Designate Turkey's Intelligence Service MIT to Be a Terror Org.

Michael Rubin | American Enterprise Institute

Six years ago, President Donald Trump designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its elite Qods Force, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

It was the first time the United States had ever labeled part of another government to be a terrorist organization. Many partisan and diplomatic critics both voiced concern about the precedent and argued that sanctioning the entirety of the Revolutionary Guards for terrorism was wrong since only a small fraction of the group conducted military missions beyond Iran’s borders.

Indeed, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is today more a business conglomerate than an army. Its monopolies control everything from dam construction to automobile plants. French and German manufacturers partnered with Revolutionary Guards-owned industrial companies.

It is also true that among its many armed units, the Qods Force is responsible for targeting Americans and Israelis personnel and interests, but they represent only a tiny fraction of total Revolutionary Guards membership.

Trump preferred to address the Revolutionary Guards with an axe rather than a scalpel, though. “If you are doing business with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, you will be bankrolling terrorism,” he explained.

There was logic to his broad designation: Victims of terrorism could sue not only the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but also those companies that partnered in its business. Not surprisingly, the French company PSA that produces Peugeots and Citroens decided to leave Iran to avoid sanctions and liability. So too did the German firm Siemens.

Not only the United States but also the European should now build on the precedent, not in Iran but in Turkey. There is overwhelming evidence that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) behaves as a foreign terrorist organization. Consider the case of Can Dündar, editor-in-chief of the center-left Cumhuriyet daily: In 2015, his newspaper published photos of MİT trucks delivering weapons to an Al Qaeda affiliate on the Syrian border. He later survived an assassination attempt.

The United States also believes that the MİT helped organize and arm the Islamic State. Israeli security caught the organization red-handed seeking to smuggle weaponry and explosives to Hamas. MİT fingerprints are also on many of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s schemes to evade sanctions on other designated terror sponsors.

Hakan Fidan headed MİT from 2010 until 2023, before taking over the helm of Turkey’s foreign ministry. During his tenure, the MİT also openly targeted Turkish dissidents across the globe, kidnapping schoolteachers in countries ranging from Kyrgyzstan to Kosovo and from Malaysia to Moldova. The MİT brags about its assassinations of opponents in Iraq. The organization even ran cells in the United States to surveil and harass dissidents.

Bodyguards of Turkey's president Erdogan attack Kurdish protesters in Washington — Bodyguards of Turkish president Erdogan attack Kurdish protesters in Washington, May 16, 2017. Photo: Twitter video/VOA

MİT likely orchestrated the 2017 attack on Turkish and Kurdish dissidents in the heart of Washington, DC. German officials quietly say their fear is less Turkey unleashing a wave of migrants into the heart of Europe and more the belief that the MİT controls gangs among the Turkish diaspora in Europe that can sabotage stability. Today, the MİT supports and provides weaponry to terror groups in Pakistan, Somalia, and Libya.

There is hardly an activity that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps engages in that the MİT does not. While there is no international consensus definition of terror, MİT checks all the boxes that various U.S and European police and security agencies use to define terrorism. That Turkey is a NATO member should not give it free rein to sponsor and conduct terror on a global scale.

A major reason why the MİT, quite literally, believes it can get away with murder from Brussels to Athens is that the West has immunized it as an exception or protected it to avoid offending Turkey’s diplomatic sensitivities. Those days should end. Not only Washington, but Brussels and Athens should designate the MİT a foreign terror organization, and both sanction and, if necessary, render, arrest, or eliminate its command structure.

Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society.

The article first published at aei.org

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.