V- Gülen Group in the American Embassy telegraphs

These secret tapes were known not only to the US prosecutors but also to the US ambassador at the time, James Jeffrey. In a telegraph he sent to Washington in 2009 he referred to Gülen’s speech about infiltrating the state apparatus.

US now wants concrete proof of Gülen’s organization being behind the coup, and yet the American state has been aware, at least for 10 years, that Fethullah Gülen is no ‘sufi cleric’ but a man whose organization has been building up a parallel structure within the Turkish state.

Video 15: Fethullah Gülen sermon in 1979 in Izmir, in which he talks about violence against USA and non-believers, about revenge that will be extracted in 10 years’ time…

It is enough to look at a few of the telegraphs US ambassadors to Turkey sent to Washington to appreciate this.

US Ankara Ambassador Eric Edelman (2005):

“ The Gulen cemaat has concentrated (with marked success) on building up a worldwide network of schools and Turkey-wide network of business and journalists/writers associations. It has also infiltrated hundreds of adherents into the national police, judiciary, and Sayistay (GAO equivalent) and also has made inroads into the AKP government, but more recently has signaled its dissatisfaction with the way Erdogan has tried to govern and appears to be distancing itself from him.”

US Istanbul Deputy Consul General Stuart Smith (2005):

“The specific Gulenist concern about negative U.S. attitudes towards Gulen apparently stems in part from a November 2004 FBI report that Gulen’s lawyer obtained through a FOIA request. Three ranking Turkish National Police contacts recently raised the issue in a meeting with Istanbul legat, in which they also provided material on Gulen and asked if the FBI could provide some sort of “clean bill of health” for him. (Note: Legat demurred, given the apparent intention to mount a public relations campaign with such material.)”

Istanbul Consul General Deborah Jones (2006):

“Gulen supporters account for an increasing proportion of Mission Turkey’s nonimmigrant visa applicant pool. As applicants, Gulenists are almost uniformly evasive about their purpose of travel and their relationships to Gulen, raising questions among Consular officers. Our unease is also shared by secular segments of Turkish society.”

Istanbul Consul General Sharon A. Wiener (2009):

“Another group that sparks the ire of the Kemalists are the followers of the religious leader Fethullah Gulen. Our contacts all agree they are everywhere in Turkish society, including the strongest bastion of Kemalism — the military.”

US Ambassador to Ankara James Jeffrey (2009):

“The assertion that the TNP is controlled by Gulenists is impossible to confirm but we have found no one who disputes it, and we have heard accounts that TNP applicants who stay at Gulenist pensions are provided the answers in advance to the TNP entrance exam.”

The US was aware of the structure that the Gülenists were building within the army from seven years before and that the Ergenekon cases were closely related with this plan. US Ambassador to Ankara James Jeffrey (2009):

“Gulenist newspapers champion the Ergenekon investigation and continually surprisingly, contacts close to the the Turkish General Staff stress that the traditional dominance of the Turkish military has been a negative factor in Turkey’s history. Not openly loathe Gulen, and contend that he and his legions of supporters are embarked on a ruthless quest not only to undermine the Turkish military but to transform Turkey into an Islamic republic similar to Iran.”

Jeffrey, who was US ambassador to Turkey in 2008–2010 also said the following in the interview he gave after the coup:

“The Gülenist movement has some infiltration at the least in the military that I am aware of. They of course had extreme infiltration into the police and judiciary earlier. I had seen that when I was in Turkey previously, particularly in the Sledgehammer case, [the National Intelligence Organization head] Hakan Fidan case [and the] corruption cases in 2013. It is very clear that significant segment of the bureaucracy in Turkey were infiltrated in and had their allegiance to a movement, not a state. That of course is absolutely unacceptable and extremely dangerous. And it highly likely that it has led to the [attempted] coup.

US embassy was very well aware of the secret organization that the Gülen group had in the army, and the tactics they used to infiltrate the system. These tactics were spelled out in a telegraph sent by the US Istanbul Consul General Sharon Wiener on 17th September2009:

“Another group that sparks the ire of the Kemalists are the followers of the religious leader Fethullah Gulen. Our contacts all agree they are everywhere in Turkish society, including the strongest bastion of Kemalism — the military. Congar told us military leadership is increasingly concerned with the Gulen Movement’s infiltration of the higher ranks of the armed forces, and are keen to continually purge Gulenists from their ranks. One tactic for ferreting them out is to hold a pool party where military officers are expected to bring their wives, thus exposing the pious women who refuse to wear a swimsuit to the detriment of their husbands, careers. Congar, however, noted Gulen supporters have begun to act in a secular manner to protect their identities. For example, while the secularists, wives attend pool parties with one-piece suits, Gulenist,s wives will wear more revealing two-piece swimsuits. She also mentioned stories of pious officers stocking their house and trash with alcohol bottles to fool the ever vigilant inspectors seeking to root out non-secular officers. (COMMENT: Many Kemalists and academics assume the Gulen Movement has already captured the police in Turkey (reftel B C). Significant Gulen inroads into the military would lead many Kemalists to believe their last defensive perimeter against fundamental Islam has been breached.)”

VI- ‘Abi’s, or Elders: the parallel hierarchy of the putschist officers within the army

Gülen had asked those who had listened to his confidential sermon to discard the contents into a bin. And when he listed the official institutions where ‘our friends are present’ he named the judiciary, the civil service, and a ‘crucial institution’ that he did not name.

The ‘crucial institution’ which he did not name, due to security concerns, was the Turkish Armed Forces.

In his interviews Fethullah Gülen always denied that his organization was creating its own parallel structure within the army:

“ This is a shocking lie. I have no idea what these projects are. I never had such a project. Because infiltration happens in enemy territory. My feelings for the army are known by all and what I have written and said about the army is out in the public.”

Gülen group’s organization within the army was carried out for 40 years, and was referred to in the most coded terms even in the most confidential of meetings.

In an army that was over sensitive about the issue of secularism, the officers were expected to have a secular life style, and they could easily be fired when they prayed or when their wives wore the headscarf.

Fethullah Gülen, developed tactics he called ‘tadbir’, or ‘precaution’ in order to surmount these sensitivities. These tactics are commonly known as ‘takiyya,’ applied in the Shia branch of Islam: fatwas are given for committing certain sins in order to advance the cause of Islam. Performing the prayer with the movement of the eyes, drinking alcohol a certain amount as to not get drunk, not wearing the headscarf- these were the fatwas given so that the Gülenists could hide their identity in the army and be known as secularpeople.

Security analyst and former soldier Metin Gürcan, who was himself forced to resign due to some footage that was leaked to the internet, described lieutenant-colonel Levent Türkkan who took the General Chief of Staff prisoner on the night of the coup in the following terms:

“He drank alcohol and did not fast during the holy month of Ramadan, to show he was not religious.”

This was how lieutenant-colonel Türkkan was known to his friends. In his deposition at the prosecutor’s office Türkkan described his 27 years with Gülen’s Organization which had facilitated his entry to the military academy:

Photo 43: Lieutenant-Colonel Levent Türkkan, who had been the right hand man of the General Chief of Staff, was among the putschists who took him prisoner on the night of the coup

“In those days I was a student at the Bursa Cumhuriyet Middle School. I was a good student with a bright future. In middle school I met the elders of Gülen’s organization. At the time there were elders who were university students with codes names such as Serdar and Musa. I was staying at the official accommodation of the high school. These elders used to come to student accommodation. They would lead me and those like me in prayer. Then they started to take me to the flat of their own group. In 1989 I entered the examination for Işıklar Military High School… midnight before the exam they came and brought me the questions to the exam. Elder Serdar had brought the questions. He had a computer print out of the questions. The multiple choices had already been marked. They were things I already knew. I read, and memorized… When I was at the Military High School I kept in touch with elders Serdar and Musa. I used to see them once a month. Usually we would go once a month, pray and have conversations, do lessons in which we would read Fetullah Gülen’s books. My elders had taught me how to take ablutions in the toilet and how to perform prayers with the movements of the eye in order not to out myself as an observant Muslim. We were able to perform prayers everywhere with this method. I used to visualize myself praying and recite sections of the Quran inwardly… During my time at the military high school my elders gave me no mission. I did not engage in any activity in the name of the organization. They said that our only mission was not exposing ourselves.”

The following section of his deposition is the best illustration of the hierarchical relationship between these officers in the army whose sole job was to keep themselves unexposed and the ‘civilian imam’s outside:

“When I finished the military high school in 1993 I enrolled straight away, without an examination, in the Military Academy. To be honest at the time I also questioned myself. I used to have girlfriends at the time and back then the elders of the organization would frown upon it”

Lieutenant-colonel Türkkan then talks about the kind of orders the officers in the army would receive from the civil imams:

“The elders I answered to were not from the military, they were all university graduates and used code names… I used to listen in on the conversations of General Chief of Staff Necdet Özel Pasha with a bug. The appliance was as small as two tips of a finger, and I used to put it somewhere in the pasha’s room every day and take it back with me every evening as I left. It had a memory capacity of 10–15 hours of recording. An elder before Elder Murat whose name I can’t remember and who worked at Turkish Telecom gave it to me. He had given it to me in his house. His house was in Incek, direction Alacaatlı. I could still find the place if I were to go. He gave me the recording device and told me to record the conversations of the pasha. ‘We’ll listen only to gain information, nothing will happen’ he said to me. I didn’t question it, I took the device. I recorded the pasha’s voice every day. There were two, three devices. Once a week I would take the device with the filled memory to my elder and pick the empty ones.”

These followings statements, on the other hand, give us an idea about the structure created by the Gülen organization within the army. In this structure an officer knows only the elder who is outside the army, and may not know the other Gülenists who are in the army:

“When the General Chief of Staff changed and I became aide of the new Chief Hulusi Akar, my mission to record ended. When I became the aide, Elder Murat said ‘You will not be leaving the recording machine anymore’ I learnt a few months later that this same job was now carried out by Sergeant Majors Serhat and Şener whose surname I did not know. Both sergeant majors were junior officer aides to Hulusi Akar Pasha.” “They had carried out the job of second command during the period of Necdet Özel Pasha for two years, two years during the term of Hulusi Akar Pasha, and another two during time of Yaşar Güler Pasha. Their aide was my friend major Mehmet Akkurt. Mehmet Akkurt is also a member of Fetullah Gülen’s organization. We took the sound recordings with him. He would place the devices in the general chief of staff second command’s rooms. I did not know who his elder was.”

The Lieutenant-Colonel did not know the real name and the day job of the elder who had been his contact with the organization:

“The people I was in touch with in the organization were the men with the codenames Murat, Selahattin, and Adil. I know the house of Murat among them. It is near the road to Konya, I can show it to you. I do not know the jobs, or the real names or the addresses of the others.”

The gendarmerie major Haydar Hacıpaşalıoğlu who is now imprisoned for participating in the coup attempt reveals the extent of this secrecy:

“I never told my wife that I was a member of Gülen’s organization. If I had, being left-leaning, she would have denounced me. My wife comes from a Republican Party family and has social democrat values. In fact she would often say that she did not like Fethullah Gülen’s organization, that she even hated them. I have two children. The members of Gülen’s organization had some suggestions as to what name we should give my daughter. They suggested Nihal. I suggested to my wife that we call our daughter Nihal and she said that she knew someone called Nihal that she didn’t like and so refused.”

The Lieutenant-Colonel who was in charge of the security systems at the General Chief of Staff Head Quarters, Gökhan Eski, was also arrested for plotting the coup. In his testimony he too admitted that he was a member of Gülen’s organization and explained how he was introduced to the group, and his relationship with the civil elders of the organization for 30 years:

“I got introduced to the Gülen Organization in 1986, first year of my middle school. When at middle school they had appointed an elder for me with the code name B., he told me he was a student in the medical faculty. Our contact continued during high school as well. He took an interest in all that I did and took care of me. In 1989 I passed the exam for İzmir Maltepe Military High School. Elder B continued to visit until the day of my graduation. When I finished the military school I enrolled in the Land Military Academy. In his last visit he said ‘From now on A will come, not I’ and transferred me to him. During my Military Academy years I was attached to Elder A. That Elder transferred me to Elder Adil. My code name in the organization was Salih. This code name was given me in middle school by Elder B.”

Thus the lieutenant-colonel had changed elders three times in 30 years. And yet one thing remained the same: his code name. The following section of the testimony reveals that Gülenist members of the military did not know one another and at most, two officers were attached to the same elder:

“When I came to Ankara in 2012 Elder F introduced me to Elder R in the house of Elder Murat (Muhammed Uslu). Elder Murat is also the elder of Levent Türkkan. Elder R lived in Çayyolu. He worked at Turk Telecom. Six months after I came to Ankara. I met lieutenant-colonel Levent Türkkan in the house of Elder R. We learnt we were part of a same Gülen organization in Elder R’s house.”

Each officer has a civil imam to whom he is attached, and the connection to the Gülen organization is built not through the hierarchy within the army but through the civil imams outside the army. It is not difficult to guess that the order for the coup also came from outside. The depositions of the officers arrested for the coup verify this:

Lieutenant-colonel Levent Türkkan explains how he received the order for the coup:

“I learnt that there was going to be a coup on 14th July 2016, Thursday, around 10–11 am. General Chief of Staff Colonel Orhan Yıkılkan called me outside for a smoke. He gave me this information when we were alone there. He also told me that on the day of the coup my mission was to neutralize Hulusi Akar Pasha to facilitate things. He said that once I neutralized Hulusi Akar Pasha, the special forces would come and take him. I accepted the mission Orhan Yıkılkan gave to me without question. That night I went to the house of Elder Murat to whom I was attached, on the Konya road, behind the Opet gas station. I went because I was curious about what was happening. We didn’t have a routine appointment that day. In ordinary times we go to the elder’s house after informing him, that is how it is supposed to be done but because this was an extraordinary situation I went without calling him. Elders Adil and Selahattin, whom I knew from before, were present in the house. Although the house belonged to Elder Murat he was not there. Elder Selahattin is superior to Elder Murat by one degree. They asked me why I had come. They did not give me any information about the coup. I asked them ‘There will be activity tomorrow night, do you have any information about it?’ They were angry when I asked. ‘How do you know? Who did you speak to this about? Who told you?’ I told them that it was Colonel Orhan Yıkılkan who had told me. They knew Orhan Yıkılkan. I don’t know through what connection. ‘You will not say anything about this issue to anyone, anywhere, the plan will continue very secretly and not be exposed.’ They did not say anything about the mission I had been given. I left the house. When I learnt from the news that bombs had exploded and that the civil population had been harmed I started to regret it. What was being done was like a massacre. These things were done by the organization which I thought was meant to serve God’s will. The corridor was filled with officers who had participated in the coup up to 9 o’clock in the morning. Everyone kept saying ‘We have failed, we are surrendering’ I truly regret what I have done. Not only participating in the coup but of having been a member of the Fetullah Gülen organization. What I have said to you is in all sincerity.”

Junior Officer Bekir Kurt who was with the Special Forces and who has been arrested for the coup attempt says the following:

“I used to go to a house in the, Keçiören Şefkat neighbourhood for the book reading and sermon meetings. I do not know the exact address of the place, but I can take you there. I knew the owner of the house as ‘Adem’. There would also be another man with alias ‘Nesimi’, we would be three people. 3 days before the coup the man named Nesimi said that there would be trouble in the near future and said ‘you must help if an officer from your regiment comes to you tells you he needs help’ When I asked him who would come, he said: ‘He knows you.’’

During the coup, the task of the 26 year-old SAS Commando Avşar Zırh, who was Junior Officer on duty at the İstanbul Büyükçekmece SAS underwater and rescue group command, was to take the Commander of the Marine Corps into custody. He spoke of similar chain of command:

Photo 44: SAS Commando Staff Sergeant Avşar Zırh was first set free. He got married. But then came back to the authorities saying his conscience troubled him, and told what he knew.

“On 14th July my organization elder whom I knew as Ulvi called me on the phone and wanted to meet. There was another person I did not know at the meeting. This person said to me ‘Beautiful and important things will happen tomorrow.’ The evening of 15th July I went to Junior Officer C S’s house at 23:00. There were three more members of the military there…”

Ankara Gendermarie Command Intelligence Branch Director Major Erdal Karlıdağ had heard about the coup from the elders in the organization:

“Because confidentiality was of the utmost importance in the organization I did not even know the officers, junior officers and rank officers who were members of Gülen’s organization within the army. On Wednesday two people came to my house. The man named Halil told me that he had made a list of three thousand active members of the organization within the gendarmerie, that I was on this list, and that we were all going to be dismissed from our positions in the August Council. We went to a park in Anıttepe together. In the park we came upon Lieutenant-Colonel Süleyman Karaca (Gendermaries Personnel Division Branch Director). Altındağ Gendarmerie Commander Murat was there too. He said that there would be activity on Friday, and when it starts, we should go to TÜRKSAT in Gölbaşı.”

In his deposition Gendermarie Lieutenant-Colonel F.E. explained how the order of the coup was relayed and the civilian institutions these civil elders were in conversation with:

“In 2011 I was appointed to the Ankara Gendermarie General Command Personnel Division Junior Officer Assignment Branch. I met up every two or three weeks with a mathematics teacher with the code name Osman who I believed to be the general imam of Gülen’s organization in the military- I do not know his address.

When the posting period was near, he would bring a list of 30–40 people concerning the posting of the personnel. I played more of a role in the postings after 2013. After the 17–25 December events I started to see less of Osman. In July 2015 I was appointed to the Ankara Gendermarie Commando Special Public Security Command. I continued to see Osman. When they asked, I made as hefty a donation as I could. Starting from 1994 I used the code names Fatih and Halit in the organization. One did not use telephone for the meetings; at each meeting the date and hour of the next meeting would be determined.

“I learned about the plans for a coup on 12th July 2016, Tuesday. In evening I met with Osman who was the imam of the military and his superior, a man with code name Hakan at an office in a building that was near a medical centre in Tandoğan. Hakan said that there would be a big operation soon against members of Gülen’s organization within the military and that to prevent it the military would seize power on the night of 15th July 2016 at around 3:00. He explained that the order came from Fethullah Gülen Hodja, and that a few brigades would come from the western cities for support. He said that the operation would start with the capture of the General Chief of Staff Headquarters, and then all the other headquarters would be captured. Then martial law headquarters would be established in the cities.”

And who were these ‘elders’ that these officers were attached to?

One of the people arrested for the coup was General Chief of Staff Hulusi Akar’s aide Lieutenant-Colonel Levent Türkkan’s elder in the organisation, Muhammed Uslu. Uslu, who worked as a civil officer at the Prime Minister’s Office Executive Assistants Directorate, had the code name Murat. Uslu gave the name of the civil imam that he himself was attached to and the officers who answered to him. It is interesting that he didn’t even know the real names of some of his ‘subordinates’ within the hierarchy of the organisation:

“Lieutenant-Colonel Levent Türkkan had the code name Ahmet, Mehmet Akkurt had the code name Ramazan, Major Fatih whose surname I did not know had the code name was Adem, the captain whose real name I did not know was code named ‘Yusuf, ‘ a junior officer working at the General Chief of Staff HQ, whose name I did not know had the code name ‘Rauf’…” “Elder Selahattin lives in Çukurambar. Elder Selahattin Abi is attached to Elder A. The highest ranking elder I know is Elder A…” “Elder” Uslu’s testimony confirms that the organization of the coup was handled by this network of civilian imams. “One day before 15th July, on the Thursday Elder Selahattin came to my house without giving notice and spoke with some people in my living room. My wife told me when I came home that evening, and was angry at me. She said that Elder Selahattin first came on his own and asked my wife ‘Can I use your living room? I need to have a meeting’. Then my sister in law and my wife went into the kitchen, closed the door. So I do not know who Elder Selahattin spoke to. My wife said that after Selahattin came to the house the doorbell rang a few more times. Normally they do not come to the house when I am not there. This meant that there must have been an emergency situation- such that they had to hold a meeting in my house one day before the coup attempt. I do not know who came to the house.”

In Izmir a high ranking officer who testified to the Republic Prosecutor Berkant Karakaya under the name Kuzgun reveals that one of the elders that he met at a meeting he attended concerning the coup in a civilian house was an elder higher ranking than the others. It was Adil Öksüz

“In this house in Ankara the people I knew were a friend from my year, Sinan Sürer and Ömer Faruk Harmancık. There were also Adil ÖKSÜZ whose name I learnt later, Hakan BIYIK whose name I similarly learned later. Apart from them there was a civilian man with long hair who had a ponytail, around 25–30 years old. In another meeting I went to in Ankara, I was given the mission to take the Marine Corps Admiral Command Director Serdar DÜLGER into custody. I objected and asked whether there would be armed conflict. I was told that the man would be in Izmir, Özdere, at the Air Forces Camp, that I would easily enter, knock on the door, invite Serdar Dülger out and face no problems”

Çetin Acar, who had come to the Ankara Combatting Terrorism Unit Headquarters to give information as part of the 9th December 2015 investigation into the Gülen Organization had said who Adil Öksüz was: ‘He is an Ankara University Theology graduate. After graduating he worked as mullah to Fetullah Gülen for many years in Istanbul. He is an assistant professor at Sakarya University Theology Faculty. After Fetullah Gülen went to the US, Mustafa Özcan became the imam of Turkey and so the position of the imam for the Air Force was transferred to him. I have heard that now he is the imam of the Marine Corps.”

However, Turkey would hear of the name of Adil Öksüz, either the Air Force or Marine Corps imam, only after 15th July 2016.