Hürriyet newspaper columnist Ertuğrul Özkök has pointed to what he described as a strange detail about Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt, saying an account in journalist Hande Fırat’s book appeared to show that the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) was unaware of the military activity in İstanbul and Ankara shortly after it began.
The observation raises questions about what Turkey’s main intelligence agency knew during the first hours of the coup attempt.
In an article titled “A very strange detail I failed to notice on the night of the coup attempt,” Özkök said he noticed the detail while rereading pages 21 and 22 of Fırat’s book, “24 Hours: Behind the Scenes of the Coup Attempt.”
“I had missed a very important detail on pages 21 and 22 of Hande Fırat’s book ‘24 Hours: Behind the Scenes of the Coup Attempt.’ I realized it the other day while reviewing the book again,” Özkök wrote.
According to Özkök, Fırat was speaking with her editor at 10:10:39 p.m. on the night of the coup attempt. She then called Brig. Gen. Ertuğrulgazi Özkürkçü, head of the Communications Department at the General Staff, but could not reach him.
After that, sometime after 10:10 p.m., she called Nuh Yılmaz, then press adviser for MİT.
“Now pay close attention to this conversation between them,” Özkök wrote, quoting the exchange as follows:
Hande Fırat: “Hello Nuh, what is happening?”
Nuh Yılmaz: “What do you mean, what is happening?”
Fırat: “There is a strange mobilization.”
Yılmaz: “I am not aware of it.”
Fırat: “But soldiers have taken the weapons of the police. My reliable sources say there is a mobilization.”
Yılmaz: “Let me look into it and call you right back.”
“I WONDER HOW HE HEARD IT WAS OVER”
Özkök also referred to Mehmet Görmez, then head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, who was in the basement of the same building during those minutes and received a phone call from his wife while in the elevator.
“His wife told him that the Bosphorus Bridge was blocked and that there were reports of coup rumors,” Özkök wrote.
“The bureaucrat’s wife found out. The journalist found out. The journalist’s sources found out. But the National Intelligence Organization says, ‘I have no news of it.’”
Özkök then questioned how MİT officials later announced that the coup attempt had been repelled.
“Yet somehow, three to five hours later, this same colleague makes a statement saying, ‘The coup has been repelled.’ I wonder how a person who could not get news of the coup as it was starting managed to get news of it ending,” he wrote.
HE CALLED HER WHILE SHE WAS ON FACETIME WITH ERDOĞAN
On the night of the coup attempt, while Fırat was connecting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to CNN Türk by FaceTime, Yılmaz called her phone.
Yılmaz’s name appeared on Fırat’s phone screen. Fırat rejected the call, allowing Erdoğan’s image to reappear on the screen.
