Turkey’s new economy czar, whose portfolio covers state banks and the Treasury, had worked with a known operative of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, a confidential investigation revealed.
Nurettin (who also goes by Nureddin) Nebati, a 57-year-old Islamist politician, was identified as a person of interest in a criminal investigation into Quds Force cells in Turkey when police investigators intercepted his communications with an operative identified as Engin Bilgin, a man who was trained, funded and used to collect intelligence by Iran’s secretive network.
According to the case file Nebati was in contact with Bilgin, who ran surveillance of the Israeli and US consulates in Istanbul on behalf of his Iranian handlers, most likely for a possible attack against these diplomatic missions or their staff.
The secret wiretap incorporated into the criminal case file showed that Nebati was in contact with Bilgin, a member of a core cell run by a Quds Force general. He was part of a surveillance team that identified vulnerable points around the US and Israeli consulates in Istanbul. The secret wiretaps showed that Nebati talked to Bilgin, whom he had known for a long time, and helped him overcome problems he had faced.
Investigation case file No.2011/762, obtained by Nordic Monitor, indicates that the police investigators working under authorization from the prosecutors found that the suspects had managed to obtain secret military maps of the southeastern provinces of Adana and Gaziantep and possessed surveillance records from the vicinity of the NATO early warning radar system in Malatya’s Kürecik district.
.
For the full article: press here
.
by Abdullah Bozkurt, December 6, 2021, published on NORDIC Monitor
