The disappearance of a Turkish teacher in Kyrgyzstan has renewed claims that Turkey’s secret services have abducted scores of the country’s citizens abroad over the past five years, according to Agence France-Presse.
The kidnappings and forced renditions are mostly of suspected supporters of Fethullah Gülen, the Muslim preacher who Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blames for a failed coup against him in 2016.
Turkey has boasted that its secret service masterminded some of the cloak and dagger operations, with the justice minister saying 107 “traitors” had been captured abroad by 2019.
Before Gülen became Erdoğan’s arch-enemy, the elderly US-based cleric — who denies any part in the coup — was one of his closest and most powerful allies.
Gülen’s worldwide network of schools was once an important part of Turkish soft power abroad.
Here are some of the most notorious cases:
Bishkek mystery
Orhan İnandı, a Turkish-born Kyrgyz citizen who used to head a network of Gülen-linked schools in Kyrgyzstan, went missing on May 31. His car was found near his home with the door open, tires flat and with the teacher’s phone and jacket still inside.
While some 1,000 Kyrgyz security forces search for him, his wife claims he is being held inside the Turkish Embassy in Bishkek.
As hundreds protest over the disappearance in the Central Asian capital, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov visits Erdoğan Wednesday, who says the two leaders agree the Gülen movement “poses a national security threat to both countries”.
Nairobi coup
Last month Gülen’s nephew Selahaddin Gülen disappears from a police station in the Kenyan capital despite a court order banning his extradition.
He later appears handcuffed, triumphantly photographed between two Turkish flags in Ankara.
The abduction echoed the most celebrated operation ever by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT), when its agents seized outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan in Nairobi in 1999.
The founder of the PKK, which has fought a war against Ankara since the 1980s, has been held on an island prison off İstanbul since.
Kosovo scandal
The former head of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, a border police chief and a top interior ministry official are charged in February with abusing their positions in handing over six Turks working in Gülen-linked schools to Turkey in March 2018.
The men’s families say they were tortured on a private jet by Turkish agents on their way to Turkey.
Uzbekistan
The same month, Turkish state media reports that two Gülenists had been captured and returned from Uzbekistan.
Moldova five
Europe’s top rights court condemns Moldova in June 2019 over the “extra-legal transfer” the previous September of five Turkish nationals with alleged ties to Gulen.
They were put on a special plane back to Turkey in a joint operation between Turkish and Moldovan intelligence agencies.
A report earlier this year by Freedom House says Erdoğan has pursued his “perceived enemies in at least 31 different countries.”
Gabon three
Erdoğan hails the MİT agents who flew three suspected members of the Gülen movement from the west African state of Gabon after a secret mission in April 2018.
Mongolian stand-off
Mongolia grounds a Turkish air force jet in July 2018 after Ankara denies claims it had tried to smuggle a Gülen-linked teacher from the country.
Veysel Akçay was seized by five men as he left his home in the capital Ulaanbaatar and thrown into a minibus. He was later freed and the jet allowed to leave after a stand-off between the Mongolian and Turkish governments.
‘Money man’ grabbed
Turkey says its spies in Sudan repatriated businessman Memduh Çıkmaz in November 2017. Ankara claims he was Gülen’s “money man.” turkishminute