Hakan Fidan’s HTS confessions... Bahçeli’s warnings...

HTS, which the world and Turkey consider a terrorist organization, has left Idlib and come to settle in Damascus. They will also build the “New Syria” together with our people!..

In 2017-2018, with the joint decision taken by Russia, Turkey, and Iran in Astana, it was announced that the operation launched by the TSK (Turkish Armed Forces) and the FSA (Free Syrian Army) into Idlib was against HTS, while HTS announced that they would consider every element entering the city an “occupier.” However, Reuters claimed that the “Turkish Army entered Idlib accompanied by HTS.” A few days later, Abu al-Fath al-Farghali, one of the religious leaders of HTS, said that “Turkey is not an occupier.”

Before the Sochi Memorandum between Erdoğan and Putin; when the “responsibility” of separating jihadists from moderate opposition in Idlib, neutralizing terrorist elements, and demilitarizing the area was given to Turkey, no one emerged to wonder, ask, or question what HTS was to us.

Again, during that period, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said, “Those who came to Idlib came here through Turkey at the time. Therefore, Turkey knows well who is who here. It would be a natural development for them to return to where they came from,” while an HTS spokesperson said, “It is not the time to talk about the dissolution of the organization and its joining a Turkey-backed group.”

In the following days, while our Ministry of National Defense announced that “the withdrawal of heavy weapons in the region was completed on October 10, 2018,” Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov stated that “Turkish partners played the main role in actively cooperating with all groups there.”

The picture conveyed by the foreign media was different. According to the allegations, there was no sign that HTS had withdrawn from the region; furthermore, they had said, “We have not abandoned our jihad preference and our war to realize our holy revolution.”

“Diplomatic Language”?

Coming to the present day; not only the media, but almost all prominent figures of the government, especially Erdoğan, explain that Turkey carried out the “Syrian revolution.”

Even if it were true; is everything said so openly everywhere, as if “calling a wolf to the herd”? Where is the weight and seriousness of the state?!

It is argued that Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is trying to clean up the messes made by using “diplomatic language” against this grandstanding.

But what are we to do about the statements he made to the French broadcaster France 24? The reason for the reminders we made at the beginning of the article is this statement.

France 24 asked, in summary, the following:

“You were the intelligence chief before becoming Foreign Minister. I assume you had contact with the HTS leader known as Ahmed al-Shara. Were they useful in the fight against terrorist groups like ISIS or Al-Qaeda? Did they cooperate with you and Western officials to show that they are no longer terrorists and that they cooperate against terrorist groups?.. Did HTS also cooperate on targets like the former leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?”

Fidan said, “HTS had good cooperation, especially in intelligence sharing in the fight against ISIS, and they were very helpful to them,” and that “they did not announce this to the public at that time due to the sensitivity of the matter,” adding, “HTS has been in cooperation with us for years regarding intelligence gathering on organizations linked to DAESH and Al-Qaeda and on targets like (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi).”

Thus, along with us, the world has learned and understood very well what HTS is to us and why the responsibility for it was left to Turkey!..

In this case, hasn't the way been paved for the potential bills in Syria to be charged to Turkey?!

How He Opposed the MIT Law

When the Assad administration was toppled, MIT President İbrahim Kalın went to pray at the Umayyad Mosque at the cost of exposing the officers with him, and when former MIT President Hakan Fidan recounted these, it is impossible not to remember how MHP Leader Devlet Bahçeli opposed the changes made to the MIT Law in 2014.

While reacting to the 15-article draft law brought to the agenda after the December 17/25 corruption operation, Bahçeli drew attention not only to its connection with the “solution process” carried out with Imrali-Qandil-HDP, but also to its relevance to developments on our borders, and spoke as follows:

“Turkey is currently being threatened by the footsteps of a ‘tyranny regime’ where the desires of a single person in the political field are elevated to the status of law under the pressure of the majority. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey has been made captive to the domination of the Prime Minister... Prime Minister Erdoğan has taken action to make MIT his backyard in the full sense and to use it from top to bottom for his political interests... The draft law in question is problematic in every sense and dangerous in every aspect... He saw the MIT Law as an opportunity to find a cover for all illegal, immoral, and illegitimate relationships, from Oslo to Imrali, from aid to terrorist groups on our borders to foreign policy choices against our national goals... MIT personnel are granted the opportunity to meet with detainees and convicts in penal institutions while performing their duties, and to establish contact with all structures that threaten national security, including terrorist organizations. Besides this, the draft law includes that MIT can establish direct relations with all kinds of domestic and foreign institutions and organizations, and all organizations, formations, and individuals, and can execute appropriate coordination methods... The Prime Minister is eager to carry out operational activities inside and outside the country with the intelligence organization under his command. From now on, the lid of covert operations will be able to be opened again... Honorable deputies representing the national will must show the necessary sensitivity and awareness so that Turkey does not become a scene to the Saddam administration, the Assad rule, and Baathist brutality... Our advice is that the Prime Minister, who is preparing to introduce a lie detector application to determine the reliability and suitability of those who work and will work in MIT, should sit in that machine first in the presence of the nation if he has the courage and trusts himself.”

The Only Change in the Picture

Other things happened in 2014 as well. ISIS took 49 personnel at our Mosul Consulate hostage... Former US Ambassador to Ankara Ricciardone claimed that Turkey was helping and working with some opposition groups in Syria such as Al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham... Turkey's participation in the international combat force to be established against ISIS came to the agenda.

Upon all this, MHP's then-Deputy Chairman in charge of Organizational Affairs, Şefkat Çetin, made a statement titled “Tayyip Erdoğan turned Turkey into a shelter for terrorists. Turkish foreign policy was left hostage to the US and ISIS” and noted the following in summary:

“The US, which pats the AKP government on the back to give Turkey the role of the gendarme of the Middle East, is on one hand blackmailing with accusations of terrorism support by using the connections of Tayyip Erdoğan and Davutoğlu with groups like the Ikhwan and Al-Nusra... Tayyip Erdoğan, who opened Turkey's doors to terrorist organization leaders that even a country like Qatar is uncomfortable with, has turned our country into a shelter for terrorists... Indeed, the words of former US Ambassador to Ankara Ricciardone that Turkey helped some opposition groups in Syria and worked with them despite their warnings show that Turkey is facing US pressure and blackmail... It is understood that the known weaknesses of the AKP, which has a criminal record for the horse-trading done for the March 1 memorandum, are being used again by forces preparing to intervene in the region under the pretext of ISIS... No matter how much they hide it, it is a bitter fact that the AKP has played the role of an internal collaborator in the new Crusades launched in the Islamic world in recent years... The war preparation made today under the pretext of ISIS is actually a new step of the Greater Middle East Project that the US has been continuing for years. The essence of the GMEP project, which was put forward to redesign a large part of the Islamic world, especially Iraq and Syria, is the destruction of old structures, most of which are under the control of the Baath regime and under the influence of Arab nationalism, and the establishment of a new order based on chaos, that is, tightening the link of the chain around the neck of the Islamic world one degree further... The most important reason for the change of government in 2002 is the knowledge that the MHP would not allow the US operation in Iraq. Therefore, the Turkish nation can only get out of the Middle East quagmire that the AKP government has put our country into with its own faith and unity. The only address that will provide this faith and unity is the Nationalist Movement Party and its power.”

The only change in this picture presented 10 years ago is this; the MHP has come to power, but it is alongside the AKP. Now they are going on a conquest together amidst the applause of the US!..