National Intelligence Organization

Not more than five years ago, Selahattin Demirtaş was only a name familiar among human rights circles in Turkey. As a young lawyer, he assumed leadership of Turkey’s Human Rights Association’s (İHD) Diyarbakır branch in 2006. Then, after joining the Kurdish problem-focused Peace and Democracy Party (PKK), Demirtaş was elected as its co-chairman in 2010.

Turkey’s intelligence chief was the first official in Ankara to learn about the release of 32 Turkish drivers who had been kidnapped by Islamist militants in northern Iraq.

On the 21st day of their captivity, 32 Turkish truck drivers were released on July 3, by militants belonging to the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) near Iraq’s second biggest city of Mosul in the north.

As all eyes were on the presidential race and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s candidacy announcement this week, a group of experts gathered at the offices of the International Strategic Research Organization (USAK) in Ankara to discuss several strategy options in Iraq and what the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL), now known as the Islamic State (IS), next step may be.

The prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) held talks in Ankara on June 26, amid growing unrest in Iraq. Both Nechirvan Barzani and Turkish officials agreed on the need for the establishment of an inclusive Iraqi government as soon as possible. 

Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Northern Iraq (KRG), has held talks in Ankara in the early hours of June 26 to discuss the deepening unrest in Iraq.

One of the recent irritating tendencies is that the restrictions imposed on the freedom of the press through court orders have spread to grave extent, somehow adopting a systematic characteristic.

An Ankara prosecutor has objected to the release of five suspected police officers detained as part of an investigation into the illegal wiretapping of the prime minister’s office.

The prosecutor’s remarks come just a day after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly complained about their release.

Two lawmakers from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have accused the government of protecting and cooperating with jihadist militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the al-Nusra Front, while the Turkish government quickly denied the claim.

There are hopes that the Turks taken hostage by the organization of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), which captured Iraq’s second biggest city Mosul on June 9, will be soon released.

Intense contacts were carried out on June 12 by the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the National Intelligence Organization (MÄ°T) to secure the release.