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Crackdown On Tahşiyeciler Group Was Pre-Emptive Operation, Says Police Chief

19.12.2014 19:00

The investigation into an armed group called Tahşiyeciler (Annotators), launched in 2004 by the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and later morphed into police raids on the safe houses of suspected members, was a pre-emptive operation by law enforcement officials to crack down on groups tied to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization in Turkey.Nazmi Ardıç, former police chief of the Organized Crime Unit of the İstanbul Police Department, said the police moved in on the group when intel suggested that their members had started to communicate with al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan and Iraq, preparing to send Turkish citizens for armed training.He said police surveillance revealed that the group's leader, Mehmet Doğan, sought to implement al-Qaeda ideology, telling his followers to join Osama bin Laden's army in Afghanistan and urging them to assassinate the country's political and religious leaders.During the operation targeting the group on Jan. 22, 2010, police raided the homes and o

The investigation into an armed group called Tahşiyeciler (Annotators), launched in 2004 by the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and later morphed into police raids on the safe houses of suspected members, was a pre-emptive operation by law enforcement officials to crack down on groups tied to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization in Turkey.

Nazmi Ardıç, former police chief of the Organized Crime Unit of the İstanbul Police Department, said the police moved in on the group when intel suggested that their members had started to communicate with al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan and Iraq, preparing to send Turkish citizens for armed training.

He said police surveillance revealed that the group's leader, Mehmet Doğan, sought to implement al-Qaeda ideology, telling his followers to join Osama bin Laden's army in Afghanistan and urging them to assassinate the country's political and religious leaders.

During the operation targeting the group on Jan. 22, 2010, police raided the homes and offices of 112 people across Turkey and discovered three hand grenades, one smoke bomb, seven handguns, 18 hunting rifles, electronic parts for explosives, knives and a large cache of ammunition.

The operation targeting Tahşiyeciler was sanctioned by Oğuz Kaan Köksal, former national police chief and current Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputy. It was also authorized by Hüseyin Namal, former head of intelligence for the İstanbul Police Department, and former İstanbul Police Chief Hüseyin Çapkın. Then-İstanbul Governor Muammer Güler, who later became the interior minister, issued a statement at the time of the raids saying that Tahşiyeciler was a radical group affiliated with al-Qaeda.

Ardıç said that during the investigation police did not find that the group had planned an armed attack but added that it was not surprising because group leader Doğan wrote in his book “Esrarname”: “We do not have enough power for an armed fight yet. We have to defer the obligatory jihad until we gain enough strength. But once we do attain enough power, we'll show how jihad can be conducted.”

It is clear from the case file on the group that Tahşiyeciler shares al-Qaeda's global jihad ideology and the evidence seized during the raids, such as video tapes, indicate that the group is dangerous.

Then-İstanbul Governor Güler issued a statement at the time of the raids saying that Tahşiyeciler is a radical group affiliated with al-Qaeda.

“In cooperation with the police departments of Ankara, Erzurum, Kayseri, Kırıkkale, Niğde and Samsun, the İstanbul Police Department and the Gendarmerie General Command launched a concerted crackdown on Jan. 22, 2010 on a radical, religious terrorist organization believed to be affiliated with the al-Qaeda terrorist network,” he said.

“We learned that some of the members of the organization who were apprehended had traveled abroad through legal or illegal means and stayed in places which were known as jihad zones. Members who were sent to these jihad zones were trained in the forests where they were provided with military training,” he said.

“We also know that some members who were detained during this operation were linked to Louai Sakka, al-Qaeda's representative for Europe, Turkey and Syria, as well as with Habib Aktaş, who was involved in a bomb attacks that took place [in İstanbul] between Nov. 15 and 20, 2003, and who later died in Iraq,” Güler stated.

Among the video footage seized in the safe houses of the organization, Doğan can be heard calling his followers to armed jihad. The footage was aired on the CNN Türk and Habertürk national networks. In it Doğan says that the head of the Turkish government and the head of the religious authority are foreigners and should be killed in an armed attack.

“I'm saying, go build arms and kill [them]," he instructs followers in the video, continuing, "If the sword is not used, then this is not Islam."

He can also be heard asking his followers to build bombs and mortars in their homes, claiming that Islam allows for such practices. Doğan said Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India are not governed by Shariah law and predicted that they will soon be wiped out.

In a video aired by Habertürk, Doğan says: “If an army [al-Qaeda] shows up in Afghanistan and that army calls on you [to join its ranks], you should join that war [jihad] even if you can only crawl.”

Doğan also called President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a non-Muslim in his sermon, which was recorded in the video. “The man at the head of your [Turkish] government is not yours. He is their [infidels'] man. The hoca at your head [head of the Religious Affairs Directorate] is also theirs,” he said, adding, “I am saying, go build arms and shoot [them].”

In his sermon of June 29, 2004, when a follower asked whether they will decapitate Americans, Doğan replied, “That will come later.” In the same speech, he describes Muslim professors of theology in Turkey as worse than infidels. In a further speech on Aug. 13, 2005, Doğan was asked whether Islam is a religion of peace that sanctions the use of force only for defensive purposes, to which he responded: “F*** that. These [beliefs] are made up by Jews. That is the pope's belief.”

Doğan also wrote a book titled “Cihadname” in which he emphasized the global jihad theory of al-Qaeda: “It is a religious duty to fight against non-believers. … A jihad against Jews and Christians is a better deed than jihad against non-believers.”

Now the government that described the raids on Tahşiyeciler as an al-Qaeda operation in 2010 has changed its story. Both the government and the public prosecutor claim the group was victimized but there is no evidence of how they were victimized -- except news stories and a TV series which featured the group in a negative way, leading to the investigation. That defies the timeline of the investigation into the group which started in 2004 by MİT and who later passed intel to police intelligence in 2008.

Although all the dailies and TV networks covered the raids in 2010 based on the governor's public statements, only the Zaman newspaper and Samanyolu TV network, affiliated with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, were targeted by the prosecutor, who said his investigation was based on a complaint from a suspected member of the Tahşiyeciler group.

Gülen -- who had criticized the Tahşiyeciler group and warned against using violence in a speech posted on his website Herkul.org on April 6, 2009 -- was also linked to the investigation for defaming the radical group.

Former Police Chief Tufan Ergüder, who served as deputy police chief in İstanbul in 2010, explained that Tahşiyeciler is part of an al-Qaeda branch in Turkey that advocates an armed fight against the government. He said Tahşiyeciler differs fundamentally from the Nurcu community that was established by Said Nursi in Turkey in the first half of the 20th century, which advocates education and is strongly opposed to the use of violence. Ergüder said Tahşiyeciler branched out from the Nurcu groups when they came under Salafi influence and quickly became radicalized.

Nurcu groups have various branches, including a social movement called Hizmet, inspired by Islamic scholar Gülen some 40 years ago.

Gülen is not alone in denouncing Doğan as another Muslim religious leader, Abdülkadır Badıllı, a student of Nursi and a pro-government figure, also denounced Tahşiyeciler leader Doğan in 2003 for contradicting the teachings of Nursi.

“His books all focus on the same goals and ultimate outcome. And that is as follows: This simple man, Molla Muhammad, is the mahdi [prophesied redeemer of Islam] the entire Muslim world is waiting for. Osama bin Laden, who is fighting the US right now, is a military wing of the mahdi. Osama will become stronger in the near future and defeat the US. In the end, he will establish an Islamic state in Palestine. Then he will delegate this state to the mahdi, who, along with Jesus [the messiah], will consolidate the power of Islam,” said Badıllı.

The pro-government newspapers that covered the 2010 raids as having links to al-Qaeda now claim the group was set up by the police investigators and that its leader was victimized. One daily actually picked a cable sent to Washington by the then US ambassador in Ankara, James Jeffrey, saying that the US did not believe Tahşiyeciler had ties with al-Qaeda.

Ambassador Jeffrey dispatched a report to Washington in 2010 right after the raids, stating, “Domestic Islamic extremists reveal no plans or intentions to attack American interests in Turkey.” He said the embassy was briefed by its contacts at the police department and other intelligence services indicating that “the detentions and arrests appear to us to have been pre-emptive.”

The US ambassador's account, which was based on information obtained from police contacts, collaborates former Police Chief Ardıç's version of the investigation. Jeffrey said Tahşiyeciler did not have an organized link to al-Qaeda and the name "al-Qaeda" was being used by the media and police as a catch-all term for suspected Islamic extremists in Turkey.

In fact it was Erdoğan's government who at that time publicly claimed the operation was believed to have been connected to the al-Qaeda network. Whether the group has formal connections with al-Qaeda or not, it surely harbors al-Qaeda's global jihad ideology utilizing armed struggle and murder. After all, the group's leader Doğan praised bin Laden and asked his followers to join his army in Afghanistan.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)



 
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