Nordic Monitor : Erdoğan worked for Iran against NATO

In recent years, the Turkish president has sought to fulfill a secret promise he made to his inner circle ten years ago, to undermine NATO if given the opportunity.

President Erdoğan’s record shows that he has more or less kept his promise by driving a wedge between NATO allies and Turkey over a number of issues, according to the Swedish website Nordic Monitor.

The site noted that this promise was made public in 2011 by Turkish investigators who were investigating the incursion into Turkey of a network of the Quds Force militia of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“When I have the opportunity, I know what I will do with NATO, Europe and Israel,” said Erdoğan, then Prime Minister. I’ll destroy them. NATO and the United States are terrorists like Israel.”

These outrageous statements by Erdoğan were made during a conversation about a proposal to establish a new radar base in the Korzic region of Malatya within the NATO missile defense system network, which works with interceptor missiles in Romania and Poland.

Erdoğan was clearly unhappy with NATO plans laid out at the 2010 Lisbon summit, but at the time he felt he had to keep up with those plans to counter pressure from the military and other government agencies that viewed Iran as a threat to Turkey’s national security.

Among those present at the private meeting with Erdoğan was Kheireddine Gagmack, a hardline deputy from the Turkish province of Bursa and a suspect in the IRGC’s investigations. Another MP, Sarastin Karayagiz, is also present, a MP from Muş Province and another politician who is a member of the political Islamist movement.

On 19 October 2010, both MPs relayed what Erdoğan had told them about the radar base of a senior Qods Force operative in Turkey, Hussein Afni Yazji Oglu, a convicted terrorist who had served a prison sentence for past Qods Force activity.

According to the Nordic Monitor, the meeting took place at a location on Istanbul’s Jamilica hill overlooking the Bosphorus Strait. Yazgi Oglu later compiled a report on the details of the conversation and handed it to the Iranian officer in charge, Nasser Ghaffari.

The report was among dozens of other intelligence documents the police had collected on Yazici Oglu when Yazji’s wife decided to report her husband’s activity.

Initially, the police paid little attention to the wife’s claims and when the wife handed over handwritten documents, notes and digital materials such as mobile drives, the police realized the seriousness of the matter and notified the Istanbul Police Counterterrorism Department, which was working on the Qods Force investigation.

The police conducted their own independent investigation, tapped into Yazgi Oglu’s phones, monitored Iranian officers and other suspects, and verified his wife’s claims.

To the investigators surprise, Yazji Oglu turned out to be a close friend of Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey’s intelligence agency.

“In 2014, however, Erdoğan managed to halt investigations into the Qods Force and expel police and prosecutors who had participated in the investigation.”

In 2016, he dealt a severe blow to NATO by launching a massive purge of almost all pro-NATO staff officers, including two-thirds of the generals and admirals of the alliance’s second-largest army, using the pretext of the so-called “coup drama.”