Murky Past of Turkey’s Gendarmerie Intelligence Emerges in Ergenekon Investigation

By Gareth Jenkins

In late August, the Turkish media reported that retired Colonel Arif Dogan had confessed to being the founder of the intelligence wing of the Turkish Gendarmerie, known in Turkish as the Jandarma Istihbarat ve Terorle Mucadele, a controversial security organization whose very existence has been officially denied for many years. Dogan’s claim was alleged to have come during investigations into the so-called Ergenekon ultranationalist gang, which was established by a handful of radical secularists – many of them retired covert operatives - who planned to stage a violent campaign to try to destabilize the moderate Islamist government of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi - AKP). ....