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100-460: MTTB was first established on December 14, 1916, based on Turkish nationalism, secularism, Pan-Turkism, and Turanism. Towards the 1960s, the group shifted to Turkish–Islamic synthesis , and a large faction shifted to Islamism and left the nationalism. In 1924, university students took action by passing out discounts on tram tickets. MTTB first announced its name in this action. On April 27, 1927, it gained legal status. Between 1931 and 1933, Tevfik İleri

200-600: A 1992 interview with The Nation , that certain elements from the network were involved in terrorist activities against de Gaulle and his Algerian policy. A section of the 11th Choc regiment split over the 1962 Évian peace accords, and became part of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), but it is unclear if this also involved members of the French stay-behind network. La Rose des Vents and Arc-en-ciel ("Rainbow") network were part of Gladio. François de Grossouvre

300-690: A 2021 speech, Destici said that the " HDP does not represent the Kurds , it represents the PKK and YPG ". In 2023, Destici accused Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu of "calling all Kurds PKK members, HDP members, PYD members, YPG members", and Destici later declared that Kurds and Turks have been "brothers for a thousand years". Turkish Islamonationalists are known to hate Greeks due to their conflicts in history as well as Greeks being Christian. The Grey Wolves were once accused of storming an Istanbul pogrom memorial exhibition and throwing eggs and taking down pictures, although

400-496: A campaign for a new Home Guard against a potential Soviet invasion. NATO provided a forum to integrate, coordinate, and optimise the use of all SB assets as part of the Emergency War Plan. This coordination included the military SB units, which were part of NATO's order of battle, and the clandestine SBOs run by NATO nations. Western secret services had cooperated in various bilateral, triparty, and multilateral fora in

500-564: A century later that SOE was complemented by a stay-behind organisation in Britain, created in extreme secrecy, to prepare for a possible invasion by Nazi Germany . A network of resistance fighters was formed across Britain and arms caches were established. The network was recruited, in part, from the 5th (Ski) Battalion of the Scots Guards (which had originally been formed, but was not deployed, to fight alongside Finnish forces fighting

600-511: A clandestine shortwave radio homed in on a fixed frequency. It had a keyboard with digital encryption, making use of traditional Morse code obsolete. They had a cache of further equipment for signalling helicopters or submarines to drop special agents who were to stay in the partisan's homes while mounting sabotage operations against the communists. When Greece joined NATO in 1952, the country's special forces, LOK ( Lochoi Oreinōn Katadromōn , i.e., "mountain raiding companies"), were integrated into

700-715: A former German army officer referred to by the CIA as an "unreconstructed Nazi". "The network was disbanded in 1953 amid political concerns that some members' neo-Nazi sympathies would be exposed in the West German press." Documents shown to the Italian parliamentary terrorism committee revealed that in the 1970s British and French officials involved in the network visited a training base in Germany built with US money. In 1976, West German secret service BND secretary Heidrun Hofer

800-754: A press officer at the US embassy in Rome. 'So even before the 'stabilising' plans that Atlantic circles had prepared for Italy became operational through the bombings, one of the leading members of the terrorist group was in the pay of the American embassy in Rome.' a report released by the Democrats of the Left party says. General Gerardo Serravalle, who commanded the Italian Gladio from 1971 to 1974, related that "in

900-427: A secret arms network was established in Britain after the war. Hackett had written in 1978 a novel, The Third World War: August 1985 , which was a fictionalized scenario of a Soviet Army invasion of West Germany in 1985. The novel was followed in 1982 by The Third World War: The Untold Story , which elaborated on the original. Farrar-Hockley had aroused controversy in 1983 when he became involved in trying to organise

1000-530: A successful coup d'état in 1980, served as the head of the Counter-Guerrilla , the Turkish branch of Operation Gladio. Historians and outside investigators have speculated that Counter-Guerrilla and several subordinate Intelligence, Special Forces, and Gendarmerie units were possibly involved in numerous acts of state-sponsored terrorism and engineering the military coups of 1971 and 1980 . Many of

1100-403: A wave of anti-Kurdish attacks came, in which stones were thrown at buses coming from or going to Kurdish-majority cities, and assaults on Kurdish seasonworkers increased. Many buses hung up the Turkish flag to avoid getting their windows broken. The BBP's Alperen Hearths responded by going onto the buses and greeting passengers and giving out roses and Turkish delights , in which Kürşat Mican,

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1200-608: Is a Western ideology, which has no place in Islamic nations. A member of the Islamic Community of Kurdistan, in a statement once said that "Turkish racism is a poisonous dagger stuck in the heart of the Islamic world " and encouraged Kurdish Muslims to physically attack Turkish–Islamic synthesists wherever they find them by saying "God wants to punish these racist fitna-makers with your hands". He also said that they are

1300-499: Is often criticized by Islamists who view nationalism as a sin, by secular Turkish nationalists who view religion as unimportant, and by various minority rights organizations and activists in Turkey. Islamic scholar İhsan Şenocak once said "Neither Turkish-Islamic nationalism, nor Kurdish-Islamic nationalism . Only Islam." The Raiders Organization claimed that this ideology is a "fascistic product of imperialism", and that nationalism

1400-462: The 1960 Turkish coup d'état and in an interview after the coup, Türkeş described the usage of Arabic for religion as a "betrayal", and said "In a Turkish mosque, the Quran should be read in Turkish, not Arabic." After the refugee crisis, anti-Arabism increased, mostly among Grey Wolves. In Gaziantep , approximately 2 dozen Syrian Arabs had to leave the city after angry Turkish crowds belonging to

1500-455: The BBP , who once ripped a picture of a Kurdistan map, said that "The Kurds are our brothers. Unfortunately, some political structures and groups within both of us either can't see the bigger picture, or it doesn't work for them to see it. They are chasing small calculations for the sake of political interest. The basis for Turkey's ability to continue on its way as a whole passes through unity." In

1600-584: The Chief Staff of Defense , there were instructions to infiltrate left-wing groups and provoke social tension by carrying out attacks and then blame them on the left. In 2000, a parliamentary commission report from the left-wing coalition Gruppo Democratici di Sinistra l'Ulivo asserted that a strategy of tension had been supported by the United States to " stop the PCI , and to a certain degree also

1700-603: The Commissione Stragi headed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino that the Italian Gladio members trained at a military base in Britain. After the 1967 withdrawal of France from NATO's military structure, the SHAPE headquarters were displaced to Mons in Belgium. In 1990, following France's denial of any "stay-behind" French army, Giulio Andreotti publicly said the last Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) meeting, at which

1800-510: The European Parliament sharply condemned NATO and the United States in a resolution for having manipulated European politics with the stay-behind armies. New legislation governing intelligence agencies' missions and methods was passed in 1998, following two government inquiries and the creation of a permanent parliamentary committee in 1991, which was to bring them under the authority of Belgium's federal agencies. The commission

1900-676: The Grey Wolves ( Turkish : Bozkurtlar ), the youth wing of the MHP . Nazar was an Uzbek born near Tashkent who had deserted the Red Army to join the Nazis during World War II in order to fight on the Eastern Front for the creation of a Turkistan. After Germany lost the war, some of its spies found haven in the U.S. intelligence community . Nazar was such a person, and he became

2000-485: The Grey Wolves ransacked their homes. Another time a group of about 1,000 Grey Wolves, which organized on social media, blocked various roads in Kahramanmaraş and refused to leave even after police warnings. The protestors also removed Arabic signs from many Syrian-owned stores, and many store owners closed their shops in fear. They also attacked a Syrian in a car and broke his windows, however they ran away after

2100-538: The Italian Massacres Commission , found out that several far-right terrorist organizations were the trench troops of a secret army who were linked to the CIA. Salvini said: "The role of the Americans was ambiguous, halfway between knowing and not preventing and actually inducing people to commit atrocities". Judge Gerardo D'Ambrosio found out that in a conference that had the patronage of

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2200-534: The Motherland Party rule, Turkish Islamonationalism became the de facto official ideology of Turkey (and until today it is accused of being so under AKP rule, although the AKP strongly denies it). In 1982, religion was strengthened in schools and education as a way to strengthen Turkish Islamonationalism, which intended to weaken mainstream Islamism and secular nationalism . The Turkish–Islamic synthesis

2300-483: The PSI , from reaching executive power in the country ". It stated that "Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organized or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence." The report stated that US intelligence agents were informed in advance about several terrorist bombings, including

2400-729: The Soviet invasion of Finland ). The network, which became known as the Auxiliary Units , was headed by Major Colin Gubbins – an expert in guerrilla warfare (who would later lead SOE). The units were trained, in part, by "Mad Mike" Calvert , a Royal Engineers officer who specialised in demolition by explosives and covert raiding operations. To the extent that they were publicly visible, the Auxiliary Units were disguised as Home Guard units, under GHQ Home Forces . The network

2500-769: The Turkish Army , was murdered by Kıvanç Ağaoglu, who was a supporter of Abdullah Çatlı , the former Grey Wolves leader. On Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day in 2012, various nationalist and Turkish Islamonationalist groups protested against the remembrance of the Armenian genocide in Taksim Square . When Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan visited the city of Ani in Kars Province, the local Grey Wolves leader suggested that his anyone who supports him should "go on an Armenian hunt." Turkish Islamonationalism

2600-603: The 1970s in Turkey were full of Anti-Kurdish sentiment , the new Islamist-led MTTB had an Islamic brotherhood approach and condemned the racism. Many Islamist Kurds joined the MTTB as there was a lack of Kurdish Islamist groups at the time, and many right-wing Kurds joined it as it was one of the few right-wing groups which did not hold Anti-Kurdish views, unlike the various Kemalist, Idealist, or other nationalist groups. When Hüseyin Velioğlu came to Ankara for university in 1978, he joined

2700-522: The 1970s the members of the CPC [Coordination and Planning Committee] were the officers responsible for the secret structures of Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy. These representatives of the secret structures met every year in one of the capitals... At the stay-behind meetings representatives of the CIA were always present. They had no voting rights and were from

2800-465: The 1980s. It was located in a park near Scheveningen . Some of the stolen weapons, including hand grenades and machine guns, later turned up when police officials arrested criminals John Mieremet and Sam Klepper in 1991. The Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD feared at the time that disclosure of the Gladio history of these weapons would have been politically sensitive. In 1957, the director of

2900-513: The ACCG. By 1961 though, 'both SHAPE and CPC [now] accepted that such SB activity [guerrilla warfare and resistance under Soviet occupation] was a purely national responsibility'. Upon learning of the discovery, the parliament of the European Union (EU) drafted a resolution sharply criticizing the fact. Yet only Italy, Belgium and Switzerland carried out parliamentary investigations, while

3000-646: The Alperen Hearths were seen in Istanbul just days after they went to fight. Although the ones who follow Türkeş are frequently accused of being anti-Kurdish , the ones who follow Yazıcıoğlu have no problem with Kurds as long as the Kurds agree to being subordinate to Turks. On February 23, 1979, while the 20-year-old Kurdish Raider activist, Metin Yüksel , was leaving Istanbul 's Fatih Mosque , he

3100-635: The CIA chief of station in Athens, answered, "How can you rape a whore?" Arrested and then exiled in Canada and Sweden, Andreas Papandreou later returned to Greece, where he won the 1981 election , forming the first socialist government of Greece's post-war history. According to his own testimony, Ganser alleges, he discovered the existence of the secret NATO army, then codenamed "Red Sheepskin", as acting prime minister in 1984 and had given orders to dissolve it. Following Giulio Andreotti's revelations in 1990,

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3200-779: The CIA headquarters of the capital in which the meeting took place... members of the US Forces Europe Command were present, also without voting rights. " Next to the CPC a second secret command post was created in 1957, the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC). According to the Belgian Parliamentary Committee on Gladio, the ACC was "responsible for coordinating the 'Stay-behind' networks in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, United Kingdom and

3300-522: The CIA's station chief to Turkey. In Austria, the first secret stay-behind army was exposed in 1947. It had been set up by the far-right Theodor Soucek and Hugo Rössner, who both insisted during their trial that "they were carrying out the secret operation with the full knowledge and support of the US and British occupying powers." Sentenced to death, they had their sentences commuted to life in prison and 20 years, respectively, by Karl Renner , to prevent them from potentially becoming martyrs. In August 1952,

3400-659: The Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) at SHAPE. The peacetime role of the CPC would have been to coordinate the different military and paramilitary plans and programmes in NATO nations (and partners like Switzerland and Austria) in order to avoid duplication of effort. The CPC itself had at least two working groups – one on communications and one on networks. SACEUR also established a Special Projects Branch to develop and coordinate 'clandestine forces operating in support of SACEUR's military forces'. In 1957,

3500-759: The December 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and the Piazza della Loggia bombing in Brescia five years later, but did nothing to alert the Italian authorities or to prevent the attacks from taking place. It also reported that Pino Rauti , former leader of the MSI Fiamma-Tricolore party, journalist and founder of the Ordine Nuovo (new order) subversive organisation, received regular funding from

3600-522: The Dutch Parliament that his office was running a secret organisation that had been set up inside the Dutch defence ministry in the 1950s, but denied it was supervised directly by NATO or other foreign bodies. He went on to inform that successive prime ministers and defence chiefs had always preferred not to inform other Cabinet members or Parliament about the secret organization. It was modelled on

3700-568: The Eastern provinces from here. We told them that all Muslims are brothers. Evil groups have been wanting to disrupt our brotherhood, unity and solidarity for years. We, as Alperens, will not allow this at all costs. By Allah's permission, we will live together in this land for a lifetime in a brotherly manner. I strongly condemn terrorism, with hatred." Mican also accused the ones who engaged in anti-Kurdish violence of being "specially selected agents". In an Iftar speech, Mustafa Destici , leader of

3800-627: The European stay-behind network. The CIA and LOK reconfirmed on March 25, 1955, their mutual cooperation in a secret document signed by US General Truscott for the CIA, and Konstantinos Dovas , chief of staff of the Greek military. In addition to preparing for a Soviet invasion, the CIA instructed LOK to prevent a leftist coup. Former CIA agent Philip Agee , who was sharply criticized in the US for having revealed sensitive information, insisted that "paramilitary groups, directed by CIA officers, operated in

3900-570: The French branch of Gladio was present, had been on October 23 and 24, 1990, under the presidency of Belgian General Van Calster, director of the Belgian military General Service for Intelligence (SGR). In November, Guy Coëme , the Minister of Defense, acknowledged the existence of a Belgian "stay-behind" army, raising concerns about a similar implication in terrorist acts as in Italy. The same year,

4000-574: The Greek Defence Ministry while Brigadier General Stylianos Pattakos gained control of communication centres, parliament, the royal palace, and according to detailed lists, arrested over 10,000 people. According to Ganser, Phillips Talbot , the US ambassador in Athens, disapproved of the military coup which established the " Regime of the Colonels " (1967–1974), complaining that it represented "a rape of democracy"—to which Jack Maury,

4100-512: The Greek defence minister confirmed that a branch of the network, known as Operation Sheepskin, operated in his country until 1988. In December 2005, journalist Kleanthis Grivas published an article in To Proto Thema , a Greek Sunday newspaper, in which he accused "Sheepskin" for the assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch in Athens in 1975, as well as the assassination of British military attaché Stephen Saunders in 2000. This

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4200-666: The Grey Wolves denied any involvement. In 2005 many Turkish Islamonationalists organized a rally and marched to the gate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and chanted "Patriarch Leave" and "Patriarchate to Greece". MHP leader also once held a map showing Turkey claiming all of the islands controlled by Greece. Similar to Greeks, Turkish Islamonationalists are also known to hate Armenians due to their conflicting history and due to Armenians practicing Christianity. Sevag Balıkçı , an Armenian in

4300-740: 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. According to several Western European researchers, the operation involved the use of assassination, psychological warfare , and false flag operations to delegitimize left-wing parties in Western European countries, and even went so far as to support anti-communist militias and right-wing terrorism as they tortured communists and assassinated them, such as Eduardo Mondlane in 1969. The United States Department of State rejected

4400-511: The MTTB under the name of the Student Union. Later, it took the name of the MTTB again in 1947. The MTTB continued its nationalist activities. They organized meetings and started anti-communist campaigns. During the late 1960s, the MTTB began shifting towards Islamism and became the top organization for Islamist or conservative politicians who were opposed to Kemalism. The MTTB was divided between Millî Görüş Islamists and Idealists , and

4500-494: The MTTB until 1980. On March 27, 2008, a group named the Student Union Federation was founded and claimed to be the continuation of the MTTB. Turkish%E2%80%93Islamic synthesis Turkish–Islamic synthesis ( Turkish : Türk-İslam sentezi ) is a type of Turkish nationalism which has an Islamist leaning instead of secular . Historian Gökhan Çetinsaya explained that there are three opinions on

4600-506: The Netherlands for sabotage purposes. Already in 1990, it was known that the weapons cache near Velp, while accidentally 'discovered' in 1983, had been plundered partially before. It still contained dozens of hand grenades, semiautomatic rifles, automatic pistols, munitions and explosives at the time of discovery, but five hand grenades had gone missing. A Dutch investigative television program revealed on 9 September 2007, that another arms cache that had belonged to Gladio had been ransacked in

4700-518: The President of Italy, Francesco Cossiga , and Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, had been involved in the Gladio organization and coverup ..." Researcher Francesco Cacciatore, in an article based on recently de-classified documents, writes that a "note from March 1972 specified that the possibility of using 'Gladio' in the event of internal subversions, not provided for by the organization's statute and not supported by NATO directives or plans,

4800-485: The Turkish police fired a warning gunshot into the air. Many Turkish Islamonationalist organizations volunteer to fight in Syria in favor of Syrian Turkmen to strengthen Turkmen interests and weaken Arab rule. The Alperen Hearths sent 250 fighters in 2015 to "fight against Russia, Iran, and Assad. And to help Turkmen", although they were later accused of having just came into Syria to take photos with fighters, as many of

4900-552: The US decided to create "stay-behind" paramilitary organizations, with the official aim of countering a possible Soviet invasion through sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. Arms caches were hidden, escape routes prepared, and loyal members recruited, whether in Italy or in other European countries. Its clandestine "cells" were to stay behind in enemy-controlled territory and to act as resistance movements , conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and assassinations. Clandestine stay-behind (SB) units were created with

5000-402: The United States". During peacetime, the activities of the ACC "included elaborating the directives for the network, developing its clandestine capability and organising bases in Britain and the United States. In wartime, it was to plan stay-behind operations in conjunction with SHAPE; organisers were to activate clandestine bases and organise operations from there". General Serravalle declared to

5100-632: The United States, United Kingdom, France, and Benelux countries, all of which ran SBOs in Western Europe, established the 'Six Powers Lines Committee' which became the Allied Clandestine Committee in 1958 and, after 1976, the Allied Coordination Committee (ACC). The ACC has been described as a technical committee to bring national SBOs together. It took its guidance from the CPC and organized multinational exercises. The authority of SACEUR when it came to clandestine operations

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5200-514: The WUCC was integrated into NATO , whose headquarters were established in France, under the name "Clandestine Planning Committee" (CPC). In 1958, NATO founded the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) to coordinate secret warfare. The network was supported with elements from SDECE , and had military support from the 11th Choc regiment . The former director of DGSE , Admiral Pierre Lacoste , alleged in

5300-485: The accidental discovery of large arms caches in 1980 and 1983. In the latter incident, people walking in a forest near the village of Rozendaal , near Arnhem , chanced upon a large hidden cache of arms, containing dozens of hand grenades, semiautomatic rifles, automatic pistols, munitions and explosives. That discovery forced the Dutch government to confirm that the arms were related to NATO planning for unorthodox warfare. In 1990, then-Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers told

5400-579: The administration of President George H. W. Bush refused to comment. NATO's "stay-behind" organizations were never called upon to resist a Soviet invasion. According to a November 13, 1990, Reuters cable, " André Moyen – a former member of the Belgian military security service and of the [stay-behind] network – said Gladio was not just anti-Communist but was for fighting subversion in general. He added that his predecessor had given Gladio 142 million francs ($ 4.6 million) to buy new radio equipment." The Italian NATO stay-behind organization, dubbed "Gladio",

5500-478: The bombings committed from the 1960s to the 1980s. Andreotti declared that the Italian military services (predecessors of the SISMI) had joined in 1964 the Allied Clandestine Committee created in 1957 by the US, France, Belgium and Greece, and which was in charge of directing Gladio's operations. However, Gladio was actually set up under Minister of Defence (from 1953 to 1958) Paolo Taviani 's supervision. Besides,

5600-460: The case of Richard Welch, "Grivas bizarrely accuses the CIA of playing a role in the assassination of one of its own senior officials" while "Sheepskin" couldn't have assassinated Stephen Saunders for the simple reason that, according to the US government, "the Greek government stated it dismantled the 'stay behind' network in 1988." Speculation that the Netherlands was involved in Gladio arose from

5700-414: The controversial Olcay Kılavuz also made bold accusations saying that the HDP, IYI, and CHP are the ones who are truly anti-Kurdish. Regardless of the MHP's denial of being racist towards Kurds, the MHP and its supporters have continued to portray acts of racism against even the Kurds who do not have an affiliation with the PKK or HDP. In 2015, in Istanbul, after the failure of the PKK peace process ,

5800-401: The convicts were pardoned and released by President Theodor Körner . While there is evidence suggesting that the activities of Soucek and Rössner were tolerated to an extent by local occupation authorities, available American archives do not suggest that they had any connection to U.S. intelligence. A secret review of the situation by US forces in Austria in early January 1948 implies that while

5900-484: The creation, training, and running of clandestine Stay-behind organisations (SBO) soon after World War II. In 1947, France, the United Kingdom, and the Benelux countries had created a joint policy on SB in the Western Union Clandestine Committee (WUCC), a forum of the Western Union , the European defence alliance predating NATO. The format entered into NATO structures around 1951–1952 when the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) established such an 'ad hoc' committee,

6000-407: The end of the 1969 elections, Burhanettin Kayhan, an Islamist, was elected, which further drew the MTTB towards Islamism and away from nationalism. The Islamists criticised the Idealists and claimed that the Turkish-Islamic synthesis is a manmade ideology which corrupts Islam. Infighting between Idealists and Islamists within the MTTB led to an Islamist victory in 1975, in which the MTTB emblem, which

6100-489: The experience and involvement of former SOE officers . Following Giulio Andreotti's October 1990 revelations, General Sir John Hackett , former commander-in-chief of the British Army on the Rhine , declared on November 16, 1990, that a contingency plan involving "stay behind and resistance in depth" was drawn up after the war. The same week, Anthony Farrar-Hockley , former commander-in-chief of NATO's Forces in Northern Europe from 1979 to 1982, declared to The Guardian that

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6200-416: The flag, the nation and the thousand-year experience and integration. Those who engage in stealthy and conscious political Kurdism are the disgraceful ones who bring water to the PKK's mill. My brothers of Kurdish origin are not against MHP. Those who are against the MHP are PKK members, PYD/YPG lovers. Kurds cannot be terrorists, terrorists cannot be Kurds, they cannot even be called Kurds." Devlet Bahçeli and

6300-472: The founding member of the Counter-Guerrilla ; Alparslan Türkeş — a product of that CIA initiative. As one of the nations that prompted the Truman Doctrine , Turkey is one of the first countries to participate in Operation Gladio and, some say, the only country where it has not been purged. The counter-guerrillas' existence in Turkey was revealed in 1973 by then-prime minister Bülent Ecevit . General Kenan Evren , who became President of Turkey following

6400-454: The goal of conquest in Turkish tradition. Operation Gladio Operation Gladio was the codename for clandestine " stay-behind " operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU) (founded in 1948), and subsequently by NATO (formed in 1949) and by the CIA (established in 1947), in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies during the Cold War . Although Gladio specifically refers to

6500-480: The high ranking plotters of the 1971 and 1980 coup, such as Generals Evren, Memduh Tağmaç , Faik Türün , Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu , Kemal Yamak and Air Force Commander Tahsin Şahinkaya , served at various times under the command of Counter-Guerrilla or the subordinate Tactical Mobilisation Group and Special Warfare Department . Additionally, the CIA employed people from the far-right, such as Pan-Turkist SS-member Ruzi Nazar (father of Sylvia Nasar ), to train

6600-468: The highest level of NATO command, coordination in time of crisis had to be arranged. Thus, to coordinate these activities at different command levels in wartime, SACEUR created the Allied Clandestine Coordinating Groups (ACCG) staffed with personnel from NATO nations at SHAPE and the subordinate commands. In case of war, SACEUR was meant to exercise operational control of national clandestine services' assets, according to each nation's existing policies, through

6700-426: The increasing Soviet-backed leftist influence in the country. They wanted to make a religion-inspired nationalism. Türkeş did not support Pan-Islamism . A famous quote of his was "Turkishness is our body, Islam is our soul." According to the synthesis, you have to be a Muslim to be a Turk, and that Islam is the most suitable religion for Turks. The ideology staunchly prioritises Hanafism - Maturidism and views it as

6800-450: The leader of the Alperen Hearths in Istanbul, stated "Due to the increasing news of martyrs, our people could not control their feelings and went to the streets to react to terrorism. We started to hear the saying 'Kurds are the eternal enemies of the Turks' on the streets. We purposely chose Friday. Friday is the holiday of Muslims. The roses we have also represent our prophet . We will serve roses and Turkish delight to our brothers who go to

6900-464: The list of Gladio members given by Andreotti was incomplete. It didn't include, for example, Antonio Arconte, who described an organization very different from the one brushed by Giulio Andreotti: an organization closely tied to the SID secret service and the Atlanticist strategy. According to Andreotti, the stay-behind organisations set up in all of Europe did not come "under broad NATO supervision until 1959." The judge Guido Salvini , who worked in

7000-425: The local Communist press, Soviet diplomats and loyal Scandinavians who hoped that neutrality or nonalignment would allow them to slip through a World War III unharmed. In 1947, Interior Minister Édouard Depreux revealed the existence of a secret stay-behind army in France codenamed "Plan Bleu". The next year, the "Western Union Clandestine Committee" (WUCC) was created to coordinate secret unorthodox warfare. In 1949,

7100-427: The matter was resolved in 1958, after Norway was assured about how stay-behind networks were to be operated. In 1978, the police discovered an arms cache and radio equipment at a mountain cabin and arrested Hans Otto Meyer ( no ), a businessman accused of being involved in selling illegal alcohol. Meyer claimed that the weapons were supplied by Norwegian intelligence. Rolf Hansen , defence minister at that time, stated

7200-683: The name he put on file was arrested by the KGB following treason in the BND, but was obviously innocent, his name having been chosen at random from the public phone book by Juretzko. According to Juretzko, the BND built up its branch of Gladio, but discovered after the fall of the German Democratic Republic that it was fully known to the Stasi early on. When the network was dismantled, further odd details emerged. One fellow "spymaster" had kept

7300-402: The nation's World War II experiences of having to evacuate the royal family and transfer government to a government-in-exile, originally aiming to provide an underground intelligence network to a government-in-exile in the event of a foreign invasion, although it included elements of guerrilla warfare. Former Dutch Defence Minister Henk Vredeling confirmed the group had set up arms caches around

7400-610: The national religion of all Turks, due to the long history of Turkic people following the Hanafi madhhab and the Maturidi school, they do not consider Hanafism-Maturidism as foreign due to their belief that al-Maturidi was a Hanafi Turk who himself had a sense of national pride. In the late 1970s, the Turkish political scene was full of ideological conflicts between far-right ultranationalists ( Idealists ) and far-left groups, along with little-to-no governmental effort to stop it. Under

7500-935: The network was not in any way answerable to NATO and had no CIA connection. In 1966, the CIA set up Aginter Press which, under the direction of Captain Yves Guérin-Sérac (who had taken part in the founding of the OAS), ran a secret stay-behind army and trained its members in covert action techniques amounting to terrorism, including bombings, silent assassinations, subversion techniques, clandestine communication and infiltration and colonial warfare. In an excerpt from Mehtap Söyler's 2015 book entitled The Turkish Deep State: State Consolidation, Civil-Military Relations and Democracy , Söyler details how certain Western forces encouraged Turkish nationalism via Operation Gladio. Specifically, Operation Gladio empowered Turanism through

7600-538: The number of Islamists was increasing. In 1969, the MHP nominated its politician Mustafa Ok during the MTTB chairmanship election in order to draw the MTTB away from Islamism and more to extreme nationalism. At the congress, held in Kayseri on May 3, 1969, Islamists and Idealists of the MTTB fought each other and 20 people were injured; during the fight, one side chanted "Muslim Turkey" and the other side "Nationalist Turkey". At

7700-430: The radio equipment in his cellar at home with his wife doing the engineering test call every four months, on the grounds that the equipment was too "valuable" to remain in civilian hands. Juretzko found out because this spymaster had dismantled his section of the network so quickly, there had been no time for measures such as recovering all caches of supplies. Civilians recruited as stay-behind partisans were equipped with

7800-589: The same as Kemalists and Turanists when it comes to Anti-Kurdism . Nihal Atsız viewed it as an artificial ideology which forcefully fuses two contradictory ideologies together, and he also saw Islamism as being incompatible with Turkism. The ideology was also criticised by Pan-Turkists who said "the person who does not defend secularism cannot be a Turanist. The Gagauz are Christian, Karaites and Khazar are Jewish, Altais are Tengrist, Yakuts are shamanist , Azerbaijanis are Shia, Anatolian Turkmens are Alevi. The Turkish-Islamic Synthesis and its Sunnism,

7900-410: The secret service NIS , Vilhelm Evang , protested strongly against the pro-active intelligence activities at AFNORTH , as described by the chairman of CPC: "[NIS] was extremely worried about activities carried out by officers at Kolsås . This concerned SB, Psywar and Counter Intelligence." These activities supposedly included the blacklisting of Norwegians. SHAPE denied these allegations. Eventually,

8000-470: The set up of a West German stay-behind network. CIA documents released in June 2006 under the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act , show that the CIA organized "stay-behind" networks of West German agents between 1949 and 1953. According to The Washington Post , "One network included at least two former Nazi SS members—Staff Sgt. Heinrich Hoffman and Lt. Col. Hans Rues—and one was run by Lt. Col. Walter Kopp ,

8100-601: The setting-up of stay-behind armies in Scandinavia : The situation in each Scandinavian country was different. Norway and Denmark were NATO allies, Sweden held to the neutrality that had taken her through two world wars, and Finland were required to defer in its foreign policy to the Soviet power directly on its borders. Thus, in one set of these countries the governments themselves would build their own stay-behind nets, counting on activating them from exile to carry on

8200-415: The sixties throughout Europe [and he stressed that] perhaps no activity of the CIA could be as clearly linked to the possibility of internal subversion." According to Daniele Ganser , LOK was involved in the military coup d'état on 21 April 1967 , which took place one month before the scheduled national elections. Under the command of paratrooper Lieutenant Colonel Costas Aslanides , LOK took control of

8300-478: The struggle. These nets had to be co-ordinated with NATO's plans, their radios had to be hooked to a future exile location, and the specialised equipment had to be secured from CIA and secretly cached in snowy hideouts for later use. In the other set of countries, CIA would have to do the job alone or with, at best, "unofficial" local help, since the politics of those governments barred them from collaborating with NATO, and any exposure would arouse immediate protest from

8400-462: The symbol of MTTB changed to the Grey Wolf under his rule. They made rallies such as 'Citizen, Speak Turkish', and 'Annexation of Hatay to Turkey', and 'Remembrance of Çanakkale Martyrs' in that period too. However, because they made a rally without permission, the MTTB was closed on November 22, 1936. 10 years after it was closed, on February 5, 1946, a group of young people came together and revived

8500-627: The topic of Turkish nationalism and Islam . First are the nationalists who reject Islam, second are Islamists who reject nationalism, and third are the ones who mix them both together. While there was elements of the fusion of Turkish nationalism with Islam during the final years of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish Islamonationalism was created and encouraged as part of Operation Gladio during the Cold War by American-backed right-wing intellectuals such as Alparslan Türkeş who were concerned about

8600-550: The view that they supported terrorists and maintains that the operation served only to resist a potential invasion of Western European countries by the Soviet Union . Following the fall of France in 1940, Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to both assist resistance movements and carry out sabotage and subversive operations in occupied Europe . It was revealed half

8700-578: Was Gladio's leader for the region around Lyon in France until his alleged suicide on April 7, 1994. Grossouvre would have asked Constantin Melnik, leader of the French secret services during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), to return to activity. He was living in comfortable exile in the US, where he maintained links with the Rand Corporation . US intelligence also assisted in

8800-496: Was a Grey wolf inside a crescent, was briefly changed into a Quran inside a crescent, and then to a simple crescent. The Idealists left the MTTB and formed CKMP . The majority of MTTB members supported the MSP and Raiders Organization , in which the wider Millî Görüş movement wanted the MTTB to be the MSP's youth wing. The MTTB was shut down after the 1980 Turkish coup d'état . Although

8900-588: Was allegedly disbanded in 1944; some of its members subsequently joined the Special Air Service and saw action in North-West Europe . While David Lampe published a book on the Auxiliary Units in 1968, their existence did not become widely known by the public until reporters such as David Pallister of The Guardian revived interest in them during the 1990s. After World War II, the UK and

9000-581: Was arrested after having revealed the secrets of the West German stay-behind army to her husband, who was a spy of the KGB . In 2004 the German author Norbert Juretzko published a book about his work at the BND. He went into details about recruiting partisans for the German stay-behind network. He was sacked from BND following a secret trial against him because the BND could not find out the real name of his Russian source " Rübezahl " whom he had recruited. A man with

9100-544: Was created following events in the 1980s, which included the Brabant massacres and the activities of the far-right group Westland New Post . The Danish stay-behind army was code-named Absalon , after a Danish archbishop , and led by E. J. Harder. It was hidden in the military secret service Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste (FE). In 1978, William Colby , former director of the CIA , released his memoirs in which he described

9200-556: Was denied by the US State Department , who responded that "the Greek terrorist organization ' 17 November ' was responsible for both assassinations", and that Grivas's central piece of evidence had been the Westmoreland Field Manual which the state department, as well as an independent congressional inquiry, have alleged to be a Soviet forgery. The State Department also highlighted the fact that, in

9300-541: Was discussed in the early 1950s as one can gather from the document 'SHAPE Problems Outstanding with the Standing Group', which, under sub-heading 'IV. Special Plans' calls for the 'Delineation of Responsibilities of the Clandestine Services and of SACEUR on Clandestine Matters Including Pertinent Definitions and Organizations' and 'Principles for Unorthodox Warfare Planning'. While all this concerned

9400-620: Was fully developed by Aydınlar Ocağı ( Turkish : Intellectuals' Hearth ) headed by Süleyman Yalçın in the 1980s. Alparslan Türkeş , founder of the MHP and Grey Wolves and one of the top ideologues of the Turkish–Islamic synthesis, was an advocate of the Turkish adhan and advocated for the Quran , Adhan , and even Salahs to be solely in the Turkish language in Turkey . He co-led

9500-555: Was not able to reach large utopias, but a small part of Anatolia. Instead of caring for the Turkmen Alevi, it considers it ideal to beat the son of a Turkmen in the name of idealism-sunnism because he is a leftist. In addition, secularism prevents the damage of sectarianism and gives the nation rationality. If he is an idealist, he cannot remain against secularism. The idealist who does not defend secularism does not have ideals nor kızılelma." Kızılelma means "red apple" and symbolizes

9600-426: Was outside the scope of the original stay-behind and, therefore, 'never to be considered among the purposes of the operation'. The pressure put forward by the Americans during the 1960s to use 'Gladio' for purposes other than those of a stay-behind network would appear to have failed in the long term." According to the former Italian Ministry of Grace and Justice Claudio Martelli , during the 1980s and 1990s Andreotti

9700-457: Was set up under Minister of Defense (from 1953 to 1958) Paolo Taviani 's ( DC ) supervision. Gladio's existence came to public knowledge when Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti revealed it to the Chamber of Deputies on 24 October 1990, although far-right terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra had already revealed its existence during his 1984 trial. According to media analyst Edward S. Herman , "both

9800-401: Was shot dead by Grey Wolves loyal to the MHP . Despite the MHP's long history of opposing any form of rights given to Kurds, Devlet Bahçeli stated "It is, in a word, dishonorable to portray the MHP as anti-Kurdish, to provoke my brothers of Kurdish origin against the MHP, and to be enthusiastic about unrest and opportunism. At the same time, it is also a grave betrayal to the homeland,

9900-681: Was the chairman. The Union took part in the Razgrad incident protests in 1933. Tevfik İleri will later become a Samsun Deputy for the Democratic Party, and was arrested after the May 27, 1960 Revolution and sentenced to death. However, the verdict against it later will be converted to a life sentence. MTTB was closely allied with the Turkish Hearths until 1936. İleri was ideologically a Kemalist, Turkish nationalist, and Turanist. In fact,

10000-592: Was the political reference of Licio Gelli and the Masonic lodge Propaganda 2 . Christian Democrat Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti publicly recognized the existence of Gladio on 24 October 1990. Andreotti spoke of a "structure of information, response and safeguard", with arms caches and reserve officers. He gave to the Commissione Stragi a list of 622 civilians who according to him were part of Gladio. Andreotti also stated that 127 weapons caches had been dismantled, and said that Gladio had not been involved in any of

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