Levent Kenez /Stockholm
An espionage investigation shut down more than a decade ago by the Turkish government has returned to public attention as court records, wiretap transcripts and sworn testimony resurface, raising renewed questions about whether an alleged Iranian intelligence network was deliberately covered up rather than dismantled as past judicial files involving pro-government media figures re-emerge amid new criminal probes and public revelations.
The investigation, popularly known in Turkey as Selam Tevhid, which in fact targeted Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force in Turkey, was launched in 2010 and 2013 by İstanbul prosecutors and counterterrorism police units to dismantle what investigators described as an Iranian intelligence and influence network operating inside Turkey. The probe relied on years of court-authorized wiretaps, surveillance, financial tracking and intelligence reports. According to official case files, 232 Turkish and Iranian nationals were listed as suspects.
Among the central figures named in the investigation were Mehmet Akif Ersoy, a senior television executive, and Furkan Torlak, a former government adviser with access to high-level political circles. Both men were monitored under judicial warrants. Neither was ever charged. In 2014 the investigation was closed, evidence was discarded and the officers who carried out the probe were later prosecuted.
Ersoy re-entered the public spotlight in recent weeks after being detained in an unrelated criminal investigation led by the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office into alleged drug use facilitation and organized criminal activity. Court records show that Ersoy, along with several media figures and close associates, was arrested on charges including enabling the use of narcotics and forming a criminal organization. Prosecutors cited secret witness testimony, forensic findings and phone records as the basis for the detention. Although the case is legally separate from the Selam Tevhid file, Ersoy’s arrest revived scrutiny of his earlier appearance as a wiretap target in the shelved counterterrorism probe.
At the same time, Furkan Torlak, whose name appears prominently in the Selam Tevhid investigation as a suspect monitored under court-authorized surveillance, resigned from his post as coordinator at Turkey’s Presidential Directorate of Communications Disinformation Center on December 13, 2025, following revelations in the criminal file. Witness statements in the Ersoy case described Torlak as a participant in closed gatherings attended by Ersoy, allegations Torlak has not publicly responded to. Torlak previously served as a press adviser to senior ruling party figures including Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş and Justice and Development Party (AKP) spokesperson Ömer Çelik. His sudden resignation brought renewed attention to his past role in the Quds Force investigation that was terminated in 2014.
Selam Tevhid documents show that Ersoy was already under surveillance while working as a correspondent for Turkey’s state broadcaster TRT. Investigators cited Ersoy’s family background, foreign contacts and communications with other suspects as grounds for judicially approved wiretaps.
Police records describe Ersoy as the son of Nadir Ersoy, a prominent figure associated with the Iran-funded Selam newspaper and circles close to the Iranian clerical regime. Investigators noted that second-generation figures, the sons of individuals named in earlier Selam Tevhid-related files dating back to 2000, appeared prominently in the revived investigation.
According to surveillance reports, Ersoy and Torlak were among several suspects who had received religious education in Shiite seminaries in Syria, a fact investigators said was deliberately concealed in official résumés. Wiretap transcripts show Ersoy in contact with individuals identified as part of the same network during this period.
Despite being a suspect, Ersoy’s career accelerated after the investigation was halted. He moved from TRT to Habertürk TV, later rising to editor-in-chief. A wiretap dated November 2013 recorded a conversation in which journalist Nevzat Çiçek, who was also a suspect in the investigation, revealed that he had personally secured Ersoy’s hiring at Habertürk through senior executives close to political power.
In a wiretap dated November 18, 2013, journalist Nevzat Çiçek, who was a suspect in the Quds Force investigation, was recorded talking to Furkan Torlak about how he had secured a position for Mehmet Akif Ersoy.
The Selam Tevhid investigation describes Furkan Torlak as a key intermediary figure linking Iranian handlers to Turkish political and bureaucratic circles. Court-approved wiretaps recorded Torlak in frequent contact with senior officials including then-Education Ministry undersecretary Yusuf Tekin, now Turkey’s minister of education.
Wiretap transcripts entered into the case file show Torlak arranging meetings, introducing associates and receiving documents despite holding no formal government clearance. In one intercepted exchange Tekin was recorded sending ministry documents to Torlak’s personal email account.
Investigators documented Torlak’s background in detail. Police records state that Torlak was sent at the age of 12 to Iranian-run Shiite religious institutions in Syria, where he remained for nearly a decade under the supervision of Iranian-linked clerics. Travel logs, surveillance reports and communications were cited as evidence of long-term operational grooming.
The file also details Torlak’s family ties. His ex-wife, Sümeyye Nur Kavuncu, was recorded in wiretaps discussing how she obtained classified materials from her workplace and delivered them in person to avoid detection. Sümeyye Nur was working for the Public Security Institution at the time. Her father, Burhan Kavuncu, was identified as a founding figure in Iran-backed Islamist movements in Turkey and as a sponsor of Torlak’s rise within government-linked institutions.
Wiretap secured by a judge’s approval in the IRGC Quds Force investigation reveals close links between Yusuf Tekin and Furkan Torlak:
Investigators concluded that Torlak functioned as a conduit for information, personnel placement and ideological coordination. None of these allegations were tested in court after the case was shut down.
The Selam Tevhid investigation concerns not only current Minister of Education Tekin but also implicates a more powerful figure, Hakan Fidan, now foreign minister and former head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT). Court and intelligence records trace the network’s reactivation to the early 2000s, after senior operatives released under a 2004 government amnesty resumed operations for Iranian intelligence, coordinating money transfers, logistics and asset recruitment with IRGC officer Behnam Shahriyari. Wiretap summaries from the 2011–2014 probe show suspects referring to Fidan by the codename “Emin” (trusted man) and noting that intelligence monitoring ceased after his appointment, which operatives saw as a turning point enabling the network’s expansion. Several of the same individuals were later targeted by US Treasury sanctions for running a Turkey-based IRGC Quds Force money laundering and oil smuggling network, corroborating findings already in the Turkish investigation.
Summary of wiretaps from confidential probe reveals how Hakkı Selçuk Şanlı said Turkish intelligence stopped monitoring him after Hakan Fidan, code-named Emin (trusted man) by Quds Force operatives, became head of Turkish intelligence agency MİT:
In early 2014, amid political fallout from corruption investigations targeting figures close to then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Selam Tevhid probe was abruptly halted. The lead prosecutors and police chiefs were removed. The case was transferred to İrfan Fidan, a new prosecutor loyal to Erdogan who dismissed all evidence and formally closed the investigation.
Court records and later testimony confirm that foreign suspects were allowed to leave Turkey and that no indictments were filed. Fidan later rose through the judiciary and currently serves as a member of Turkey’s Constitutional Court.
Following the closure, prosecutors, judges and police officers who conducted the Selam Tevhid investigation were themselves charged with crimes including attempting to overthrow the government. Many were imprisoned or dismissed. Journalists who reported on the case were also prosecuted.
According to Turkish media, former police chief Erol Demirhan, who was later imprisoned after the investigation was shut down, recently told the Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court in testimony that the Selam Tevhid case was built on an intelligence trail dating back to a 2000 Hezbollah raid in Istanbul, during which security forces seized a large organizational archive. Demirhan said subsequent intelligence showed the same structure re-emerging years later through new actors including the sons of people named in the original files. He told the court that investigators compiled detailed biographical dossiers, digital profiles and records of foreign religious training for Iranian handlers and said the investigation was dismantled not because the evidence failed but due to direct political intervention.
In addition to Ersoy and Torlak the Selam Tevhid file briefly references other media and state figures, including Fatih Er, then-director of TRT World; Nevzat Çiçek, editor-in-chief of Independent Türkçe; and senior political advisers who were the subjects of wiretap warrants during the same period. Their names appear in intercepted communications but were never the subject of indictments.
The Erdogan government has consistently described the Selam Tevhid investigation as a fabricated conspiracy and denied claims that Iranian intelligence operatives were protected. However, the original wiretaps, surveillance reports and testimonies remain part of the judicial archive.
No steps have been taken to reopen the case or to review the prosecutions of those who carried it out, even as Ersoy and Torlak have again come to public attention through recent developments
Ironically, the Erdogan-aligned media, which was once strongly against Selam Tevhid, is now publishing detailed stories about the private lives of individuals, including Ersoy, named in the latest drug case, frequently citing the Selam Tevhid file in an effort to indirectly discredit Hakan Fidan, widely considered the likely future leader of the ruling party after Erdogan’s departure, a position that Erdogan is reportedly grooming his son Bilal to assume.
