Turkish intelligence agency MIT conducts covert surveillance at US funeral to identify Erdogan critics

Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm

The Turkish intelligence agency, Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MIT), covertly conducted surveillance on US soil to identify individuals, including many American citizens, critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian government, as revealed in several official communiqués obtained by Nordic Monitor.

Dated Nov. 19, 2024, a communiqué referenced an intelligence note from MIT to the Security General Directorate (Emniyet), directing them to conduct background checks on individuals identified during the surveillance.

On Nov. 15, the Emniyet transmitted the intelligence to the Şanlıurfa Provincial Police Department via a classified cable, designated 2024111419275740355. The directive instructed local authorities to deepen their investigations of individuals profiled by MIT on US soil.

Another communiqué, dated Nov. 21, 2024, was addressed to the İzmir Provincial Police Department. It similarly referenced MIT intelligence through a classified cable, instructing further action against individuals identified in the US. This cable appears to have been disseminated to other provinces where the victims’ birth or previous residential records were maintained.

A communiqué from the Şanlıurfa Provincial Police Department underscores the collaboration between the Turkish National Intelligence Organization and the Security General Directorate in analyzing surveillance operations conducted on US soil:

Additional documents reveal that extensive background checks were conducted of individuals named in the communiqués. These investigations were subsequently followed by administrative and legal actions designed to penalize victims of Turkish intelligence surveillance operations.

The covert surveillance in this instance was conducted during the funeral ceremony of the late Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, a prominent critic of President Erdogan and known for his outspoken opposition to government corruption and Turkey’s support for radical jihadist groups.

Gülen, who had lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999, passed away on Oct. 20, 2024, at St. Luke’s Hospital in Pennsylvania due to multiple health complications. His teachings inspired a global volunteer network dedicated to education, interfaith dialogue, charitable initiatives and social empowerment. His movement opposed President Erdogan’s repressive government, enduring a decade-long crackdown as a result.

Overnight, Erdogan branded Gülen’s movement a terrorist organization after corruption investigations revealed in 2013, indicated the close ties of the president and members of his family to Iranian sanctions violator Reza Zarrab and onetime Saudi al-Qaeda financier Yasin al-Qadi. Denouncing the charges as a judicial coup, Erdogan secured the release of all detained suspects, dismissed police chiefs and prosecutors en masse and accused the movement of orchestrating the probes — a claim Gülen consistently denied.

A communiqué from the İzmir Provincial Police Department concealed the Turkish intelligence agency’s involvement by referring to it as “Institution V,” obscuring the origin of intelligence obtained through surveillance conducted in the United States:

The communiqués disclose that MIT conducted surveillance in and around Skylands Stadium in Sussex County, New Jersey, where nearly 20,000 people gathered to pay their final respects during the cleric’s funeral service. Afterward, the cleric was laid to rest at a retreat center in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, with a smaller group of family and close friends attending the burial.

The retreat site has since become a place of pilgrimage, with visitors from both the US and abroad coming to pay their respects and honor Gülen’s memory.

Since 2015, the Erdogan government has filed multiple extradition requests with US authorities against Gülen on fabricated charges, but the US Justice Department has consistently denied these requests, citing a lack of credible evidence in the Turkish claims.

The Turkish government communiqués make clear that the intelligence agency sought to identify all individuals who attended the large ceremony at the stadium, as well as those present at the burial site. Footage was also obtained from live broadcasts aired by media networks affiliated with the movement, based in the US, Belgium and Germany.

Concerned about potential intrusions by agents of the Erdogan government and the possibility of provocations, organizers of the funeral service in the US collaborated closely with federal and local law enforcement agencies. To ensure security, they limited the number of attendees, implemented an accreditation process and hired hundreds of volunteers to facilitate the smooth operation of the funeral proceedings.

One of the documents produced as a result of Turkish intelligence surveillance reveals that further actions were taken against individuals identified in the United States:

US authorities, including FBI offices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, along with state and county police departments, enforced stringent security measures in and around the stadium. A helicopter hovered above the crowd during the ceremony, and a ban on drone flights over the stadium was imposed for the duration of the service.

Confidential sources informed Nordic Monitor that the Turkish intelligence agency has also enlisted embedded reporters from Erdogan government-controlled media outlets, including the Anadolu news agency, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation and CNN Türk. The information is not surprising, considering MIT’s longstanding practice of using Turkish journalist cover for its agents and assets. This strategy allows them to gather intelligence, access individuals and locations that would otherwise be difficult to reach and relay information back to headquarters in Ankara.

The identification of individuals who attended Gülen’s funeral could result in severe consequences, including false designation as a terrorist, the initiation of criminal investigations, issuance of arrest warrants, asset seizure, targeted defamation campaigns and punishment of their family members and relatives in Turkey.

According to the document, Turkish authorities sought to identify individuals who attended the funeral service of Fethullah Gülen, a prominent critic of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government:

Over the past decade, the Erdogan government, which exerts total control over the judiciary, has initiated politically motivated criminal proceedings against more than half a million people in Turkey on charges of alleged membership in the Gülen movement. Among others, it has dismissed over 130,000 individuals from government positions through presidential decrees, completely disregarding due process, and has imprisoned tens of thousands.

The crackdown on the Gülen movement has been both vicious and relentless, showing no signs of abating. It has even extended overseas, with MIT orchestrating the abduction of individuals linked to the movement in Asia and Africa through bribery of local officials, as well as conducting aggressive harassment and surveillance programs in Western countries.

During a parliamentary debate on Nov. 20, 2024, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya boasted that, in the first ten months of the year, 935 individuals were arrested in 4,177 police operations across Turkey for their alleged affiliation with the movement.

In the past decade, the Erdogan government’s operations targeting members of the Gülen movement in the US and Europe have faced pushback, with several governments initiating criminal proceedings against MIT spies and agents of the Erdogan regime for violating multiple laws in their respective countries.

Kamil Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish government operative indicted by US federal prosecutors in December 2018, attempted to conduct surveillance on opponents of President Erdogan in Washington, D.C. Alptekin’s covert activities on US soil on behalf of the Erdogan government were exposed during the trial of his associate, Bijan Rafiekian, who was convicted of acting as an undisclosed agent of the Turkish government in the US.

In 2015, Germany’s federal attorney general charged Muhammet Taha Gergerlioğlu, a close advisor to Erdogan and a MIT operative, with espionage. He and two associates were accused of collecting information on Turkish nationals living in Germany who were critical of the Turkish government.

In June 2018, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland issued arrest warrants for two Turkish diplomats — then-press attaché Hacı Mehmet Gani and Hakan Kamil Yerge, the then-second secretary at the Turkish Embassy in Bern. They were accused of gathering political intelligence for another state and attempting to kidnap a Swiss businessman of Turkish origin. The businessman, reportedly affiliated with the Gülen movement, had been living in Switzerland for approximately 30 years.

In December 2021, the Special Department of the Court of Appeals in Kosovo upheld a prior decision by the Special Department of the Basic Court of Pristina regarding the March 2018 kidnapping of six critics of President Erdogan. The individuals, affiliated with Gülen’s volunteer network, were abducted by Turkish agents and their accomplices within Kosovo’s government institutions, violating local laws.

The communiqués make clear that the actions taken by European countries and the US thus far have not deterred the Erdogan government from continuing its covert operations. On the contrary, more Turkish spies have been dispatched abroad, many operating under diplomatic, business, academic and journalistic cover, to carry on intelligence-gathering activities on foreign soil.

MIT is currently led by Erdogan’s longtime confidant, Ibrahim Kalın, who is known for his admiration of the Iranian mullah regime. Kalın has previously written articles praising the 1979 Iranian Revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini. He has also been linked to the propaganda arm of the Turkish network of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, known as Selam Tevhid, which has been designated as a terrorist organization in Turkey.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that many of the tactics employed by MIT under Kalın’s leadership against critics, opponents and dissidents of the Erdogan regime closely mirror those of the Iranian regime.