Merdan Yanardağ
Greetings to BirGün readers and all our friends from Silivri Prison.
This is my second time passing through this prison. This time it is crowded inside, many of our friends are here.
I can say that the story of my arrest is quite interesting this time. But first let me note that we are facing a fifth rate, not even third rate, frame up. There is no coherence or basis to the accusations and charges directed at us or at me, there is not even the smallest trace of intelligence. The plotters who try to mock our minds cannot avoid displaying their own stupidity.
Does a person have no interest in detective stories or literature at all? Let’s say you never read a detective story, have you not seen even a single espionage case?
Has your hostility toward the Republic and this country’s progressive and patriotic forces and your primitive vengeful reflexes blinded and brutalised you this much?
It seems that once they parted ways with the FETÖ members and the liberals, the political Islamists, who were already a vulgar, uninterested and ill equipped movement, fully turned into a tacky organisation and trend. They are not even aware that they have declared the majority of the country their enemy and opened a war. We are faced with full on provincial bigotry.
The Ekrem İmamoğlu indictment they prepared is like a coup declaration. They treat democratic politics and opposition to the government as crimes. Unbelievable as it is, they even consider CHP delegates choosing a leadership that fights the Erdoğan AKP government as hostility or even “espionage”. It sounds like a joke but one of the accusations against me is that I intervened in favour of İmamoğlu and ensured Özgür Özel’s election at the CHP Congress. Moreover, they claim I did this under the direction of British and Israeli intelligence. How I supposedly did this and with what tools is unclear. There is no evidence and there is no such definition in Articles 327 and 328 of the Turkish Penal Code, which regulate this crime (espionage). It is an irrational and illogical scene.
The aim is clear: even an attempt to change the AKP Erdoğan government through democratic politics is a crime for those who carried out the 19 March operation. Whether it has a counterpart in the Penal Code or not does not matter. For example one of the charges directed at İmamoğlu is “setting out for a presidential candidacy and forming a team for this purpose”.
One wishes both one’s friends and enemies to be somewhat honourable and intelligent. Fighting this nonsense, battling slander and black propaganda, weighs heavily on a person.
We are faced with an attempt by someone I saw a few times next to an elderly woman who was a friend of TELE1 and with whom I had nothing more than short chats about current affairs to declare me a British spy and turn it into an opportunity with provincial cunning.
This businessman named Hüseyin Gün says the same things in his statement. In none of his statements is there any allegation against me or İmamoğlu. It consists of a few messages on current politics, generally about programmes he watched on TELE1, and my polite replies. They are trying to extract an espionage story from a viewer journalist TV presenter dialogue.
Besides we have not met at all since Seher hanım (Alaçam), who gave small support to TELE1, passed away in 2022. This is clearly visible in the HTS records. What we have is complete nonsense.
Here is the story: when Seher Alaçam died of a heart attack in the pool of her home in 2022, a fight over property began between her foster son Hüseyin Gün and her biological son. The biological son called 155 and reported Hüseyin Gün as a “spy”. When the police found that my name and the names of Necati Özkan and Ekrem İmamoğlu appeared in a few messages, they fabricated such a scenario. It is an absurd tale.
Hüseyin Gün, who owns a social media software company (based in London), tried to sell a programme to İstanbul Municipality but couldn’t. Necati Özkan didn’t trust it and didn’t buy it. The same person also worked with many institutions from the General Directorate of Security to the Ministry of Industry and Technology. He had AKP mayors and MPs invited to the House of Lords in England and arranged meetings. He chaired that meeting and so on.
THE AIM IS TO ENTRENCH THE NEW REGIME
The aim is clear. This “espionage” frame up has two targets. As seen in the published indictment they could not fill in the “corruption” accusations. So the first aim was to issue a “reserve detention order” for İmamoğlu. The second was to seize TELE1, which has a game setting position in Turkey’s media environment and reaches a large and widespread audience, to plunder it and silence me and my friends. TELE1, established and run by a left team, was a successful institution competing in the big media field. It was a bad example for them as a model. It sustained itself, made new investments and paid the wages of its employees that is the salaries of 144 people without delay. RTÜK fines and the cases opened against me were not enough to silence us. We overcame all obstacles one by one. They could no longer bear this. They wanted to break our influence on society. That is the issue.
THOSE WITH SHAMEFUL RECORDS
The history of political Islamists in Turkey is a history of shameful cooperation with imperialism and intelligence agencies. I described this history in my books with documents and details. Political Islamists who believe that having a sacred cause frees them from any need for morality display shameless insolence by accusing this country’s patriots, revolutionaries and the Left of “espionage”.
Since the 1960s the Islamist movement has been in cooperation with imperialism (especially the USA and the UK) and intelligence agencies. They based this on an Islamic interpretation they called the rule of “choosing the lesser evil” against “godless red communists” and the notion that it is permitted even in war. The political method of Islamists has always been based on narration and deception.
Particularly during the Cold War period, as a result of the US and NATO’s ‘Green Belt’ policy, all sects, communities and political Islamist groups active in Turkey entered into relations with the CIA and, consequently, with the Counter-Guerrilla (Gladio) organisation. This relationship continued after the 1990s as well (linked to doctrines such as the Greater Middle East Project). Especially the Nurcu groups were the CIA’s favourites. The Fethullah Gülen clique and the Mehmet Kırkıncı group, a student of Said Nursi, were CIA linked groups. For example a Nurcu named lawyer Bekir Berk acted as the liaison between the CIA and the political Islamists. More importantly all Islamist opinion leaders and community and tarikat sheikhs also knew about this. Üzeyir Şenler, also a Nurcu, had revealed that lawyer Bekir Berk worked with foreign intelligence agencies and had links with the CIA. Journalist Mustafa Aydın, who visited him shortly before his death in hospital, wrote in 2012 that Bekir Berk was an agent, that is a spy. Journalist Mustafa Aydın was close to the Nurcu Tahşiye Group. Aydın also revealed that Mehmet Fırıncı and Mustafa Birinci, influential figures in Islamic circles, were CIA linked.
When Bekir Berk died he was washed by Mehmet Kırkıncı and Fethullah Gülen led the funeral prayer. All leading figures of Islamist circles carried his coffin. The Turkey branch of the Nurcus openly wrote that the Fethullah Gülen structure was CIA and US linked. For this reason two senior administrators of the community, Muhammed Doğan and Mustafa Kaplan, were detained in 2009 during the Ergenekon frame up trials with a fabricated claim.
Not only the Nurcus but the Necip Fazıl followers and other political Islamist groups were also CIA linked. In the 1960s, Mehmet Şevket Eygi, the owner and chief columnist of the newspaper today and someone who published like a Counter Guerrilla (Gladio) bulletin, was one of those who planned the attack on young people in 1969 known as “Bloody Sunday”.
In a shameful column published in Millî Gazete on 28 February 2008 he tried to justify why they cooperated with the CIA and the US with Islamist clichés. Eygi roughly said: “At that time in line with the rule of choosing the lesser evil in Islam we were under American influence against the godless Reds. It was not wrong at that time to cooperate with the US against the Russian communists.”
I have never heard such a shameful justification of collaboration with imperialism and CIA agency espionage in my life. Those who rule Turkey today also come from this stock. There was direct US input in the founding of the AKP. I wrote this with documents in my book ‘AKP as a US Project’.
Those whose own record is filled with dirty cooperation with imperialism and Western intelligence agencies now dare accuse us, this country’s patriots, leftists and revolutionaries, of “espionage”.
Get lost.
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Casus kim?, published in BirGün newspaper on November 17, 2025.
