President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday inaugurated a new headquarters for Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT), praising it for conducting international operations, especially in Syria and now in Libya, the Turkish media reported.
“In shedding light on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, MİT made our nation proud in the international arena. And now, it’s playing the same kind of role in Libya,” Erdoğan said in Ankara.
A Saudi journalist critical to the royal family, Khashoggi was killed at the İstanbul consulate building of Saudi Arabia in Oct. 2018.
“[MİT] has combined its experience in gathering intelligence with high technology [provided by the government] and performed well in Syria,” he added.
Turkey has been backing Syrian rebels since the start of the civil war in 2011. In Libya, Ankara supports Fayez al-Serraj’s UN-recognized Tripoli government against Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s forces.
The new MİT headquarters, a 500-hectare complex, is named “The Castle,” according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
The Hürriyet daily had reported that MİT’s budget was increased from $410 million in 2010 to nearly $2 billion in 2017.