Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. conducted operations focused on combatting socialism in Turkey, executed chiefly through Operation Gladio's Turkish branch, the Counter-Guerrilla. The Syrian civil war has seen a resurgence of CIA activity in Turkey in recent years.
Starting in the 1950s, Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance flights flew from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. The U-2 flown by Francis Gary Powers and shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 was based at Incirlik - as was Power's unit, which operated under the cover of the Weather Observational Squadron of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The unit consisted of pilots recruited by the CIA to fly high-altitude reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union and other key sites. During the Suez Crisis they also flew reconnaissance flights over the Mediterranean. [1]
During the Cold War, an important asset was the Counter-Guerrilla, and the Grey Wolves; the paramilitary youth branch of the Nationalist Movement Party. [2] Before the death of Counter-Guerrilla Alparslan Türkeş, the far-right paramilitary Grey Wolves were used to attack leftists. [3]
The CIA also maintains a cadre of moles inside Turkey's National Intelligence Organization, as acknowledged in 1977 by its former deputy director—and CIA recruit—Sabahattin Savasman. [4]
During the Cold War, the CIA set up a clandestine "stay behind" army network in Turkey. They were intended to conduct sabotage and espionage operations if required. Such networks were set up in many NATO European countries (the best known being Gladio), as well as in officially neutral countries in Europe; the network in Turkey was codenamed "Counter-Guerilla", elements of it were later accused of committing torture. [5] The Counter-Guerrillas' existence in Turkey was revealed in 1973 by then-prime minister Bülent Ecevit. [6]
After accusations of Turkish involvement in secret CIA rendition flights were denied by Turkey's Foreign Ministry, a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks revealed that such flights had taken place. A cable dated 8 June 2006 stated that the Turkish military had allowed the use of Incirlik Air Base as a refueling stop for "detainee movement operations" since 2002. [7] [8]
According to intelligence sources quoted by Seymour Hersh, in early 2012 the CIA set up in co-operation with Turkey what it called "the Rat Line", a covert operation to obtain and transport, using proxies and front companies, armaments from Libya to rebel groups in Syria via southern Turkey. The CIA's part in the operation reportedly ended as a result of the mass evacuation of CIA operatives from the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, after the 2012 Benghazi attack. [9] According to Hersh, the operation was run by David Petraeus, and the CIA could avoid reporting the operation's existence to US Congress intelligence committees since the involvement of Turkey allowed it to be classed as a liaison mission. [10]
In January 2014, the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence cast doubt on this alleged United States involvement and reported that "All CIA activities in Benghazi were legal and authorized. On-the-record testimony establishes that CIA was not sending weapons (including MANPADS) from Libya to Syria, or facilitating other organizations or states that were transferring weapons from Libya to Syria." [11]
Seymour Myron Hersh is an American investigative journalist and political writer. He gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. During the 1970s, Hersh covered the Watergate scandal for The New York Times, also reporting on the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia and the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) program of domestic spying. In 2004, he detailed the U.S. military's torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq for The New Yorker. Hersh has won a record five George Polk Awards, and two National Magazine Awards. He is the author of 11 books, including The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (1983), an account of the career of Henry Kissinger which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
The Phoenix Program was designed and initially coordinated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Vietnam War, involving the American, South Vietnamese militaries, and a small amount of Special forces operatives from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam. In 1970, CIA responsibility was phased out, and the program was put under the authority of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS).
The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2015. Within SAC there are two separate groups: SAC/SOG for tactical paramilitary operations and SAC/PAG for covert political action.
Operation Gladio was the codename for clandestine "stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO and by the CIA, in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies during the Cold War. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, Operation Gladio is used as an informal name for all of them. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and in some neutral countries.
Incirlik Air Base is a Turkish air base of slightly more than 3320 ac, located in the İncirlik quarter of the city of Adana, Turkey. The base is within an urban area of 1.7 million people, 10 km (6 mi) east of the city core, and 32 km (20 mi) inland from the Mediterranean Sea. The United States Air Force and the Turkish Air Force are the primary users of the air base, although it is at times also used by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Saudi Air Force. The base is also the home of the 74th Anti-aircraft Artillery Regiment of the Spanish Army.
A stay-behind operation is one where a country places secret operatives or organizations in its own territory, for use in case of a later enemy occupation. The stay-behind operatives would then form the basis of a resistance movement, and act as spies from behind enemy lines. Small-scale operations may cover discrete areas, but larger stay-behind operations envisage reacting to the conquest of whole countries.
A strategy of tension is a political policy wherein violent struggle is encouraged rather than suppressed. The purpose is to create a general feeling of insecurity in the population and make people seek security in a strong government.
Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories suggest a number of possible explanations for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Some of the theories preceded the official investigation by Scottish police and the FBI; others arose from different interpretation of evidence presented at Libyan agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's 2000–2001 trial; yet others have been developed independently by individuals and organisations outside the official investigation.
Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) domestic espionage project targeting American citizens operating from 1967 to 1974, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson and expanded under President Richard Nixon, whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic race, anti-war, and other protest movements. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms by chief of counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a global area of operations.
Operation Zeppelin was a major military deception operation run by the British during the Second World War. It formed part of Operation Bodyguard, the cover plan for the invasion of Normandy in 1944, and was intended to mislead German intelligence as to the Allied invasion plans in the Mediterranean theatre that year. The operation was planned by 'A' Force and implemented by means of visual deception and misinformation.
Counter-Guerrilla is a Turkish branch of Operation Gladio, a clandestine stay-behind anti-communist initiative backed by the United States as an expression of the Truman Doctrine. The founding goal of the operation was to erect a stay-behind guerrilla force to undermine a possible Soviet occupation. The goal was soon expanded to subverting communism in Turkey.
The Central Intelligence Agency, known informally as the Agency, metonymously as Langley and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
The Republic of Turkey (Türkiye) and the United States of America established diplomatic relations in 1927. Relations after World War II evolved from the Second Cairo Conference in December 1943 and Turkey's entrance into World War II on the side of the Allies in February 1945. Later that year, Turkey became a charter member of the United Nations. Since 1945, both countries advanced ties under liberal international order, put forward by the US, through a set of global, rule-based, structured relationships based on political, and economic liberalism. As a consequence relationships advanced under G20, OECD, Council of Europe, OSCE, WTO, the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, IMF, the World Bank and the Turkey in NATO.
The Taksim Square massacre was an attack on leftist demonstrators on 1 May 1977 in Taksim Square, Istanbul, Turkey. Casualty figures vary between 34 and 42 people killed with 126 to 220 injured. Over 500 demonstrators were later detained by the security forces, and 98 were indicted. None of the perpetrators were caught, although suspicion soon fell on the Counter-Guerrilla and associated right-wing groups. The massacre was part of the wave of political violence in Turkey in the late 1970s.
The US Army Field Manual 30-31B, dubbed the "Westmoreland Field Manual," purportedly outlined a strategy called the "strategy of tension," wherein violent attacks are orchestrated and blamed on left-wing groups to justify government action. However, most scholars believe it to be a Cold War-era hoax conducted by Soviet intelligence services.
While the CIA cooperates with its French counterpart, the DGSE, the countries do collect information on one another, especially in the economic and scientific areas.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in Italian politics since the end of World War II. The CIA helped swing the 1948 general election in favor of the centrist Christian Democrats and would continue to intervene in Italian politics until at least the early 1960s.
The 2012 Benghazi attack was a coordinated attack against two United States government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, by members of the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia. On September 11, 2012, at 9:40 p.m. local time, members of Ansar al-Sharia attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi resulting in the deaths of both United States Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith. At around 4:00 a.m. on September 12, the group launched a mortar attack against a CIA annex approximately one mile (1.6 km) away, killing two CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty and wounding ten others. Initial analysis by the CIA, repeated by top government officials, indicated that the attack spontaneously arose from a protest. Subsequent investigations showed that the attack was premeditated—although rioters and looters not originally part of the group may have joined in after the attacks began.
Ten investigations were conducted into the 2012 Benghazi attack, six of these by Republican-controlled House committees. Problems were identified with security measures at the Benghazi facilities, due to poor decisions made by employees of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and specifically its director Eric Boswell, who resigned under pressure in December 2012. Despite numerous allegations against Obama administration officials of scandal, cover-up and lying regarding the Benghazi attack and its aftermath, none of the ten investigations found any evidence to support those allegations. The last of the investigation committees issued its final report and shut down in December 2016, one month after the 2016 presidential election.
Timber Sycamore was a classified weapons supply and training program run by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and supported by some Arab intelligence services, including Saudi intelligence. The aim of the programme was to remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power. Launched in 2012 or 2013, it supplied money, weaponry and training to Syrian opposition groups fighting Syrian government forces in the Syrian Civil War. According to US officials, the program was run by the CIA's Special Activities Division and has trained thousands of rebels. President Barack Obama secretly authorized the CIA to begin arming Syria's embattled rebels in 2013. The program became public knowledge in mid-2016.
Ulkucus, the ultranationalists, were the lead players of the Turkish Gladio ...
The CIA has a delegation of at least 20 people who co-operate in the MIT with the CIA and who occupy high positions inside the MIT. They supply information, contacts and they participate in operations at home and collectively in operations abroad... All technical equipment is supplied by the CIA. A lot of personnel was trained by the Americans in courses abroad, the buildings were constructed by the CIA, the instructors were supplied by the CIA... The employees have been working for years as CIA agents, for the benefit of the American secret service, it takes over its tasks without pay in operations at home and abroad...
Türkiye'deki gizli ordunun adı kontr gerilladır.