Turkey abducts critics in exile

By morning’s end, seven Turkish nationals had been abducted at gunpoint, hooded and handcuffed by masked agents traveling in unmarked vehicles, according to Western security officials, witnesses and relatives of the victims. While three were later released, four were taken to a remote airstrip outside the Kenyan capital, officials said, and forced aboard a plane waiting to take them to a Turkish prison near here.

The abductions were the latest of more than 118 “renditions” that Turkey’s intelligence service, MIT, has orchestrated over the past decade, according to the spy agency’s website, making it one of the most aggressive practitioners of such extralegal operations. In Nairobi, MIT relied on Kenyan government operatives to carry out the abductions and was able to bypass Kenyan courts, according to the Western security officials who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive operation.

Turkey has branded this global campaign its own “war on terror” in an echo of the phrase that came to define the period after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Turkey has also drawn extensively from the U.S. counterterrorism playbook. Beyond renditions, it has used secret detentions, terrorism watch lists, asset seizures and torture — including at least one reported case of waterboarding — against exiles, according to U.N. documents, human rights groups, Western security officials and public records in Turkey.

These operations have been “justified in the name of combating terrorism,” according to a U.N. report, even though nearly all those targeted are members of a religious sect known as the Gulen movement with no history of terrorist attacks. Turkey has labeled the group a terrorist organization because of its members’ alleged involvement in a failed 2016 coup. But the United States and other governments have rejected this designation, and the movement has not been accused of acquiring explosives, plotting attacks against civilians or other activities associated with terrorism.

This article includes previously unreported details about Turkey’s rendition operations and its reliance on counterterrorism capabilities to target exiles. It is based on dozens of interviews with Western, Turkish and other government officials, U.N. advisers and human rights experts, as well as victims of abductions and their relatives and associates. The Washington Post also relied on Turkish court records, U.N. documents and other materials.

Turkish officials defended the country’s campaign against the Gulen movement, saying that the Turkish government abides by legal processes — including arrest warrants and criminal trials — that the United States often bypassed in its own operations against terrorist groups.

“This is a terrorist organization,” a senior Turkish official said in an interview here, adding that the government apprehends members overseas and returns them to Turkey “because it is important for them to be judged here.”

Kenyan officials, including a representative of the office of the president, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Turkey’s attempt to characterize this crackdown as counterterrorism is seen by human rights organizations and Western security officials as an attempt to legitimize a campaign of transnational repression, a term for governments’ use of violence and intimidation against exiles seen as a political threat.

Turkey’s operations have primarily been aimed at members of an Islamic movement founded by Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive cleric who attracted millions of followers. He died Oct. 20 at a U.S. hospital, after spending decades in exile living in a compound in Pennsylvania. Gulen was once a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and helped fuel his rise to power. But the alleged involvement of Gulen loyalists in a failed 2016 coup triggered a sweeping crackdown involving mass purges and arrests, according to the Turkish opposition, human rights groups and public records.

Turkey declared the Gulen sect a terrorist group and began referring to it as FETO, or “Fethullahist Terrorist Organization.” The United States refused Turkey’s demands that it do the same, as well as requests that Gulen be extradited, citing a lack of evidence that he or the organization were violating any laws.

Gulen movement leaders have long denied responsibility for the coup, in which a faction of the Turkish military commandeered tanks and fighter jets in a failed attempt to oust Erdogan.

The Gulen organization “is a peaceful movement that categorically rejects violence in discourse and action,” said Y. Alp Aslandogan, executive director of the Alliance for Shared Values, a Gulen-affiliated organization based in New Jersey. The FETO designation, he said, “has not been recognized or ratified by the United Nations or any U.N. member state except Turkey.”

Though banned in Turkey, the organization has spread widely internationally, establishing charities and schools in dozens of countries. Erdogan treats these branches as nodes in a terrorist network still plotting to infiltrate and overthrow his government, and touts MIT’s work to eradicate them. Abductions are routinely highlighted in the pro-government news outlet Daily Sabah, with photos of handcuffed Gulen followers forced to stand between Turkish flags under a recurring “War on Terror” headline.

MIT has published a tally of its rendition operations on a webpage that depicts FETO as the equivalent of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the PKK, a Kurdish militant group that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and other governments. A version published in March of this year boasts that 114 Gulenists had been “brought to justice” from 28 countries.

The tally does not include the Turkish nationals flown out of Kenya.

Ranging in age from their early 40s to mid-50s, none had been accused of crimes or immigration violations in Kenya, according to relatives and associates. Two were in the process of securing visas to relocate to the United States, U.S. officials said. A third, Mustafa Genc, had lived in Kenya for 24 years and served as the director of a respected private school established by the Omeriye Foundation, a Gulen-linked charity. The other three who were abducted also worked for the school or foundation.

Gulen movement leaders said Turkey has generally targeted prominent representatives of the movement overseas, major financial supporters and individuals with ties to the organization’s founder. They spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation.

Genc, a well-known figure in diplomatic circles in Nairobi, appears to have been on MIT’s radar for years. His name is on a 2018 document listing dozens of Gulen followers in Kenya who were under investigation by a Turkish prosecutor, according to a copy of the document obtained by Nordic Monitor, a Stockholm-based organization that tracks Turkey’s operations abroad.

Genc, 46, was briefly detained in Kenya and released in 2021 as part of a previous rendition operation targeting one of Gulen’s nephews, according to associates and human rights organizations.

All four of those abducted in Nairobi in October had U.N. refugee status and were supposed to “be protected from forcible return” to a country where they faced threats to “life or freedom,” according to documents issued by the Kenyan government.

And yet Kenya’s National Intelligence Service collaborated with MIT on a mission that involved months of surveillance and was designed to circumvent courts and international legal protections, according to Western security officials familiar with details of the operation.

One of the abductions took place shortly after 7:30 a.m. on a residential street in northwest Nairobi, according to an account provided to The Post by Necdet Seyitoglu, one of three Turkish nationals who were abducted but later released. The others released were the spouse and teenage son of separate targets.

Seyitoglu, who works for an education consulting firm in Nairobi and is involved in Gulen organizations, said he had just climbed into a colleague’s car for the commute to work when a white SUV cut in front of their vehicle. They were then surrounded by four gunmen.

“I thought it was a robbery and I was ready to give all my money,” Seyitoglu said. “But they ordered us toward the [SUV] and pushed us in. Then I understood they are not robbers.”

Seyitoglu, 49, said he and his colleague, Huseyin Yesilsu, 42, were handcuffed and hooded as the SUV sped out of the city. Their captors wore masks and civilian clothes. Seyitoglu said he could tell they were Kenyan from a brief glimpse of one’s skin and the language they spoke, but that he and Yesilsu suspected Turkey’s hand.

After hours of driving, the SUV stopped and Seyitoglu said he could hear scraping sounds possibly made by agents changing license plates. He used the delay to plead with his captors to examine his passport, which showed that he was a U.K. citizen, having lived 18 years in Britain before moving to Nairobi.

“They took a picture and sent it to their boss,” he said.

Those in charge of the operation appear to have balked at the potential fallout over their treatment of a British national. By coincidence, the head of Britain’s MI6 spy agency, Richard Moore, was scheduled to arrive in Nairobi just days later for meetings with Kenya’s intelligence service.

Seyitoglu was ushered into a different vehicle and then dropped off on the outskirts of Nairobi. His captors gave him $6 for a taxi, he said, but refused to return his phone or laptop. Only when he finally made it home, he said, did he learn that Yesilsu was still missing and that others had also been abducted.

Seyitoglu said he has since returned to work but remains shaken. “Every single morning when I leave home I am looking over my back,” he said. “Is there a car or an [SUV] following me? It is a kind of trauma.”

As news of the abductions spread, Western diplomats, U.N. representatives and human rights organizations launched a frantic effort to prevent Kenya from transferring the captives to Turkey.

Initial signals seemed reassuring. In a private conversation with a Western diplomat, Kenyan President William Ruto insisted that the Turkish refugees were still in Kenya and that his government would follow international law before making any decisions on whether they would be transferred, according to officials familiar with the discussion.

In reality, they were already gone.

All four were forced aboard a secret flight that departed a remote Kenyan airstrip on the Friday they were abducted and landed two hours later — presumably in Somalia, where Turkey has a large military installation — according to associates citing information provided by a lawyer who met with the captured men in Turkey. From there, the captives were put on another plane to Turkey, the associates said.

“We have been played,” a U.N. official said in a text to his colleagues as word spread that weekend that it was too late to stop the transfers, according to individuals who saw the message.

Genc, Yesilsu, Alparslan Tasci, 40, and Ozturk Uzun, 56, had been deposited in cells in Sincan prison near Ankara by the time the Kenyan government publicly acknowledged their departure, according to Western security officials and associates of the prisoners.

That Monday, three days after the abductions, Kenya’s principal secretary for foreign affairs, Korir Sing’Oei, confirmed that the government had participated in the operation but only after having “received assurances from the Turkish authorities that the four will be treated with dignity in keeping with national and international law.”

Lawyers who have represented Gulen members abducted in other countries said they were unaware of any cases that had ended in acquittal. The lawyers spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing concern about government retaliation.

Kenya’s involvement puts it on an expanding roster of countries accused of collaborating with Turkey on extrajudicial renditions.

They include Albania, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Gabon, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Lebanon and Pakistan, “among others,” according to a 2020 report by a U.N. working group on involuntary disappearances that was submitted to the Turkish government. The Post obtained a copy.

The report said the renditions were often preceded by secret cooperation agreements with other governments “containing broad and vague references to combating terrorism.”

When formal extradition measures fail, the report said, Turkish authorities “resort to covert operations” in which those apprehended are “forcibly disappeared for up to several weeks” and “often subjected to coercion, torture and degrading treatment.”

The report details a half-dozen cases, including the 2018 abduction of a Turkish woman in Lebanon who later said in a petition submitted to a Turkish court that she had been “subjected to electrical shocks, waterboarding and hanging upside down.” Waterboarding is an interrogation method meant to induce the sensation of drowning that was used by the CIA on al-Qaeda suspects, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

In a written response to the working group, Turkey insisted that it had always “acted in line with its international human rights obligations” and accused the Gulen movement of “presenting itself as the victim of human rights violations to hide its crimes.”

In some countries, collaboration with Turkey has triggered repercussions.

After Moldova handed over seven teachers from a Gulen academy in 2018, the country was sanctioned by the European Court of Human Rights. The head of Moldova’s intelligence service later pleaded guilty to abusing his authority in ordering the rendition.

There was similar fallout in Kosovo following its 2018 transfer of six Turkish nationals. A parliamentary investigation concluded that the targets “had been arbitrarily detained, forcibly disappeared and illegally transferred to Turkey.”

Kosovo’s interior minister and spy chief were fired even as Erdogan publicly boasted that “our intelligence agency brought six top FETO terrorists to Turkey,” and vowed that MIT would continue hunting Gulenists.

“We will find them,” Erdogan said, “and we will bring them back to Turkey.”

In Turkey, officials responded to questions about the abductions with a similar refrain. “It’s not like they are removed to a remote gulag and left there,” the senior Turkish official said. “The American war on terror [used CIA black sites and Guantánamo] to allow authorities to do whatever they wanted with impunity.”

The abductions in Kenya have underscored the limits of U.S. influence.

Turkey has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new commercial center near Nairobi, and Turkish defense contractors have maneuvered to become key suppliers of tanks, armed drones and other military hardware to Kenya’s armed forces, according to information posted online by the Turkish and Kenyan governments and Turkish corporations.

The abductions and Kenyan officials’ apparent dissembling about them stunned Western officials.

U.S. officials summoned Kenya’s ambassador in Washington to the State Department on Oct. 25 for a meeting in which Marta Youth, the top department official on refugee issues, expressed “shock at the detention and involuntary return” of the Turkish nationals, according to an official who reviewed a summary of the meeting.

CIA Director William J. Burns and Moore, his British counterpart, also raised the issue in separate meetings with Ruto in Nairobi in October, officials said.

Ruto has struck an apologetic note and admitted to the U.N. high commissioner on refugees that the renditions were a “violation of Kenya’s long-standing policies,” according to Western diplomatic officials.

Ankara has yet to acknowledge the latest abductions, in contrast with previous cases. The four men were allowed to make brief calls to relatives in Turkey, according to associates. A lawyer who met with them upon their arrival in Turkey declined to answer questions from The Post, hanging up abruptly after saying he was no longer their attorney.

Erdogan’s government has made clear that the crackdown against the Gulen movement will continue despite the death of its founder. Turkish authorities just last month detained 459 people across dozens of provinces accused of being members of FETO.

In a speech to party members on Oct. 22, four days after the Kenyan abductions, Erdogan lamented that Gulen himself had not been captured before his death but said that “he cannot escape from divine justice.”