Video Shows Turkish Intel Smuggling Arms Into Syria

ANKARA (Dispatches) -- Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet has released a series of still images and video showing Turkish state intelligence agents participating in smuggling of arms across the border to militants in Syria.

Date: 30 May 2015 - 21:55

News ID: ۱۴۴۶۹

The video shows security officials unloading a box of antibiotics, revealing large amounts of mortar shells underneath. This is reportedly the same January 2014 incident reported recently as part of testimony in legal proceedings.
Exactly where the arms went once they crossed the border is unclear, but they were believed to have been distributed broadly among militant factions, particularly ISIL which controls a large portion of the Turkish border.
Turkey has repeatedly denied the charges, and followed up the publication by announcing the newspaper that broke the story is facing charges of "terrorism” for making the report. Prosecutors who were pushing a case related to the weapons smuggling have similarly been detained, and Turkey seems determined to cover this up at all costs.
The video came after witness testimony obtained by Reuters once again showed that the Turkish government was dishonest about their involvement in the rise of militants in northern Syria.
Turkey's state intelligence agency helped deliver arms to parts of Syria under militant control during late 2013 and early 2014, according to a prosecutor and court testimony from gendarmerie officers seen by Reuters.
The witness testimony contradicts Turkey's denials that it sent arms to Syrian militants and, by extension, contributed to the rise of ISIL, now a major concern for the NATO member.
Syria and some of Turkey's Western allies say Turkey, in its haste to see President Bashar al-Assad toppled, let militants and arms over the border, some of whom went on to join the ISIL militant group which has carved a self-declared caliphate out of parts of Syria and Iraq.
Ankara has denied arming Syria's militants or assisting ISIL.
Testimony from gendarmerie officers in court documents reviewed by Reuters allege that rocket parts, ammunition and semi-finished mortar shells were carried in trucks accompanied by state intelligence agency (MIT) officials more than a year ago to parts of Syria under Islamist control.
Four trucks were searched in the southern province of Adana in raids by police and gendarmerie, one in November 2013 and the three others in January 2014, on the orders of prosecutors acting on tip-offs that they were carrying weapons, according to testimony from the prosecutors, who now themselves face trial.
While the first truck was seized, the three others were allowed to continue their journey after MIT officials accompanying the cargo threatened police and physically resisted the search, according to the testimony and prosecutor's report.
President Tayyip Erdogan has said the three trucks stopped on Jan. 19 belonged to MIT and were carrying aid.
"Our investigation has shown that some state officials have helped these people deliver the shipments," prosecutor Ozcan Sisman, who ordered the search of the first truck on Nov. 7 2013 after a tip-off that it was carrying weapons illegally, told Reuters in a interview on May 4 in Adana.
Both Sisman and Aziz Takci, another Adana prosecutor who ordered three trucks to be searched on Jan. 19 2014, have since been detained on the orders of state prosecutors and face provisional charges, pending a full indictment, of carrying out an illegal search.
The request for Sisman's arrest, issued by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and also seen by Reuters, accuses him of revealing state secrets and tarnishing the government by portraying it as aiding terrorist groups.
Sisman and Takci deny the charges.
"It is not possible to explain this process, which has become a total massacre of the law," Alp Deger Tanriverdi, a lawyer representing both Takci and Sisman, told Reuters.
"Something that is a crime cannot possibly be a state secret."
More than 30 gendarmerie officers involved in the Jan. 1 attempted search and the events of Jan. 19 also face charges such as military espionage and attempting to overthrow the government, according to an April 2015 Istanbul court document.
An official in Erdogan's office said Erdogan had made his position clear on the issue.
Erdogan has said prosecutors had no authority to search MIT vehicles and were part of what he calls a "parallel state" run by his political enemies and bent on discrediting the government.
"Who were those who tried to stop MIT trucks in Adana while we were trying to send humanitarian aid to Turkmens?" Erdogan said in a television interview last August.
"Parallel judiciary and parallel security ... The prosecutor hops onto the truck and carries out a search. You can't search an MIT truck, you have no authority."
One of the truck drivers, Murat Kislakci, was quoted as saying the cargo he carried on Jan. 19 was loaded from a foreign plane at Ankara airport and that he had carried similar shipments before.