TURKEY: MFA TALKING POINTS ON OPERATIONS CARRIED

C O N F I D E N T I A L ANKARA 000242 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/05/2027 TAGS: ASEC PGOV PREL PTER TU SUBJECT: TURKEY: MFA TALKING POINTS ON OPERATIONS CARRIED OUT AGAINST HAYDAR KIRKAN GROUP LINKED WITH AL QAEDA Classified By: Political Counselor Janice G. Weiner for Reasons 1.4 (b, d) ¶1. (C) On February 2, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department Head for International Terror Huseyin Ozdemir provided talking points on the January 29 coordinated operations in 6 provinces against the Haydar Kirkan group. After going through the talking points, Ozdemir pointedly drew attention to press that claimed some of the current detainees had been arrested after the November 2003 Istanbul bombings. He said that all of the detainees were Turks. He could not tell us what the charges would be at this point; it was still "very early." He also noticed that the number of detainees as reported in the press had fluctuated a bit; he attributed this also to "early reports." ¶2. (U) The text of the talking points is as follows: -- At terrorist bombings conducted by Al Qaeda in Istanbul on 15 and 20 November 2003, 59 people, including 4 suicide bombers were killed and 700 were wounded. In searches following the bombings 247 people were caught as well as numerous weapons and explosive ingredients. 62 of them were detained. -- As a result of operations carried out against Al Qaeda after these attacks, many people linked with Al Qaeda groupings were captured and their plans for terrorist actions were foiled. -- Within this framework, it was learned that a group has become active in Konya, Istanbul, Kocaeli and Izmir provinces under the leadership of Mr Haydar Kirkan, who had a military training and religious education at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1999. -- Intelligence indicated that the said group was in preparation for a big scale terrorist act in Turkey and most probably about to finish its reconnaissance activities to this end, though the target of such an act has not been discovered yet. -- In this vein, on 29 January 2007 concurrent police operations were conducted against Haydar Kirkan group during which 47 persons (23 in Konya, 17 in Istanbul, 2 in Kocaeli, 3 in Izmir, 1 in Mardin and 1 in Afyon provinces) were taken into custody and transferred to Konya province for interrogation. -- During searches carried out in the houses and workplaces of the people under probation, 3 handguns, 3 blank-firing guns, 6 shotguns, 1 air rifle, 2 swords, 205 bullets (9 mm), 27 computers, 5 laptop computers, 4 walkie-talkies, 2 forged ID cards and passports, 1 000 CDs including images of terrorist acts conducted in Iraq etc., hard disks, flash disks and numerous documents of the organization were captured. -- In Haydar Kirkan's house, two practicing certificates for lawyers as well as a membership card for IHA-DER (Association for the Protection of Human Rights) in the name of Osman Karahan was found. Mr. Karahan is publicly known as the lawyer defending Al Qaeda members in Turkey and was arrested, on charges of providing assistance to the terror organization in 29 December 2006. -- It is evaluated that through the operations conducted against Haydar Kirkan group that intensified its efforts to carry out an attack in Turkey and has a potential to realise it, Al Qaeda's another terrorist act was foiled at an early stage (sic). Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/ankara/ WILSON