The rise and fall of a Turkish intelligence officer

Basri Aktepe, a former top officer of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), was arrested on Sept. 7 in Ankara over having alleged links to Fethullah Gülen, the U.S.-based Islamist preacher who is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding the bloody coup attempt of July 15.

Aktepe had worked first in research and development and then transferred to electronic intelligence unit of the MİT.

That department was established as a modified version of the former Technical Department after Undersecretary Hakan Fidan was appointed as MİT head in 2010. When the government (headed by then-Prime Minister, now-President Tayyip Erdoğan) decided to give the enhanced electronic intelligence capacities of the Turkish Armed Forces to MİT by Jan. 1, 2012, Fidan went into a number of restructuring in the agency. Aktepe who was already transferred into MİT was a part of that restructuring effort.

He had experience. Back on July 23, 2006 when the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) government decided to establish the Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) - a new agency to oversee all legal eavesdropping capacities of MİT, the police intelligence agency, and the gendarmerie intelligence units - Aktepe was responsible for  the technical process, working under a judge, Fethi Şimşek. Aktepe was thus transferred from his original post as deputy head of the intelligence department of the General Directorate of the Security (ie. the police).

Neither MİT nor the police welcomed the establishment of the TİB, because it was not placed under the authority of the interior minister, the foreign minister or prime minister. It was instead to be overseen by the transportation and communications minister, who at the time was Binali Yıldırım,...