leaked Archives

Energy minister’s leaked email Expose Turkey’s tacit support for ISIL

September 29, 2016 by administrator

A leaked email belonging to Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s energy minister and son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, shows weapons supply routes to the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) through the Turkish border, in a tacit acknowledgement of Turkish support for the extremist group.

Albayrak’s email account was hacked by RedHack, a Turkish Marxist-Leninist-Maoist computer hacker group on Friday, and the group threatened to disclose 20 GB of secret information if the Turkish government failed to release Alp Altınörs, deputy co-chairperson of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and prize-winning novelist and journalist Aslı Erdoğan by Monday.

The email was shared among a number of persons, including Cüneyt Arvasi, Halil Danışmaz, executive director of the Turkish Heritage Organization, a pro-Justice and Development party (AKP) institute in the US, Energy Minister Albayrak and his brother Serhat Albayrak.

The email provides information to the energy minister and says that ISIL will launch full-scale attacks in northern Syria against Kurdish militias that Turkey views as the enemy, after the August 2014 presidential elections in Turkey.

Maps of arms supply routes and jihadist crossings through the Turkish border to Syria are also attached to the email, the content of the email shows.

In a striking comment, the email says the war between the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) had turned into another fight in Syria between ISIL and Kurdish militia the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The YPG is the Syrian extension of the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and Turkey.

In 2014, there was no actual fighting between the TSK and the PKK as a truce declared in 2013 was still in place despite some problems. The fragile two-year cease-fire collapsed last summer.

Albayrak: We’ve lost the Kurds

Just weeks before the Nov. 1 parliamentary elections last year, the energy minister said in an email sent to an advisor of President Erdoğan that the government has mostly lost the Kurds due to an escalation in the fighting in Turkey’s Southeast.

The PKK’s decision to bring the war to cities and towns triggered an intensification of fighting between security forces and the terrorist group, reducing cities to rubble.

The government’s heavy-handed response also worsened the conditions of civilians trapped in the urban fight.

Albayrak shared with the advisor a draft of field research conducted by the pro-government SETA think tank titled “Kurdish People and Turkey”.

“This is a draft version of field research about Kurds’ tendencies. Not the final version. We seem to have lost the Kurds. This is done. May Allah help our final situation,” Albayrak wrote.

Another field survey measuring voter behavior across the region shows that prior to the Nov. 1 elections, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) had won 67.7 percent of the vote, while the AKP garnered 23.1 percent. The figure fueled government fears, but the election results saw the ruling AKP recoup some of the losses it sustained in the June 7 elections.

Source: http://www.turkishminute.com/2016/09/27/energy-ministers-leaked-email-reveals-turkeys-tacit-support-isil/

Turkey: Leaked wiretaps of ISIS agents show Ankara routinely ignores terrorist cross-border activity

May 14, 2016 by administrator

Thousands of ISIS associates have been routinely crossing into Syria aided by contacts in Turkey, phone calls tapped by Ankara security forces and handed to the media by opposition MP Erem Erdem reveal. He accuses the government of a massive cover-up.

Transcribed phone recordings belonging to Ilhami Bali, well known in Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) ranks and suspected of staging high-profile bomb attacks in Ankara and the mainly-Kurdish border city of Suruc, detail the lack of control along the Syrian Turkish border. The 98-kilometer (61-mile) stretch of border has only two crossings, the Jarablus and Al Rai entry points across from Turkey’s Gaziantep and Kilis.

Pressured by the international community to impose stricter border controls to stem the flood of militants into Syria, Ankara has been erecting walls at key crossing points, but to no avail as surveillance data from the Municipality of Ankara Provincial Security Department revealed.

The transcripts of the recordings have been passed on to the media by Turkish opposition politician, Eren Erdem of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), who is facing a witch-hunt from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government over his repeated allegations of massive cover-up of IS activity on Turkish soil.

While daily logs by the Turkish Armed Forces reveal that Turkish security forces apprehended 961 IS members from 57 countries in 2015, the alleged reality exposed by the Erdem leak, shows that thousands of IS fighters and their family members cross the Turkish border from Syria on a daily basis. But even those who get arrested on the Turkish side are often released at the crossing points.

For instance several documents suggest that IS coordinators helped some 1,400 people cross the Turkish border from September 22 – October 17. In one of the phone conversations, Ilhami Bali asked his interlocutor named Erkek, who according to the conversations helps smuggle people, the exact number of persons he has helped cross the border.

As the men argue about the actual number of all those who entered and left Turkey, the conversation reveals that the actual count of people passing through to the Turkish side is actually more than IS coordinators have presumed.

Another conversations between the two subjects revealed Bali was extremely dissatisfied with Erkek’s performance as he failed to help IS operatives cross the border.

“Did you get our people through?” Bali asked Erkek, who replied that he was not the one guiding the group in question.

“What? Are you the one who is responsible that they got arrested? Don’t lie to me! Don’t lie to me. Eighteen people crossed the border last night. Fifteen of them got arrested when you tried to help them,” Bali said.

“Listen to me, I have warned you,” added Bali, losing his temper. “If I ever hear that you try to pass our guys through, I will come in your house and shoot you to your head. I will shoot your head while you’re in bed.”

However, as other conversations have shown, IS operatives and contacts on the Turkish side of the border help those IS affiliates detained by Turkish security forces to evade justice.

“One brother, two sisters and one child were arrested while they tried to cross [at Kilis]. How could this happen? I do not understand,” wondered Erkek in another phone call.

“We have called and gave them the information,” Bali replied. “We talked to the brother who will look after the people who were arrested. Inshallah will look after them.”

More conversations between the two subjects further confirm that those who get arrested are later released through IS connections at police stations.

“The guy from the Gendarmerie called me and said that they were in the smuggler car,” Bali told Erkek in a conversations about another group detained at the border. “Call this guy. The people who got arrested today are at the Gandermarie station. Maybe he can do something… Gendarmerie took them under arrest. If they can let them free they should do that.”

Bali’s conversation with another IS operative, Mustafa Demir, offers apparent proof that the IS terror group is smuggling its fighters into Turkey for medical treatment.

“You know this Abu Abdella Garip who gets out the wounded people? Now Ali Mantara will come. He will bring a brother. He will call you when he arrives… Take the numbers and send them to the administration [of the crossing]. So the administration will look after them,” Mustafa Demir tells Bali.

“Where should I bring Abdullah Garip who helps cross the wounded ones? Should I take him to madrasa?” Bali asked.

“Send them to madrasa and call Ebu Abdallah and tell him that five persons are with Garip Geli… tell him that he should write down their names… So we can control how many left from here,” Demir replies.

In another conversation Erkek asks Bali what should “one wounded person” do when he comes to Turkey.

“I don’t really know. It has nothing to do with us,” Bali replied. “Tell them they should go to the border to the administration there.”

Karekin II Appears in Leaked HSBC Files

February 10, 2015 by administrator

WASHINGTON (A.W.)—On Feb. 8, the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released details from 60,000 leaked files on more than 100,000 client accounts (individual and legal) with the British banking giant HSBC. Among the 61 clients profiled on the ICIJ website is the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians and head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II.

According to the ICIJ, HSBC files revealed that Karekin II was first listed among its clients in 2000. The profile states, “He was connected to an account named ‘His Holiness Karekin II Nersis’ that listed one bank account and held as much as $1.1 million in 2006/2007.” According to the report, the leaked files do not specify the exact role that Karekin II had in relation to the account.

A spokesperson for Karekin II told the ICIJ that the account was opened by his predecessor “for the benefit of the church and its charities. This account was transferred to His Holiness Karekin II Nersissian upon the death of his predecessor to be used for the same purposes. The Catholicosate—the area of responsibility of the Catholicos—of the Armenian Church is a national religious institution and is not subject to any taxes,” and that His Holiness “has immunity from any taxes.”

According to the ICIJ, the French newspaper Le Monde originally obtained a version of the French tax authority data, which covers bank accounts of clients from more than 200 countries.

Through a comprehensive international collaboration of several media outlets, including Le Monde, the Guardian, and the BBC, the ICIJ reported that the accounts hold more than $100 billion in total, and that the private files provide important details, such as the use of aggressively marketed schemes likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes and collusion with clients to conceal undeclared “black” accounts from their domestic tax authorities.

According to the ICIJ, Armenia is ranked 146^th among countries with large amounts of money, with $15.4 million. Ten clients are associated with the country (4 with Armenian passports or nationality); the highest amount of money associated with a client is $5.8 million.

The data published by the ICIJ reveals that HSBC’s private banking unit has made significant profits over the years by handling the secret personal accounts of clients including arms dealers, heads of drug cartels, and even royalty. So far, the ICIJ has published the profiles of 61 HSBC clients and the details of their accounts.

Other clients that have been profiled in the project include King Abdullah II of Jordan, alleged arms fixer A.K. Gulamali, and musician Phil Collins.

Founded in 1997 by American journalist Chuck Lewis, the ICIJ is a global network of 185 investigative journalists in more than 65 countries who collaborate on in-depth investigative stories, focusing on issues including cross-border crime, corruption, and accountability.