As I mentioned yesterday, the would-be Sultan of the revived Ottoman Empire is meddling more and more blatantly in his neighbors’ internal affairs. Recep Tayyip Erdogan keeps supporting the jihad groups trying to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, and is having only mixed success at covering his tracks.

The latest scandal involves a shipment of weapons to Turkmen fighters in Syria that was intercepted on its way out of Turkey. Cumhuriyet, the newspaper that broke the story, has now been warned by Mr. Erdogan that it will pay a serious price for its actions. There’s little doubt that the reporters and editors responsible for the story will find themselves behind bars, along with so many other journalists who have dared to oppose the future Caliph.

The following article from Cumhuriyet (which has since disappeared from the Internet) originally appeared at Vlad Tepes in a slighty different form. Many thanks to Burak Ant Kiliç for the translation:

Note: some of the characters with special Turkish diacritical marks failed to make it through Vlad’s character encoding, and appear here as question marks:

Cumhuriyet has reached the visuals from the D.A’s files of the truck that was stopped by the police on an informant’s notice at January 19 2014, allegedly carrying arms to Syria.

It turned out that the existence of the arms and ammuniton that were consistently denied by the government were recorded by three cameras in the trucks that are said to be MIT’s (Intelligence Agency)

It was observed that in the steel holds opened by the DA who was escorted by gendarme officials, there were mortar and cannon shells and heavy machine gun bullets covered on top by boxes filled with antibiotics.

How was it stopped?

As remembered, on 11th May 2013 in Reyhanl?, 52 people died after two trucks filled with explosives were detonated, and this was recorded as the “bloodiest terrorist action” in the history of the Republic.

On the 1st of January on a similar informant’s notice a truck was stopped by police forces in K?r?khan county of Hatay, but a search was prevented when the Mayor had interfered.While the truck’s load was recorded as “Humanitarian Aid”, CHP asserted that there were weapons in the truck, and it was carrying arms and ammunition to Syria under control of the government and MIT.

Hayati Yaz?c?, The Minister of Customs, stated “We are x-raying everything that goes to Syria, this situation has nothing to do with us,” while Efkan Ala who took his oath in the Parliament and took office that day asserted that there was aid that was going to Turkmens in the truck and threatened the journalists:

“Everybody is going to know their business. Do you know what’s inside the trucks?”

18 days after this incident, this time three trucks were stopped by the gendarme at the gates of Adana Ceyhan Sirkeci again with an informant’s notice. There were tensions between the MIT officials escorting the truck, the riot police that arrived later and the 250 Gendarme officials under command of Adana City Gendarme Commander, even weapons were drawn.

Adana D.A. Aziz Takç?, who gave permission for the trucks to be searched later stated at the court that when he reached the scene, some rugged-looking individuals with dirty beards who claimed to be MIT officials were shouting and insulting.

The trucks that turned out to be travelling without the knowledge of city state officials, MIT regional director and Armed Forces, were to be held under detention at Seyhan County Gendarme Command, while the MIT staff tried to stop this by cutting them off on the road, taking the keys from the driver and throwing them away.

D.A Takç? stated about that day:

“I went and checked the equipment. I also saw the arms and ammo filled. (truck) I told the Gendarme who came to the scene to report and record it, and take numbers. At this time, Hüseyin Avni Co?, the Mayor of Adana, and the Police Chief came there with about 3-4 hundred special action police (Something equivalent to SWAT) and riot police. We had a meeting with the mayor of Adana to solve the situation. He told me that these trucks belonged to MIT, he would do everything to death to make sure they’re let go, that the Prime Minister (Erdogan) called and said something around ‘We will make a legislation about this, tell the D.A. to let them go’, and that the Minister of Internal Affairs had also called him.

After these warnings, no legal action was made about the equipment on the trucks.

After the incident, first the government stated that the equipment in the trucks were “national secret”, then P.M. Erdogan claimed that the equipment was headed to the Turkmens, but the Turkmens later denied this and said that nothing was delivered to them.

There’s an accompanying video at Vlad’s place.

Additional articles on this story:

• CNN
• Jerusalem Online
• ANSAmed