CHP questions activities of Turkish defense company over ‘ISIL links’

ISTANBUL

Republican People’s Party (CHP) Mersin deputy Fikri Sağlar

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Mersin deputy Fikri Sağlar has made a parliamentary inquiry addressed to Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım over the activities of an Istanbul-based defense company accused of having links to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

In his June 30 inquiry, Sağlar said the SADAT International Defense Consultancy, established in the early 2000s by soldiers dismissed from the military due to “reactionary activities,” is a company close the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and offers “irregular warfare training” in various fields including “intelligence, psychological warfare, sabotage, raiding, ambushing, and assassination.” 

“It is claimed that special commissioned and non-commissioned officers have begun working at this company with high salaries, and that in camps irregular warfare training has been given to ISIL and its derivatives,” said the inquiry.

It also referred to claims that the training was frozen when Western intelligence services gathered information on these activities, but a secret armed body’s training continued and some of the attendants were members of the AKP’s youth branches and the “Ottoman Hearths.”    

Sağlar therefore asked whether any ministerial, state-level permission has been given to SADAT’s military training and consulting activities. He also asked whether the claim that SADAT was permitted to act as an alternative to the Turkish Armed Forces, whether SADAT’s activities were being monitored by state institutions, where its camps are located and who controls these camps, and whether SADAT provides support to ISIL and trains its militants in its camps.   

The head of SADAT, retired brigadier Adnan Tanrıverdi, refuted all allegations in a statement to the semi-official Anadolu Agency, denying that the company has relations with ISIL or any other terrorist groups.   
“SADAT does not have any training camps. It does not have any interest or relations with DAESH [ISIL] or any other terror organization. The existence of such a thing is not even possible. We have not given guerilla training to any country or any domestic or international illegal organizations. They are trying to hit our president through us, just because we provide irregular warfare and special operations services,” said Tanrıverdi, adding that the company has contacts with other countries but “has not taken any serious tenders” from these countries.