MIT gun truck bust lands Turkish gendarmes in prison
Turkish gendarmes arrested and prosecuted for stopping and searching trucks — which were chartered by Turkish intelligence — feel they are unfairly prosecuted for obeying orders.
Last week, Turkey was rattled by a new development related to the Jan. 19, 2014, operation in which seven trucks chartered by the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) were stopped, searched and found to be illegally transporting weapons and ammunition to Syrian opposition groups.
Seventeen gendarmes, all but three of them junior personnel, were arrested on charges of “membership in a terror organization” and “attempting to subvert the Republic of Turkey.” Among those detained and sent to prison in Istanbul, on questionable charges, for the incident near Adana in south Turkey were a lieutenant colonel (the chief of Hatay province gendarmerie intelligence), two majors, a captain, six first lieutenants and six noncommissioned officers. The arrests and trials of the largely junior gendarmes have aroused a plethora of questions, while scores of prosecutors, police and high-level bureaucrats involved in the case remain free.
Everyone remembers that one of the most reverberating aspects of the struggle between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and the Gulen community was this particular incident that involved these trucks that the MIT had hired near Adana.
While government officials insisted the trucks were carrying humanitarian aid to Syria under MIT protection and that prosecutors had no authority to search them, opposition parties and the media reported the trucks were carrying heavy weapons, rockets, artillery and ammunition to Syrian opposition groups.
