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Sunday, December 3, 2017

Re: Turkey seeks arrest of ex-CIA officer Fuller over coup plot - Statement by Graham E. Fuller, 1 December 2017

Re: Turkey seeks arrest of ex-CIA officer Fuller over coup plot
 
Statement by Graham E. Fuller, 1 December 2017
 
The government of Turkey has issued an arrest warrant against me—according to the charge—for having been personally involved on the scene directing the coup attempt against the Erdogan government on 16 July 2016. According to earlier Turkish press accounts a few months ago, I was “spotted in Istanbul” and later that night, following the failure of the coup, was “exfiltrated by chopper across the border into Greece.” I have often been accused in the Turkish press of being “Fethullah Gülen’s CIA handler.” 
 
A few inconvenient facts for the Turkish “case” against me.
 
-I retired from CIA exactly 30 years ago.
 
-I have not set foot in or even near Turkey in five years.
 
-I never heard the name Fethullah Gülen while working in Turkey in the 1960s. I met him exactly once in my life, long after retiring from CIA, in an interview conducted 15 years ago in Istanbul. I have never seen him since, although I have followed his movement with interest.
 
-The night of the coup attempt in Turkey I happen to have been addressing a group of 100 people or so right here in the town in western Canada where I have been living for the last 15 years,
 
-I have written a good bit about Gülen’s movement HIzmet (Service) in the context of a broader study on movements in political Islam from Indonesia to Morocco in my book “The Future of Political Islam.” I was impressed then, and am still impressed now, that HIzmet represents one of the most progressive and tolerant visions of Islam and its contemporary social role anywhere in the Muslim world.
 
-Far from being an opponent of Erdogan, my last book: “Turkey and the Arab Spring: Leadership in the Middle East” speaks in very positive terms about the dramatic changes that Erdogan and his colleagues introduced into Turkey starting in 2002 in nearly every sphere of life, including a bold and innovative new foreign policy vision. Only in the final chapter did I begin to express misgivings about the apparent onset of Erdogan’s sudden more erratic behavior, his paranoia, his loss of political touch and his megalomania.
 
-I am apparently a choice target for Erdogan because of my 25 year career with CIA. My very first tour of duty abroad was as a very junior officer in Istanbul in the late 1960s—although the Turkish press likes to promote me to having been “CIA Station Chief in Ankara.” Some have even called me a “former chief of CIA.”  I never returned to Turkey as a CIA officer after that tour.
 
-Many Turks and other foreigners are willing to believe almost any story about CIA; political leaders routinely use it as a bogey man to bolster their own positions. Unfortunately, these suspicions are not always without foundation. US government policies have much to answer for over the years in their many directives to the CIA to engage in damaging and foolish political intervention and even coup-making in a number of countries. Many of those “regime change” policies still obtain today.
 
That said, I doubt very much the CIA had anything to do with this pathetic, ill-conceived and amateurish coup attempt —that unfortunately cost over 350 lives—against Erdogan in July 2016. I doubt even more that Gülen was involved in “ordering” a coup, a view shared by many European intelligence organizations and within the US government. For what it’s worth, Gülen condemned the coup attempt in the strongest terms. HIs movement has had had zero involvement in any political violence prior to the coup attempt accusation.
 
I am only marginally swept up among many Turks in the ongoing wave of arrests, persecutions and cashiering of tens of thousands of Turks—journalists, judges, academics, military officers, police officers—all perceived as enemies of Erdogan’s state. Most of them have suffered grievously. I, at least, am lucky not to be living there, a country I have long admired.
 
Sadly, all this only provides further evidence of the extent to which Erdogan has become a nasty (but elected) authoritarian engaged in a national witch hunt that has intimidated his country, alienated virtually all foreign leaders, produced hundreds of thousands of domestic victims of arrests, and cashiering from jobs in all walks of life among any whom Erdogan perceives as enemies. His growin

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