Is the Deep State really all that deep?

https://ahvalnews.com/deep-state/turkeys-deep-state-never-one-structure-more-culture-impunity

https://jamestown.org/program/murky-past-of-turkeys-gendarmerie-intelligence-emerges-in-ergenekon-investigation/ 

 https://jamestown.org/program/susurluk-and-the-legacy-of-turkeys-dirty-war/

https://www.mei.edu/publications/turkeys-deep-state-and-ergenekon-conundrum 

https://warontherocks.com/2019/02/how-the-deep-state-came-to-america-a-history/ 

 Let me ask you a question, have you ever heard the term Deep State? You’re a politics student of course you have. Like most you have probably come to this term quite recently, probably around the time of Donald Trump’s campaign for president. But the term is older than that and has only recently entered the wider political lexicon of America and Europe. But is the deep state a monolithic entity, as Donald Trump likes to characterize it? What is the deep state? Id like to take you on a trip to the place where the term and the concept arguably first came to prominence in my lifetime. So dear readers pour a glass of aslan sütü, pull up a chair and let me tell you a story.

Our story begins in 1996 in a Mercedes 600 SEL traveling at 180KPH on a road near the town of Susurluk in western Turkey. The Mercedes crashes into a truck and three of the four passengers are killed. The occupants of the car were an unlikely bunch. The driver and owner of the car was Sedat Bucak, he represented Şanlıurfa as an MP for the True Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi). He was also head of the Bucak tribe which had its own paramilitary militia. Huseyin Kocadağ, former deputy head of the Istanbul police department was killed in the crash. Beauty queen Gonca Us was also killed along with her boyfriend Abdullah Çatlı. It is this last name that is probably of greatest interest. Abdullah Çatlı wasn’t just anyone, he was a hit man with ties to the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves and was wanted by Interpol for murder and drug smuggling. An unlikely bunch of fellow travelers I think you'll agree. 

The backdrop to this incident is the war in the south eastern provinces of Turkey, where the Turkish armed forces were waging a bloody campaign against the PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane). It was a conflict ripe for what could be referred to as “off the books operations”. Often fought in the mountains of south eastern Turkey, far from the prying eyes of the world. Prime operational territory for a group such as Gendarmerie Intelligence and Anti-Terror (Jandarma Istihabarat ve Terorle Mucadele). The Gendarmerie are responsible for policing areas of Turkey outside urban centres and occupy a somewhat vague position. While technically under the command of the ministry of the interior, they draw their officer corps from the army academy and are commanded by a four-star army general. Given the vagueness of their position in the overall Turkish law enforcement structure the gendarmerie found themselves able to set up JITEM and use it to prosecute a counter insurgency campaign against the PKK, with little to no oversight from government officials. A great many atrocities were committed by the Turkish armed forces and the PKK during the worst years of the conflict. Groups like JITEM were able to conduct deniable operations such as false flag attacks, bombings, assassinations and kidnappings that presumably the Turkish chain of command would have hesitated to sanction, and certainly didn’t want attributed to them.

The Susurluk incident blew the lid off the cooperation between government officials, organised crime, ultra-nationalist groups and paramilitary organisations. It revealed to the general public how government officials cooperated with state and non-state actors to conduct a campaign of extra judicial violence against those labelled “enemies of the state”. It brought to light some of the actions of the Turkish military in the south eastern provinces, and the steps many seemed willing to take in the name of Turkey. All seemingly well away from the prying eyes of the world, and from the eyes of many in the government who really should have been paying more attention. But is this evidence of the so-called deep state? Or is this just evidence of actors within the state security apparatus acting without oversight, or with impunity, towards the vague national security goals of the Turkish state?

The deep state is a term that gets a lot of airtime these days. The deep state is a useful prop for a regime when they wish to whip up votes or cover up their own incompetence or crimes. Certainly President Erdoğan likes to allude to them in his speeches as the rather vague “enemies of Turkey” when he wants to stir nationalist feelings. Sifting fact from fiction is often quite difficult with these sorts of things. Groups like JITEM undeniably exist but getting information on them is difficult for obvious reasons. I find the greater likelihood is that the deep state has never really existed at all, at least not in the solid monolithic sense that many seem to think. The deep state is more likely to just be the state doing illegal things and then blaming it onto the deep state to cover things up. How convenient for the Turkish armed forces to be able to shift blame for the all the war crimes committed in the south east against the Kurd's, onto the nebulous and shadowy deep state. Got a journalist you want dead but don’t want to risk your government being implicated, who you gonna call? You’re gonna call your head of intelligence who probably knows some ultra nationalist who will do the job for you.

 What the Susurluk incident revealed wasn’t some shadowy centrally controlled parallel state organisation. It was just a culture of impunity that pervaded the security forces in general. A lack of oversight and no willingness to reign in the security forces allowed multiple security agencies to run death squads, smuggle drugs and commit numerous other crimes. So it seems that perhaps the deep state isn’t really that deep at all.

Urien Rheged