Over the past week, the Turkish intelligence agency managed to arrest in Ukraine and fly to Turkey two alleged members of the opposition movement blamed for the failed coup that attempted to overthrow the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016.
Turkish Imam Salih Zeki Yigit was flown to Istanbul on July 12 and blogger Yusuf Inan was sent to Turkey on July 15, Turkish media reported.
Both were accused by the Turkish authorities of links to Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based preacher and opposition figure whom Ankara blames for the coup attempt.
The Turkish government news agency Anadolu published the photos of both men handcuffed.
Ukrainian authorities couldn’t share anything about the arrests, suggesting the Turks could have been abducted.
Spokespersons of Ukraine’s State Security Service and Prosecution General’s Office told the Kyiv Post they have no information about the arrested Turks. Spokesman of the State Border Service couldn’t immediately comment whether the two crossed Ukraine’s state border.
At the same time, Erdogan’s spokesperson İbrahim Kalın thanked Ukrainian special services for helping with Yigit’s arrest.
The Embassy of Turkey in Kyiv couldn’t immediately comment on the arrests.
According to Ukrainian law, both extradition and deportation from the country require a court warrant which should be public and can also be appealed.
The two arrests are reminiscent to the abduction of Palestinian national Dirar Abu Sisi, who was captured by Israeli security services on a train in Ukraine in 2011, and Russian national Leonid Razvozzhayev, who was kidnapped by Russian security services when walking on a street in Kyiv in 2012.
According to Yunus Erdogdu, a Turkish journalist working in Ukraine who is covering the alleged abduction in his blog, Yigit lived in Odesa and Inan lived in Mykolayiv.
Erdoglu said that based on the information from his sources, he believes that Turkish security services captured Yigit on one of Odesa’s central streets in the afternoon on July 11, brought him to Kherson and flew him overnight by a private jet to Istanbul with a sack on his head. Erdoglu didn’t specify where he received these details.
Erdoglu also said Yigit contacted him by phone about a year ago asking for advice on how to receive asylum in Ukraine. Erdoglu doesn’t know, however, whether Yigit received asylum and what his status was when living in Ukraine.
The State Migration Service spokesperson said he didn’t know about these cases.
According to Interfax Ukraine news agency, Yigit used to raise money in the Turkish Mersin province for Gulen’s organization and fled to Ukraine following the failed coup in 2016.
He was captured on the same day when the Turkish security service brought to Turkey from Azerbaijan İsa Özdemir, whom they accused of being “Gulen’s treasurer.”
Erdogan’s spokesman told the media that the Turkish authorities were grateful to Ukrainian and Azerbaijani special services for helping with the arrests.
“Based on this, we may presume that Ukraine’s security services were also involved here,” Erdoglu told the Kyiv Post.
Inan, who was abducted from Ukraine on July 15, is accused by the Turkish authorities of being a social media blogger on behalf of Gulen’s movement. Anadolu Turkish state news agency reported he was wanted in Turkey’s Izmir province for “being a member of an armed organization.”
Gulen, who resides in the United States since 1999, denies any links to the coup attempt in 2016, which lead to about 250 people killed.
Gulen’s organization built strong influence in Turkey and in the Balkans, Africa and Central Asia through his network of schools, several of which also exist in Ukraine.
Turkey has arrested tens of thousands of people on charges of belonging to Gulen’s group. The Turkish authorities vowed to search and detain his supporters worldwide. In April, they reported about 80 Gulenists being brought back to Turkey in secret operations.
