Because Austria hits Turkey
All the latest tensions between Austria and Turkey. The in-depth analysis by Giuseppe Gagliano
Last Tuesday, Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer at a press conference in the Austrian capital said that the Austrian government wishes to send a clear message to the Turkish Republic, namely that Turkish espionage and Turkey's interference in the civil liberties of citizens Austrians can never ever be tolerated in Austria. Furthermore, the Austrian official said his government will work at a European level to make sure Turkey does not interfere in the internal affairs of EU states. But what exactly is the minister referring to?
An alleged Turkish spy was discovered by the Austrian authorities after a major political protest held in Vienna last June, which resulted in violent clashes between pro-Kurdish and pro-Turkish protesters. The protesters were members of pro-Kurdish organizations in Vienna but were confronted by pro-Turkish protesters, which resulted in the entire demonstration escalating into violent street fighting. An investigation by the Austrian police found that many of the pro-Turkish protesters were affiliated with a far-right Turkish group known as the Gray Wolves.
Furthermore, according to the Austrian Interior Ministry, it was also discovered that Turkish intelligence, known as MİT, helped organize the Gray Wolves group that violently opposed the pro-Kurdish demonstration. Among the Gray Wolf rioters, Austrian officials say, was a man who had been "recruited" by the MİT to spy on pro-Kurdish activists or critical of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan . Nehammer specified that the alleged spy has already confessed to working for the Turkish secret services.
In response to Nehammer's statements, the Turkish government accused the Austrian national leadership of harboring an "anti-Turkey obsession" and obviously denied any Turkish government involvement.
As is known from the historical point of view, the gray wolves were founded in the late 1960s by Alp Arslan Türkç, one of the main promoters of the 1960 coup. by Erdogan. Until 2018 it had been classified as a far-right terrorist organization in Turkey. Although ideologically the organization is persuaded of the ethnic superiority of the Turks over the Kurds, the Greeks and the Armenians, the Gray Wolves consider the Kurds their main enemy against whom they have carried out terrorist actions inside and outside Turkey now with the implicit and now explicit support of the Turkish MIT.
On the other hand, it is no coincidence that the Turkish terrorist organization supports the Turkmen in Syria with military aid and that Ankara uses them both in northern Syria together with Isis – and mercenary groups – and in Libya. The coordination of operations in Libya is entrusted to two men linked to the Turkish MIT, namely Fatih Inal Tarkan and Maher Mustafa Pasha who coordinates the mercenaries of the "Al-Muntesir Billah Division" of the Turkmen. Specifically, Pasha would have launched military operations on the city of Afrin in Syria in direct coordination with Turkish intelligence and the Gray Wolves.
Ultimately this terrorist organization is a political and military tool that the Turkish state uses in the same way that, for example, the Stasi used far-left groups such as the RAF and the June 2 Movement or those Palestinians in an anti-American and anti-Israeli function during the Cold War or in the same way in which the Anglo-American and Italian intelligence used the New Order and the National Vanguard in an anti-Communist function. If, from a historical point of view, these synergies between intelligence and terrorist organizations are an illuminating example of how the double state acts with regard to Turkey, they are indispensable to understand with what ruthlessness Erdogan moves both in the context of domestic and foreign politics.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/perche-laustria-picchia-contro-la-turchia/ on Sat, 05 Sep 2020 09:46:19 +0000.