.

“The community can be assured that this investigation is not related to any terrorist-related threat or incident,” a police spokeswoman said.

The Melbourne raids took place in Glenroy, Coolaroo, Pascoe Vale, and Dandenong.

Police raided the offices of the Kurdish Association of Victoria on Fawkner Road, Pascoe Vale, before dawn.

They sealed off the area and entered the offices.

Police seized boxes full of documents in the raids.

They also took desktop computers, hard drives and bagged evidence to waiting police cars.

Local Kurds, however, said the raids were nothing more than a political stunt.

Sniffer dogs combed the scene and association members were barred from entering the property.

Up to seven police cars were at the scene at first light.

The raids are believed to be linked to Kurdish groups providing funding to terror organisations overseas.

The Kurdish Association of Victoria was established to help newly arrived Kurdish refugees and migrants.

Its website says it provides a range of services for the Kurdish community, including settlement, advocacy, referral, education and health issues.

It also offers cultural and recreational programs in the areas of folk dancing, traditional music and Kurdish language.

The raids are believed to be linked to a crackdown on funding for the Kurdish Workers’ Party, which is listed as a terror organisation internationally. The PKK’s goal is to establish an independent Kurdish state.

with Reid Sexton

http://media.theage.com.au/entertainment/red-carpet/brownlow-party-booze-limits-1797523.html, 19 August 2010

The Stuttgart ruling is another blow for the DHKP-C

The Stuttgart state court Friday convicted three men for being members of a banned Turkish leftist group and of supporting its terrorist activities.

The court ruled that the three were all high-ranking members in the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), a group which investigators say seeks to overthrow the present Turkish government and replace it with a Marxist one.

Membership in a foreign terror organization carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The group features on the terror lists of Turkey, the European Union and the United States.

As part of a plea agreement in which they confessed to involvement with the group, Hasan S. (46) was sentenced to two years and 11 months in prison. Mustafa A. (52) and Ilhan D. (40) who were also convicted of forging documents, were given five years and three-and-a-half years respectively. Hasan S. and Mustafa A. are Turkish nationals. Ilhan D. is a German national of Turkish origin.

After the sentencing, Mustafa A. and Ilhan D. walked free from the courtroom as they had already served their time in detention before and during the trial which lasted 15 months.

The DHKP-C is believed to have orchestrated attacks on Turkish institutions in Germany as well as on purported “enemies” of the group until it was banned in August 1998.

The following year, the group’s general secretary, Dursan Karatas, said that it would no longer use violence to achieve its political aims.

The DHKP-C is also accused of masterminding a wave of hunger strikes among left-wing prison inmates and their friends and families in Turkey that has resulted in nearly 70 deaths in four years.

Convictions follow extradition of regional leader

The convictions in Stuttgart come after Hasan Huseyin K., the suspected leader of a regional chapter of the DHKP-C in Germany, was extradited to Germany from the Netherlands in June.

He was accused of belonging to a terrorist organization and also faced charges of extortion and of beating and shooting two political dissidents in a Hamburg restaurant.

The DHKP-C is believed to have some 650 members and supporters in Germany.

nda/AP/dpa

Editor:  Susan Houlton

Source: www.dw-world.de, 07.08.2009

A PKK fighter takes position with his rifle during a training session in 2007 in northern Iraq, 10 kms near the Turkish border. A senior Iraqi Kurd official on Wednesday joined the United States in rejecting Iranian accusations that the US military trains separatist Kurdish rebels for undercover work in Iran.

(AFP/File/Mustafa Ozer)

• Play Video Iraq Video:Multiple bombs in Baghdad Reuters
• Play Video Iraq Video:U.S. soldiers killed in Baghdad Reuters
• Play Video Iraq Video:Kirkuk suicide bomber kills at least 7 Reuters

Wed May 20, 3:16 pm ET

ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) – A senior Iraqi Kurd official on Wednesday joined the United States in rejecting Iranian accusations that the US military trains separatist Kurdish rebels for undercover work in Iran.

“With all due to respect to Mr Khamenei, it appears that he has received incorrect information,” said Jabbar Yawar, about the accusations made by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“The United States has no military base in Kurdistan to train the PJAK (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan),” said Yawar, the spokesman for the Peshmerga ministry, the Kurdish equivalent of the Iraqi defence ministry.

“The United States put the PJAK and the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party) on their list of terrorist groups, so how can they support these groups they regard as terrorists.”

Khamenei said on Tuesday that the United States was trying to make mercenaries out of young Kurds.

“Behind our western border, the US is training terrorists. It is spending money and handing out weapons to be used against the Islamic republic” of Iran, he said.

“Americans have dangerous plans for (Iraqi) Kurdistan … Their plans are not aimed at defending the Kurdish people, but they want to control them,” Khamenei said in a televised speech.

The US Defence Department on Tuesday dismissed the accusations and countered that Tehran was meddling in Iraq.

“I find it ironic that the Iranians would be accusing us of meddling, when in fact over the last six, seven years in Iraq they have consistently been trying to undermine the peace and stability that we are trying to bring to the Iraqi people there,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.

The border region with Iraq has often seen deadly clashes between Iran’s armed forces and the Kurdish separatists.

Iranians have targeted PJAK, an Iranian Kurdish separatist group which has launched attacks on Iran from rear-supply bases in the Kurdish mountains of northern Iraq.

Treasury Designates Free Life Party of Kurdistan a Terrorist Organization

February 4, 2009
TG-14

Washington, DC – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), a Kurdish group operating in the border region between Iraq and Iran, under Executive Order 13224 for being controlled by the terrorist group Kongra-Gel (KGK, aka the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK).

“With today’s action, we are exposing PJAK’s terrorist ties to the KGK and supporting Turkey’s efforts to protect its citizens from attack,” said Stuart Levey, Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

Designated in December 2002 under E.O. 13224, KGK has been involved for more than 20 years in targeting Turkish government security forces, local Turkish officials, and villagers who oppose the KGK in Turkey. Turkish authorities have confirmed or suspect that KGK is also responsible for dozens of bombings since 2004 in western Turkey.

The KGK leadership authorized certain Iranian-Kurdish KGK members to create a KGK splinter group that would portray itself as independent from but allied with KGK. PJAK was created to appeal to Iranian Kurds. KGK formally institutionalized PJAK in 2004 and selected five KGK members to serve as PJAK leaders, including Hajji Ahmadi, a KGK affiliate who became PJAK’s General Secretary. KGK leaders also selected the members of PJAK’s 40-person central committee. Although certain PJAK members objected to the KGK selecting their leaders, the KGK advised that PJAK had no choice.

As of April 2008, KGK leadership controlled PJAK and allocated personnel to the group. Separately, PJAK members have carried out their activities in accordance with orders received from KGK senior leaders. In one instance, PJAK’s armed wing, the East Kurdistan Defense Forces, had been acting independently in Iran. KGK senior leaders immediately intervened, however, and recalled the responsible PJAK officials to northern Iraq.

Under E.O. 13224, any assets PJAK has under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen, and U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with PJAK.

Identifying Information
FREE LIFE PARTY OF KURDISTAN
AKAs:
Kurdistan Free Life Party
Party of Free Life of Kurdistan Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistane
PJAK
PEJAK
PEZHAK

Location:
Qandil Mountain, Irbil Governorate, Iraq

Alt, Location:
Razgah, Iran

About 67 Turkmen Qaragol tribes were also injured in the attack at a gathering of Turkmen Qaragol tribal leaders in Yusufiya, 20km (12 miles) from Baghdad. The Qaragoli tribes are Türkmen tribes that are settled in the region of Baghdad and the province of Alwaset.

The suicide bomber had entered the home of a Sheikh as a council meeting was being held by the Turkmen Qaragol Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah Salih to discuss the election ahead of the provincial polls scheduled for later this month.

A number of tribal elders and leaders on the board of support and Sheikhs from Turkmen Qaragol are reported to be among the casualties. The injured from the blast have been transferred to the Alyermuk Hospital in Baghdad and to the General Hospital of Almahmudiya for treatment.

Mofak Salman

Ireland

Dec 10, 2008, 00:22

(WMR) — Tuncay Guney, the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) agent who was a key player in the right-wing “Deep State” Ergenekon movement that attempted to overthrow the Turkish government, spent time in North Jersey in the months prior to the 9/11 attacks, according to a reliable source who spoke to WMR.

Guney now claims to be a rabbi but his status as a rabbi has been rejected as a falsehood by Turkey’s Jewish community leaders. Guney is listed as a rabbi at Jacob House (“B’nai Yakov”) Jewish Community Center in Toronto but the Toronto Board of Rabbis and the Turkish Jewish Congregation have no records of a Rabbi Tuncay Guney or “Daniel Levi,” an alias used by Guney. It is believed that “Jacob House” is a front for intelligence operations and not an actual synagogue. Jacob House shares an address with the New York Institute, which also maintains an address in New Jersey.

Guney was arrested by Istanbul’s Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime Department on March 8, 2001, after a police search of his home turned up two guns, fake license plates, a number of Turkish identity cards, over a hundred fake diplomas, and other Ergenekon evidence. The head of the Istanbul police unit, Adil Serdar Saçan, suspected Guney was a key player in Ergenekon. However, Sacan was, himself, later arrested and charged with being a member of Ergenekon. However, WMR has learned from its Turkish sources that Sacan is honest and was set up in an attempt to tarnish his image after he discovered an Israeli connection to the powerful Ergenekon movement.

As a member of the Turkish police JITEM unit, Guney reportedly spied, under cover as a journalist, on Iraqi Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani and Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Talabani is now the President of Iraq.

After Guney’s release on bail on March 9, 2001, Şenkal Atasagun, MIT’s undersecretary, asked the CIA to exfiltrate Guney to the United States. Guney was flown on Turkish Airlines to New York. Guney eventually ended up, according to our sources, living in North Jersey and making a living pumping gas.

Guney lived in the “973” area code zone, an area that encompasses East Rutherford and Fairlawn, towns that were centers of activity for Israeli Mossad Urban Moving System operatives who were spotted celebrating the 9/11 attacks from at least two locations — Liberty State Park in Jersey City and an apartment complex on the Jersey Palisades above Weehawken, the headquarters of Urban Moving Systems. The FBI and CIA later identified Dominick Suter, the manager of Urban Moving Systems, as a Mossad intelligence officer. Five Urban Moving Systems employees were arrested in their van in East Rutherford during the afternoon of September 11, 2001, after they were seen traveling toward the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan. Their Urban Moving Systems van tested positive for the presence of explosives. Suter fled the United States and the five Israelis, some of whom were identified as Mossad in an FBI/CIA database, were released after a few months in jail after heavy pressure was applied on the U.S. government by Israel.

Guney is also suspected of acting as an agent for Mossad, as well as the CIA. His presence in North Jersey, a “hot zone” for Israeli intelligence before and during the 9/11 attacks, points to a possible Turkish connection to the attacks.

On August 7, 2005, WMR reported on details of the apprehension of the Israelis for their false flag actions: “Jersey City was a major base of operations for the 1993 World Trade Center attack. The Ryder van used in that attack was rented from a Jersey City rental agency . . . there was a call placed to the Jersey City Police Department that claimed ‘Palestinians’ in Arab clothes were seen celebrating the attacks. Although the Jersey City Police discovered their 911 system tapes on September 11, 2001 disappeared from their servers and achives after ISI [of Mount Laurel, NJ] took over the contract, some tapes implicating “Arabs” found their way into the hands of WNBC-TV in New York in June 2002. WNBC played transcripts of 911 calls from the Jersey City Police:

Dispatcher: Jersey City police.
Caller: Yes, we have a white van, 2 or 3 guys in there, they look like Palestinians and going around a building.
Caller: There’s a minivan heading toward the Holland tunnel, I see the guy by Newark Airport mixing some junk and he has those sheikh uniform.
Dispatcher: He has what?
Caller: He’s dressed like an Arab.

“It is clear that the Jersey City Police Department’s 911 call tapes were manipulated to delete any calls that might implicate the Israelis. The one call provided to WNBC was clearly an attempt at a ‘false flag” operation implicating ‘Palestinians’ wearing ‘sheik uniforms’ as the culprits in at least one of the white vans driven by Israeli ‘movers’ on the morning of September 11. After the van was traced to the Israeli moving company, the BOLO [Be On Look Out for message] went out for the arrest of the vehicle’s driver and passengers. An East Rutherford policeman directing traffic away from the closed Lincoln Tunnel on Route 3 East noticed the van was driving slowly on the service road towards the tunnel. The tag of the vehicle was only off by one letter from what was contained in the BOLO (JRJ 13Y) and the front New Jersey plate had been removed. It is very possible that to confuse the police, the Israelis were using NJ plate JRJ 13Y as the rear tag on two white vans – the one sighted in Liberty State Park and the other in Maria’s apartment building parking lot. In fact, local police reported a number of white van sightings during September 11, with a number of them phoned into the police. Maria told ABC News she phoned tag number JRJ 13Y to the Jersey City Police after seeing the Israelis driving in a white van celebrating the first plane’s impact, while Liberty State Park witnesses said the same tag number — JRJ 13Y — had been passed to the police and FBI after a white van with ‘celebrating Arabs’ had been chased from the park by the park’s chief ranger after the first plane impact.[11] It was clear that officials of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection in Trenton, which has authority over the state’s parks, ordered Liberty State Park officials not to talk to the media about September 11 and the Israeli van.”

The man who then New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey placed in charge of his liaison to New Jersey’s security and law enforcement agencies, Golan Cipel, later was allegedly identified by U.S. intelligence as a gay “honey trap” Mossad officer tasked with entrapping and blackmailing McGreevey. McGreevey resigned as governor after details of the homosexual affair became public.

Ergenekon has been accused of carrying out terrorist attacks and assassinations in Turkey as “false flag” operations to discredit, undermine, and eventually overthrow Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Former FBI Turkish and Persian translator Sibel Edmonds told the Sunday Times of London earlier this year that her translations of wiretaps of Turkish, Iranian, Israeli, and American individuals pointed to Turkish training for the 9/11 hijack ring. Edmonds said that an “Al Qaeda” leader, a Syrian named Louai al-Sakka, had trained 9/11 hijackers at a military base in Turkey, under the watchful eyes of the Turkish military, which we now know was riddled with Ergenekon agents up and down the chain-of-command, four star generals to non-commissioned officers. Al-Sakka was convicted in 2007 for his role in a series of 2003 bombings in Istanbul that targeted the British Consulate, two HSBC bank branches, and two synagogues and his now serving a life prison sentence. The Turkish ring may have been involved or known about several beheadings of Western prisoners in Iraq that were blamed on “Al Qaeda.”

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA station chief in Istanbul, wrote the following in the Dallas Morning News: “Sibel Edmonds makes a number of accusations about specific criminal behavior that appear to be extraordinary but are credible enough to warrant official investigation.”

Coupling the Turkish official investigation of Ergenekon with Edmonds’ information, there is more than a smoking gun pointing to 9/11 as a “false flag” operation involving Turkish, Israeli, and U.S. intelligence operatives. The Saudi and Pakistani financial connection to the 9/11 hijackers and the “false flag” operation has already been well-documented.

It is time for the incoming Obama administration to seriously consider appointing a new 9/11 commission, sans enablers and possible conspirators in the 9/11 false flag attack on the United States. Thousands of pages of documents are now available in Turkey, the United States, Britain, India, France, and other countries that will prove that 9/11 involved a network much larger than a former CIA asset hiding in an Afghan cave, Osama Bin Laden, and 19 ne’er-do-well “hijackers,” some of whom were more interested in going to strip joints and bars in the days before they decided to take express flights to “heaven” to spend eternity with Allah.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
Email Online Journal Editor

Source: onlinejournal.com, Dec 10, 2008

[2]

Mossad implicated in a coup plot in Turkey, a NATO country; CIA fingerprints also found on attempt

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Dec 4, 2008, 00:20

(WMR) — Fresh from revelations, reported by WMR, that Israel’s Mossad and Chabad House-based criminal syndicates were targets in a criminal gangland retribution attack by a notorious Muslim gang in Mumbai, comes word that Mossad has, once again, been implicated in an intelligence and criminal network, this time in Turkey.

What makes this latest example of Israel’s failure to stem the criminal activities of its intelligence service and criminal syndicates worse is that Turkey, unlike Israel, is a NATO ally of the United States and, therefore, the United States is bound by treaty to protect NATO allies from aggression by non-NATO states, including Israel.

The Turkish and other Middle East media are reporting that the Mossad has been fingered in connection with a right-wing Turkish criminal and intelligence gang, known as Ergenekon, that stands accused of attempting to overthrow Turkey’s democratically-elected Justice and Development (AKP) Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul. Several Turkish papers have named a Turkish rabbi, Tuncay Guney, aka Daniel T. Guney and Daniel Levi and code-named “Ipek” or “Silk,” as having served as a double agent for the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) tasked with infiltrating the shadowy but powerful “state within a state” group Ergenekon. Guney had been arrested by Turkish authorities in 2001 for distributing fake drivers’ licenses and phony license plates for luxury cars. A document recently uncovered by the Turkish press revealed that Guney had also infiltrated a police intelligence unit (JITEM) working with Ergenekon to destabilize Turkey. Guney was exfiltrated to the United States and he now heads up the B’nai Yaakov Synagogue and Community Center in Toronto, Canada. Guney has denied that he has been an agent for Israel, Turkey or the United States but the MIT has confirmed the document identifying Guney as an agent for MIT is authentic.

The Turkish daily Hurriyet has reported that Guney served in MIT’s Counter-terrorism Unit (CTU) and in the MIT unit that monitors Iran. Hurriyet also reported that Guney had developed a contact at the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, Muhsin Karger, the consulate’s political affairs undersecretary.

Guney also has claimed to be a journalist and it is also alleged that he was a member of the PKK. Silvyo Ovaydo, the leader of the Turkish Jewish community, called Guney a fraudulent rabbi and said he was not even registered as a rabbi at the B’nai Yaakov synagogue in Toronto. Guney is said to have once worked for Islamist media organizations in Turkey but suddenly converted to Judaism and became an “instant rabbi” in Toronto.

At the heart of the Ergenekon story lies Mossad and its reported attempts to turn Turkey into another Lebanon or West Bank/Gaza, a country wracked by internal strife and constant warfare that would usher into power a strong right-wing military dictatorship. In the trial of one of the accused murderers of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, the lawyer for one of the accused murderers asked another accused murderer, Erhan Tuncel, a one-time police informer like Guney, if he had an Israeli girlfriend. Tuncel refused to answer the question, citing an invasion of his privacy. However, it was clear that what the lawyer was driving at was a Mossad connection to the murder of Dink, a murder that was being pinned on Turkish anti-Armenian nationalists by the corporate and heavyily Israeli Lobby-influenced media in the West.

When 89 suspects were named in a 2,455-page indictment by a criminal court in Istanbul last July, many retired Turkish army officers, the neocon network, especially in Washington, which is their major citadel, along with Jerusalem and London, began to throw cold water and the term “conspiracy theory” around charges in the Turkish indictment that Ergenekon played a major role in the formation of several Turkish terrorist groups to disrupt Turkish politics, including the illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkish Hizbollah (Party of God), the Marxist-Leninist People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP-C), and the little-known Islamic Great East Raiders Front (IBDA-C). The neocon Jamestown Foundation in Washington called the indictment’s links between Turkish military elements and radical terrorists a “conspiracy theory.” Organizations like Jamestown have no other choice. If it were also proven, as it was in Turkey, that various terrorist groups like “Al Qaeda,” “Deccan Mujaheddin,” and others exist courtesy of the nurturing and support by American, Israeli, and other Western military-intelligence structures, groups like Jamestown would lose their reasons for existence — to make propaganda and receive funding in order to keep the terrorist bogeymen, the actual “Emmanuel Godsteins,” alive.

Guney is reported to be the 86th suspect in the indictment of Ergenekon. Guney is believed to have revealed the initial detailed information on the existence of Ergenekon in order to avoid being charged in the case.

The involvement of extreme right-wing Turkish military and intelligence officials and Turkish organized crime networks, with Mossad and, possibly, CIA agents acting in concert with a suspected CIA-funded Turkish Islamic charismatic madrassa and Islamic centers’ chief named Fethullah Gulen — whose activities parallel pan-Turkic/Eurasianist (re: George Soros) goals of Ergenekon — is similar to the scenario now playing out in India where a little known group called “Deccan Mujaheddin” may have been created as a ruse by Indian right-wing military and intelligence officers, allied with Mossad and CIA agents, to sow discord in India and bring about a right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena Hindu government.

Gulen owns a number of media and business interests in Turkey and runs Islamic centers throughout central Asia and even in Russia.

In polls, some one-third of the Turkish public believe Islamist Nurcu sect charismatic leader Grand Hodja Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, is part of a movement that aims to seize control of the Turkish state and a little over a third believe that Gulen is funded by “international powers.” After he was acquitted in Turkey of attempting to overthrow the secular state with his religious organization, Gulen was first denied a Permanent Resident Card or “Green Card” to remain in the United States by the U.S. Distrrict Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania but then an appeals court granted Gulen a Green Card. In October of this year, a federal appellate court found that U.S. immigration authorities improperly rejected Gulen’s request for a Green Card. The appeals court ruled that Gulen was “an alien of extraordinary ability,” a decision that saw approval of Gulen’s residency status. Observers of the case suspect the CIA intervened with the court on Gulen’s behalf. Gulen’s support for the AKP government may be an insurance policy by the CIA to maintain a close relationship with the “Islamist tendency” AKP government in Ankara. The Bush administration, after seven years of trying to deport Gulen to Turkey, suddenly dropped its opposition to his permanent residency status.

The public prosecutor in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) case against Gulen’s permanent residency status argued in filed documents that Gulen’s movement was financially supported by Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Turkish government, and the “Central Intelligence Agency.” The deposition stated that some Ankara businessmen donated up to 70 percent of their income to Gulen’s movement.

If Gulen’s operations are funded by the CIA that means the “Agency” may be linked to Ergenekon. With the U.S. having a mutual defense treaty with Turkey’s recognized government that puts the CIA potentially in violation of U.S. law. And Israel’s connections with Ergenekon means that the United States is bound by treaty to protect its ally Turkey from Israeli covert or overt aggression.

There is an element of “McCarthyism” in the Ergenekon case. Some well-meaning officials have been subjected to being tainted by the broad brush of being associated with Ergenekon. One is Asil Serdar Sacan, the former head of the Istanbul organized crime department, who was the first to confiscate documents on Ergenekon in 2001 and broadened his investigation to include both Ergenekon and the Gulen organization. Sacan, who investigated the murder of Turkey’s “King of Casinos” Omer Lutfu Topol, successfully beat attempts to smear him, being acquitted of 36 criminal charges brought against him and being reinstated six times to his police position. Sacan is currently in jail as an Ergenekon suspect but his only “crime” appears to have exposed Guney as a possible triple agent for the MIT, Mossad, and CIA. In 2001, Guney was spirited out of Turkey thanks to an agreement between MIT’s undersecretary Senkal Atasagun and the CIA. Guney was given a 10-year U.S. visa thanks to the CIA’s intervention.

In fact, Ergenekon and its “deep state” players in Turkey and Shiv Sena and its extremist Hindu “deep state” allies in India, backed by elements of Mossad and the CIA, appears to be a replay of the CIA’s secret “Gladio” network in Europe that placed weapons caches in the hands of fascists and neo-Nazis groups to take up arms in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

The use of “false flag” terrorist attacks in Western Europe by Gladio units were blamed on Communists in an effort to forestall Communist-Socialist coalition governments in Western Europe, particularly in Italy and France.

Similarly, Ergenekon stands accused of inciting conflicts between Turks and Kurds to create anarchy in the country with the aim of having Ergenekon seizing control of the Turkish government and re-cementing close ties with the United States and Israel.

In 2004, Ergenekon attempted three military coups against the AKP government. They were code-named Eldiven (The Glove”), Sarikiz (“The Blond Girl”), and Ayisigi (“Moonlight’).

Ergenekon has been cagily kept off the newspaper pages and TV news screens in the United States. To investigate Ergenekon and Gulen in Turkey is to peel away at an onion that could expose some other “unpleasantness” for certain quarters.

On January 10, 2007, WMR reported: “According to Federal law enforcement sources, two influential businessmen — Turkish Sunni Muslim Fetullahci charismatic leader Fetullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania after being acquitted in Turkey in 2006 of plotting against the secular republic, and Saudi BMI Islamic investment chief investor Yasin Qadi, a major investor in Turkey who was named in October 2001 by President Bush as a Special Designated Global Terrorist — were both involved with the CIA in the late 1990s in funneling weapons and other support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an Albanian terrorist group operating in the former Yugoslavia. The KLA was allied with the Clinton administration and supported by leading neocons such as Richard Perle, whose lobbying firm, International Advisers, Inc., counts Turkey as its major client. Gulen’s books have been translated into Albanian. BMI’s founder, Soliman Biheiri, also helped to start PTech, a Braintree, Massachusetts-based firm that had active software contracts with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Pentagon on 9/11. PTech’s offices were raided by federal authorities in December 2002 after it came under suspicion for terrorist financing. Qadi is suspected of using a series of northern Virginia-based businesses and charities to fund ‘Al Qaeda’ activities in Bosnia. Osama Bin Laden was granted a special passport by the Bosnian government in 1993. Qadi was reportedly a business partner of Turkish businessman Cuneyd Zapsu, an adviser to the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Reconciliation Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP).”

The dramatic revelations about Ergenekon coming out of Turkey also points to the reasons why the neocons in Washington were keen to stymie the work of FBI Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds and the CIA’s non-official cover agent Valerie Plame Wilson, both of whom had smuggling and other activities in Turkey high on their priority lists. On January 18, 2008, WMR reported: “WMR has learned that former CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson, whose covert status was leaked by the Bush White House, and former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who was focused on a major covert network involving Turkish, Israeli, and key members of the Bush administration and Republican Party and weapons and drug smuggling, were essentially looking at the same network. The nexus of Turkey with both the covert CIA Brewster Jennings and Associates operations and the Turkish-Israeli network of influence active within the Defense and State Departments, is the key factor in understanding the complicated counter-espionage operation conducted by both the FBI and CIA.” It now appears that the Washington-connected criminal network being looked at by Edmonds and Plame was, in fact, closely linked to the Ergenekon network in Turkey.

WMR’s January 18, 2008 report continued: “Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was also, according to our sources, well aware of the massive conspiracy to cover-up the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction components from former Soviet Central Asian states, as well as Ukraine, Moldova, and Ukraine, to the international weapons bazaar. The Abdul Qadeer Khan (A Q Khan) network based in Pakistan was a major beneficiary of the weapons smuggling operation that used Turkey as a pass-through. Rather than expand his investigation, Fitzgerald demurred on looking at the activities of the American Turkish Council, Turkey’s influential lobbying group in Washington, and its parallel symbiotic organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Turkey and Israel are close military and intelligence partners.”

Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin has called on President-elect Barack Obama to reappoint Fitzgerald as U.S. Attorney for Northern Ilinois. If Obama does so, it means that the network being investigated by Edmonds and Plame, one that stretches to Ergenekon and the Gulen network in Turkey, has its hooks deep into the future Obama administration.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
Email Online Journal Editor

Source: onlinejournal.com, Dec 4, 2008

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 23, 2008; A01

BAGHDAD — Kurdish officials this fall took delivery of three planeloads of small arms and ammunition imported from Bulgaria, three U.S. military officials said, an acquisition that occurred outside the weapons procurement procedures of Iraq’s central government.

The large quantity of weapons and the timing of the shipment alarmed U.S. officials, who have grown concerned about the prospect of an armed confrontation between Iraqi Kurds and the government at a time when the Kurds are attempting to expand their control over parts of northern Iraq.

The weapons arrived in the northern city of Sulaymaniyah in September on three C-130 cargo planes, according to the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Kurdish officials declined to answer questions about the shipments but released the following statement: “The Kurdistan Regional Government continues to be on the forefront of the war on terrorism in Iraq. With that continued threat, nothing in the constitution prevents the KRG from obtaining defense materials for its regional defense.”

Iraq’s ethnic Kurds maintain an autonomous region that comprises three of the country’s 18 provinces. In recent months, the Shiite-led central government in Baghdad, which includes some Kurds in prominent positions, has accused Kurdish leaders of attempting to expand their territory by deploying their militia, known as pesh merga, to areas south of the autonomous region. Among other things, the Kurds and Iraq’s government are at odds over control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which lies outside the autonomous region, and over how Iraq’s oil revenue ought to be distributed.

The Kurds of northern Iraq have run their affairs with increasing autonomy since 1991, when U.S. and British forces began enforcing a no-fly zone in northern Iraq to protect the region from President Saddam Hussein‘s military. The U.S.-led invasion in 2003 sparked concern that Iraqi Kurds would seek independence, but the Kurds have insisted that they wish to remain part of a federal Iraq.

Neighboring countries with large Kurdish minorities, including Turkey and Iran, have said they would oppose the emergence of an independent Kurdistan, as the autonomous region is known.

Iraq’s interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, said in an interview that central government officials did not authorize the purchase of weapons from Bulgaria. He said such an acquisition would constitute a “violation” of Iraqi law because only the Ministries of Interior and Defense are authorized to import weapons.

Experts on Iraq’s constitution said the document does not clearly say whether provincial officials have the authority to import weapons. However, Iraqi and U.S. officials said the Ministries of Interior and Defense are the only entities authorized to import weapons. The Defense Ministry provides weapons to the Iraqi army, and the Interior Ministry procures arms for the country’s police forces.

The Iraqi government has acquired the vast majority of its weapons through the Foreign Military Sales program, a U.S.-run procurement system, Brig. Gen. Charles D. Luckey, who assists the Iraqi government with weapons purchases, said Saturday. He said he knew of no instances in which provincial authorities had independently purchased weapons from abroad.

With thousands of American military officials involved in the training of Iraq’s security forces, there is little the U.S. government does not know about weapons that are legally imported to Iraq. The shipments from Bulgaria in September caught the American military off guard, the three officials said. They first learned of the shipments from a source in Bulgaria, the officials said.

The three said they did not know whether U.S. officials had confronted Kurdish leaders about the shipments or alerted Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki‘s government.

“Yes, the Kurds have this autonomous region and they’re authorized to keep the pesh,” one of the officials said, referring to the militia. “But arming themselves and bringing in weapons stealthily like that — if I were the Iraqi government, I’d be pretty concerned.”

While violence in Iraq has decreased markedly in recent months, political tension is rising as Iraqi leaders gear up for provincial and national elections scheduled to take place next year, and as they prepare for an era in which the U.S. military will have a smaller presence there.

Of the primary fault lines — which include tension between Sunnis and Shiites and rivalry among Shiite political parties — the rift between Kurds and the Arab-dominated Iraqi government has become a top concern in recent months. Senior government officials have engaged in a war of words, and Iraqi army and pesh merga units have come close to clashing.

“You could easily have a huge eruption of violence in the north,” said Kenneth B. Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service in Washington. “Nothing having to do with the Kurds is resolved.”

Because Arab Sunnis largely boycotted the 2005 election, Kurds obtained disproportionate political power in key provinces such as Tamim, which includes Kirkuk, and Nineveh. Both abut the Kurdish autonomous region. Kurds also control 75 of the 275 seats in parliament.

This year, violence broke out in Kirkuk amid political squabbling over an Arab proposal that seats on the Tamim provincial council should be divided evenly among ethnic Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. In the end, Iraqi lawmakers had to shelve plans to hold provincial elections in Tamim because the sides were unable to reach a deal.

In August, U.S. officials narrowly averted an armed confrontation between an Iraqi army unit and pesh merga fighters in the town of Khanaqin, in Diyala province.

In recent weeks, Maliki and Kurdish leaders have exchanged sharp words over Maliki’s creation of so-called support councils. Maliki has said the councils, which are made up of pro-government tribal leaders, are the central government’s eyes and ears in provinces. But Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani and other Iraqi leaders have accused the prime minister of using the councils to bolster Maliki’s influence in areas where he has little political support. In a recent news conference, Barzani said Maliki was “playing with fire.”

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is a Kurd, recently sent Maliki a letter saying the money being spent on councils should go to the country’s armed forces.

The pesh merga, which began as a militia controlled by powerful Kurdish families, fought Iraqi troops when Hussein was in power. Since the 2003 invasion, its primary role has been to patrol predominantly Kurdish areas in the north. However, pesh merga units were deployed to the northern city of Mosul in 2004 to help quell an insurgent uprising, and others were dispatched to Baghdad as part of the 2007 buildup of U.S. troops.

Recently, the Iraqi government has refrained from using pesh merga forces outside of the Kurdish region and has taken steps to replace predominantly Kurdish forces with Sunni and Shiite soldiers in Nineveh, one of the most violent areas in Iraq.

Central government officials recently bristled at Barzani’s offer to allow U.S. troops to establish bases in the Kurdish autonomous region, saying the regional government had no authority to make such an overture, especially as Iraqi officials are calling for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops.

“There is a lot of tension,” Kurdish parliament member Mahmoud Othman said. “Maliki and his administration are accusing the Kurdish authorities of violating the constitution. And the Kurds are accusing Maliki of violating the constitution.”

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sedat LACINER is director of USAK,

Ankara-based Turkish think-tank and International Relations lecturer. BA (Ankara U., Turkiye), MA (Sheffield, UK), PhD (King’s College London, UK)

Some claim that Turkey is one of the transit countries of the drug trafficking, not a consumer; so the fight against narcotic should not be involved with in the priority struggles of Turkey. Even, within some conversations, it is possible to hear that narcotic money has an additional value for Turkey. Data on drug usage verifies the fact that Turkey is not a crucial drug consumption market, it is mostly a transit country. Due to drug smuggling, billions of dollar have entered to the country. However, these are not the whole part of the schema. To clarify Turkey just as a “transit country” is not sufficient. In the mean time, Turkey has become one of the crucial narcotic centers of the world. Every drug bags, pass through Istanbul and other Turkish cities to the Western Europe this turns back as a terror, crime organization, violence on the street and loss of government power in Turkey. Besides, this process continues for decades; drug-violence-degeneration triangle insidiously prejudice Turkey internally. At that point, drug trucks, passes from Turkey, should be stopped so as to re-construct order in Turkey, re-gain government authority by the government itself.

Terrorist organizations are based on two main columns: The first one is ideological/political base. Terrorist organizations exploit mistakes of states, areas where there is no state authority; the more these exploitation facilities continue, the more these organizations grow fast. The second important column terrorist organizations based is the economic infrastructure. Money is requisite for weapons, explosive materials, daily needs of terrorists etc. Contrary to general perception, money mostly has not come “directly” from other countries. When other countries want to assist, they prefer utilizing from “natural ways”; randomly cash money is given directly to the terrorists by foreign countries. There are two fundamental principles to maintain economic infrastructure of terror. 1) tribute \ blackmailing \ donation, 2) robbery, 3) narcotic money, 4) other illegal revenue. Among these, since it is relatively easier way and more sustainable, mostly, narcotic money catches attention. If it is considered that world’s drug market is around 400-500 billion dollars, this amount will not only sustain terrorist organizations but also countries. The money, circulated in the drug market, is almost equal to the USA’s defense expenditure in a year and it is approximately over Turkish gross national product. In Europe, one of the most important regions of the huge market, the PKK, time to time, has controlled 80 % of the market; so it is not difficult to comprehend how the PKK can stand for more than two decades.

When the PKK constituted as a terrorist organization, it did not take it so long to discover the drug smuggling money. At the beginning of 1980’s, it started to act in both producing and transportation sectors of illegal drug business. In 1982, the PKK begun to produce hemp and opium poppy around the Lebanese camps (Baelbek and Hermen) that were under Syrian control. Ports of Beirut, Sayda, Sur, Miryan, Abdeh and Tripoli were the main transit points of this transition. Drugs were sent to ports of Greek Cyprus, Greece and Italy; and from this forwarding, the terrorist organization sustained significant amount of revenue for the years. It is unfortunate that Syria, Greek Cyprus and Greece ignored (or supported) the PKK drug business in order to support this terrorist organization against Turkey. In the beginning of the 1980’s, another considerable role of the PKK was in the line that comes from Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran, crosses Turkey and reach to Europe. As it is known these three countries were called “golden crescent” for drug smuggling. Behind the ‘Golden Crescent’ Laos – Thailand – Birmania countries are ‘Golden Triangle’ for drug producing and smuggling. In other words, most crucial producer countries are located in the east of Turkey, and Turkey is one of the most crucial routes for the European drug market. It did not take too long for the PKK militants to notice how a ‘lucky position’ they had to control drug trafficking between the East and the West. Terrorists realized the huge wealth, and firstly begun business by allowing transition and sustaining “security services” for ordinary smugglers. During the 1980s it was not difficult for the PKK to secure international drug transportation in the region because it was organized almost in every district and villages of eastern Turkey. When its organizations advanced in Istanbul, other Western big cities and Western European countries, drug dispatching and distribution has become easier for the PKK. Especially, over Afghanistan-Iran-Turkey-Eastern Europe-Southern Europe-West Europe line, tons of morphine, heroin, liquid hashish and other drug materials were transferred under the PKK control. The PKK has not only played a significant role in the East-West route drug transportation but also in the West-East transportation of chemical goods for processing of raw drug materials in the East. At the end of 1980s, it was realized that the real money was in the processing business. When raw drug materials were processed, its price increases geometrically. At that point the PKK, firstly in the East and Southeast Anatolia, later in different regions of Turkey and in some East European countries, constructed processing drug laboratories.

When the PKK reached its one of the political aims by composing a Kurdish diaspora close to itself in the Western European countries, it became a real boss in the drug business between Golden Crescent and Western Europe without any serious rival. In most of the cities in Europe, the PKK had thousands of members and huge sympathizer network that assist it in drug business. The terrorist organization helped many Kurdish people to immigrate illegally to Western Europe, and all these people were forced to pay significant part of their income in their new life. Apart from these so-called donations, Kurdish immigrants were forced to help the PKK’s drug businesses in Western European cities. Since there was no second group organized as the PKK did in the East and in the West, within a short time, the PKK strengthened its power in European drug market in terms of production, transportation, distribution and marketing. Kurdish children including 10-15 years old ones became drug seller in front of the pubs, pavilion, and even around certain schools in many European capitals.

In 1991, a PKK confessor said that between 1988 and 1990, he carried more than 300 kg heroin to Europe by his own. According to Interpol, in 1992, the PKK was orchestrating 80 % of the European drug market. This relationship was in the fields of processing, transportation, securing transportation, distribution, and marketing. With reference to 1992 Interpol data, the number of Kurdish organizations related with drug business was 178; and most of them were under the PKK control or they gave tribute to the PKK. Ikbal Huseyin Rivzi, Interpol’s chief narcotics officer, explained that the PKK was heavily evolved in drug trafficking as a means to support terrorism in Turkey. At the same year, the reports of the Italian police clearly showed that the PKK set up special teams for international drug business. German high rank officials also stated that the 75 % of heroin caught in this country in 1994 was belonging to Kurdish origin Turks. Moreover, 70 % of drug sale in Germany was made by the PKK. Other sources similarly indicate that the PKK controlled between 60 % to 70 % of the European illegal drug market in 1994. The number of the imprisoned PKK members related with drug crimes in Germany was 30 in 1994. In the same year, the amount of the captured PKK drug was nearly 1.6 ton.

By this way, drug business has become most important revenue of the PKK terrorist organization. The 1996 UN Narcotic Audit Committee’s Report indicated the reason how the PKK still stands, as narcotic money. 1997 Sputnik Operation (Belgium) showed how the PKK launders narcotic money. The terrorist organization in these years laundered money under the name of donation or aid to so-called cultural, children, women etc associations in London, Paris, Brussels and other European cities. This money has been collected in certain accounts; later, laundered money has been spent for MED TV (now Roj TV), weapons, explosives, militia training and for other PKK businesses. Another laundering method is jewelry buying-selling and some other legal investments.

In 1997, relationship between the terror organization and drug smuggling begun to disturb more the Western European countries, and with some operations, terror organization was forced to take more measures to hide its illegal activities. When risks increased in drug business, the PKK started a propaganda campaign claiming that it was not in any illegal drug business. The organization further claimed that these accusations were part of the Turkish Republic’s ‘propaganda game’ against the PKK. According to the PKK propaganda, those people who were caught by police had not any relationship with the PKK. In this regard, the PKK, thanks to its social and so-called cultural organizations, started a great “No to Drug” campaign in many European countries in 1998. With these kind of campaigns, as expected it was not possible for the PKK to clear itself in the eyes of European police and other security forces. However, it shouldn’t be forgotten that English or French police and judiciary are working within political system, and public opinion naturally influences their works against the criminals. May be this is the point that Turkey cannot intercept fully, but the PKK utilizes, perfectly. While Turkey generally perceives all Europe (even the West in general) as a single body, the terror organization successfully abuses the Western democracies’ weaknesses and the Western pluralist political and legal structures.

After capture of Abdullah Ocalan, head of the PKK, and with the dramatic decrease of clashes in the Anatolian mountains, the organization begun to give more importance to drug business than before. Between 2004 and 2005, the amount of drug just caught in the Netherlands was more than 400 kg. With reference to 2005 European data, the PKK is the primary actor of the illegal European drug trade. BBC stated that, 80 % of European drug market was Turkish origin (it means Kurdish origin); and the PKK manages it. The BBC also reports that the number of the PKK members in British prisons is more than 1000. According to Turkish authorities, the number of PKK members caught with drug is around 700 between 1984 and 2000. These numbers clearly stated that the PKK has worked with hundreds of people in each country on the transition route.

When all these data is considered, it won’t be so extreme to say that the PKK has developed by narcotic money. In the mean time, a new kind of mafia emerged in drug, smuggling, and tribute \ robbery areas. This formation, can be called as ‘PKK mafia’, has developed its own mentality beyond terrorist organization’s classic mentality. In course of time, participations begun to this network from outside; and a network, stretched to three continents (Europe, Asia and Africa), was created. Surprisingly, some organizations, defined themselves on the contrary to the PKK, have also begun to participate to this PKK mafia network. Thus Turkist or Kurdist ideologies curtailed the real intentions and the drug money undermined public order and state authority in the country. So as to secure drug production, processing, transportation, distribution and marketing; this network has reflected itself differently and spreaded even inside the state body. The criticism made by European countries in the mid-1990s, was about the fact that drug bosses had friends in the Turkish cabinets. Although these claims seem to be more exaggerated, it is so remarkable that organizations that reflect themselves to public under different ideology and utilize from state power in some cases, has been cooperating with the PKK. It can be argued that the Deep State problem, extreme nationalisms and terrorism in Turkey have been financed by the drug smuggling money for the years.

In brief, illegal drug trade is the most crucial financial source of terror and collapse of legal state in Turkey. In order to end terror, if Turkey succeeds in ending drug smuggling it will get more effective solutions than bombing Kandil Mountain. Turkey on the one hand must eliminate the areas that are exploited by terrorists and extremists, and at the same time it must destroy financial infrastructure of terror and other crimes by cutting drug smuggling. Otherwise, the Turks will continue to live with the problems like robbery in streets of Istanbul, terror in mountains of southeast Anatolia and political assassinations in most sensitive times. We should also note that Turkey desperately needs immediate help of the European countries in its combat against terrorism. The ‘monster’ so big for Turkey, and the Turks cannot overcome the problem without the EU. At the same time, the drug smuggling mainly targets the youth of the Western European countries, and the EU cannot stop the illegal drug problem without a real co-operation with Turkey.

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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sedat LACINER is director of USAK, Ankara-based Turkish think-tank and International Relations lecturer. BA (Ankara U., Turkiye), MA (Sheffield, UK), PhD (King’s College London, UK)

slaciner@gmail.com

“The PKK is moving towards the breaking point now,” Basbug told a briefing on Sept. 16. “I do not say they are at the breaking point. How can we benefit from this? If we can succeed in it, then we can reach at breaking point.”
Officials said the Turkish military has urged the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan to extend permission for the campaign against the PKK in northern Iraq. Parliament has approved Turkish military operations in Iraq until Oct. 17.