The İstanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office has issued an arrest warrant for former CIA official Graham Fuller as part of an investigation into a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, Hurriyet reported.
According to the report Fuller is accused of “attempting to overthrow the government, attempting to subvert the work of the government, obtaining confidential documents of the state for political and espionage purposes, and attempting to overthrow the constitutional order.”
It is stated in the warrant that evidence exists that Fuller has had contact with academic Henri Barkey, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Wilson Center for whom an arrest warrant has been outstanding since Nov. 11, and others who played a role in the coup attempt, and that he perpetrated the same crimes.
It is also noted that Fuller left Turkey following the failed coup attempt.
The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued a detention warrant for Barkey, for being behind the Gezi protests of 2013, the corruption operations of Dec. 17-25 in 2013 and a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016.
On April 15, following a recent criminal complaint filed by a group of Turkish lawyers, the İstanbul chief public prosecutor launched an investigation into 17 prominent US figures including Senator Chuck Schumer, former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara and former CIA Director John Brenan for alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
According to the report the investigation is based on allegations of “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” and “attempting to overthrow the government and parliament.”
The prosecutor has started to investigate the details of a meeting of some of the “suspects” on İstanbul’s Büyükada island on July 15 and in Karaköy on July 17, 2016, the report said.
Mehmet Sarı and Rıza Saka are two of the lawyers who filed criminal complaints against Bharara; Senator Schumer; Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) President David Cohen; President of the Turkic American Alliance (TAA) Faruk Taban; lawyer Zafer Akın from the Turkish Cultural Center; Kemal Öksüz from the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians; Emre Çelik from the Rumi Forum; Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official; former Turkish police chief Ahmet Sait Yayla, who currently resides in the US; Barkey; Fuller; Mahmut Yeter from the Mid Atlantic Federation Of Turkic American Associations; Talha Saraç from the Turkish American Business Network (TABN); former CIA Director John Brenan; Recep Özkan; Burak Yeneroğlu; and Ralph Peters.
Turkey survived a military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that killed 249 people and wounded more than a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement despite the lack of any evidence to that effect.
Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.
Amid an ongoing witch-hunt targeting the faith-based Gülen movement, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on Nov. 16 said 48,739 people had been jailed and eight holdings and 1,020 companies seized as part of operations against the movement.
Turkey’s Justice Ministry announced on July 13 that 50,510 people have been arrested and 169,013 have been the subject of legal proceedings on coup charges since the failed coup.
Turkey has suspended or dismissed more than 150,000 judges, teachers, police and civil servants since July 15 through government decrees issued as part of an ongoing state of emergency.
Contrary to accusations made by President Erdoğan and the Turkish government, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament concluded last month that Gülen and the movement he inspired as a whole were not behind the failed coup in Turkey.
The UK Parliament statement came a week after Germany rejected Erdoğan and the Turkish government’s accusations against the Gülen movement about July 15.
The head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), Bruno Kahl, said Turkey could not convince them that US-based Turkish-Islamic scholar Gülen was behind the failed coup in July.
Similarly, Devin Nunes, chairman of United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said he has not seen any evidence showing Gülen’s involvement in the putsch in Turkey.
In addition, a report prepared by the EU Intelligence Analysis Centre (IntCen) revealed that the coup attempt was staged by a range of Erdoğan’s opponents due to fears of an impending purge.