Pro-government columnist Abdülkadir Selvi argued in his latest column in daily Hürriyet that the CIA attempted to take Mehmet Barıner, a former national intelligence officer of Turkey's Iran desk, to abroad for the Zarrab case and yet the attempt had been averted at the last minute.
The columnist Selvi on Thursday wrote that Mehmet Barıner started to work for the Iran desk of Turkish intelligence agency MİT in 2013 and yet was purged in 2016 from the office for his alleged connections to the Fethullah Gülen sect. The network of U.S.-based Fethullah Gülen was one of the masterminds of last year's coup attempt.
Barıner's position at the Iran desk of MİT enabled him to follow the Iranian- Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab case closely. Zarrab and Turkish Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a deputy general director of Turkish state-owned Halkbank were arrested in the United States. Zafer Çağlayan, the former Turkish Economy Minister from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has been included in the U.S. indictment regarding money laundering and illegal transactions for the Iranian government against the U.S. administration. The indictment, announced last week, marked the first time an ex-government member with close ties to Erdoğan had been charged in an investigation.
The arrests threaten to reopen a case that reached right into Erdoğan’s inner circle and to tarnish the party that he founded. Since the indictment of former minister, pro-government columnists have been warning; the U.S. would detain Erdoğan in relation to the Zarrab case if he went to New York for attending the United Nations General Assembly.
Selvi argued that an operation to take Barıner to abroad had been organised by Enver Altaylı, also a former national intelligence officer of Turkey and whose close connections to the CIA had pretty much been talked of. According to the article, Mehmet Barıner had been contacted by Enver Altaylı for his safe passage to a country abroad, and yet Barıner had been detained by the police trying to hunt him down. Two days after Barıner's detainment, the police takes Altaylı into custody. Both Barıner and Altaylı are imprisoned now.
The pro-government columnist Selvi argued that the CIA was behind the operation to take Barıner to abroad to use him as a witness against the Turkish government in the Zarrab case.
