Germany has been spying on Turkey since 1976: Report

Germany's foreign intelligence agency has been spying on Turkey for nearly four decades, Focus magazine said on Aug. 23 in a report which could raise tensions further between the NATO allies.

The details about the duration of possible surveillance and on the decision-making surrounding it go further than first reports earlier this week.

Turkey summoned Germany's ambassador in Ankara on Aug. 18 after media reports that Berlin had identifiedAnkara as a top target of surveillance in a government document from 2009 and had been spying on Turkey for years.

Focus magazine said the BND intelligence agency had been spying on Turkey since 1976 and that German government under the then Social Democrat chancellor Helmut Schmidt had expressly approved the step.

The magazine also cited government sources as saying the BND's current mandate to monitor Turkish political and state institutions had been agreed by a government working group. That included representatives of the chancellor's office, the defense, foreign and economy ministries.

A spokesman for the German government declined to comment on the report.

The report is a further embarrassment for Angela Merkel's government which faces accusations of hypocrisy because of its outrage over allegations of widespread surveillance by the United States on Germans, including the tapping of the chancellor's phone.

However, conservative lawmaker Hans-Peter Uhl told Focus there were "good reasons" for the BND to bug Turkey. He cited human trafficking, drugs and terrorism as issues of concern and his comments chime with the views of many German politicians.

"We need to know what is coming to us from EU-applicant Turkey," Focus quoted him as saying.

Germany is Turkey's largest trading partner in the European Union and home to at least 3 million Turks. But relations are not always smooth. Merkel's conservatives are skeptical about Turkish EU membership.

In response to media reports about U.S. spying in Germany, Merkel has said spying among friends is "not at all acceptable".

In a public spat which chilled relations between Berlin and Washington, Germany told the top U.S. spy in Germany to leave earlier this year after a double agent at the BND was unearthed.

Der Spiegel magazine reported that the BND has also targeted Albania, another member of NATO, for surveillance.

German intelligence 'spied on whole of Turkey'

Turkey was the only NATO member that the German foreign intelligence agency (BND) spied on and the scope of the program covers the whole country, sources in the German intelligence community have told daily Hürriyet.

Citing the updated version of the German government’s intelligence profiling document, a source said Turkey was listed as one of the main targets under a category called “the updated profile.”

“The document also lists why Turkey is the only NATO country on the list. It states the whole of Turkey, not just the region, should be monitored, because of its ‘great importance,’ particularly in areas of foreign policy, economics, oil pipelines and anti-terrorism operations,” the source said.

A German federal prosecutor had arrested a 31-year-old BND employee in July, on suspicion of spying for American intelligence. 

The German media reported last week that documents had been discovered showing how the German government had ordered the BND to spy on a NATO partner state, without naming the country. Der Spiegel then reported Aug. 16 that Turkey was and still is the target.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu called his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, late Aug. 18 to personally express his government’s anger. The two ministers agreed that the chiefs of the two countries’ intelligence services, Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and BND, should come together and that theGerman side should provide an explanation for their actions.

Is it only Germany that is spying on Turkey?

German Ambassador to Ankara Eberhard Pohl was summoned to the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Aug. 18 following media reports claiming German secret services have been eavesdropping on Turkey for some time. The Turkish Foreign Ministry asked for an explanation from the ambassador and said in a public statement that it would be “grave” if even only part of the media reports were true.

The claims were first reported by Der Spiegel and then the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Allegedly, electronic espionage on Turkey was disclosed in the documents seized from a German intelligence officer, who had been interrogated by Germancounter-intelligence upon suspicions of spying for the United States. The interrogation was a part of a wider probe following last year’s scandal about U.S. intelligence eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which caused a chill between Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama.

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung report, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German exterior intelligence service, has been spying on Turkey because of domestic developments in Turkey posing a threat to Germany’s national security.

The report mentions the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the activities of other religious, left-wing and right-wing groups in Germany as a justification for this unacceptable spying on a NATO ally, just as Germany had been – rightfully – complaining about American espionage on itself.

Almost 5 percent of Germany’s population of 82 million is of Turkish origin. Since the 1960s, “guest workers” from Turkey have been contributing to the German economic miracle and living there. Every political and religious grouping in Turkey has branches in Germany and all political debates and antagonisms in Turkey have very amplified echoes in Germany.

Therefore, Berlin could try to justify its illegal activity in Turkey by trying to intercept electronic communications here in order to take precautions against possible actions in Germany by those groups.

That would be a crime in itself, but would it be limited to this? For example, there is the “foreign fighters” issue that bothers not only Germany, but also the U.S. and many other NATO countries. The “foreign fighters” are either native citizens of those countries who have been converted to Islam by radical agitators or Muslim immigrants who become citizens, then join illegal armed organizations – such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), a side product of the civil wars in Syria and Iraq – to fight before returning to commit acts in their country of citizenship. 

But the information telling us that Merkel government had instructed the BND in 2009 to spy on Turkey because of the PKK leads up to certain speculatione. That year Erdoğan had instructed the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) to carry out dialogue with the PKK for a poltitcal settlement for Kurdish poblem. The talks that took place in Norway’s capital Oslo collupsed in 2010 because of a leak which hit the Internet in 2011.

After that Erdoğan decided for direct talks with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan on the İmralı island prison via MİT chief Hakan Fidan. That process is still going on.

And would it only be Germany that is trying to spy on Turkey, a country that lies in such a critical region? Particularly as major crises are ongoing around Turkey, such as Syria, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Cyprus and the wholeIran nuclear issue, and with all the Afghanistan-Central Asia connections through Turkey and historical links with the Balkan conflicts.

In addition, the internal fight between different factions of the police, the intelligence agency and the judiciary have already scattered all of their dirty laundry around. It would be very easy for the Germans to spy on Turkey overtly by simply indexing media reports. So there must be something other than what has already been revealed behind all of the current scandal.

The motto, “Don’t get caught!” is the rule of thumb of secret activities. The Germans may have been caught, perhaps because of their row with the U.S., and Prime Minister (and now president-elect) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will surely ask Merkel about this as soon as the story becomes clearer.

German intel spied on Kerry and Clinton, targeted Turkey: Report

Germany's intelligence agency eavesdropped on calls made by U.S. Secretary Hillary Clinton, as the German intelligence also targeted Turkey, Der Spiegel reports.

Germany's foreign intelligence agency eavesdropped on calls made by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor Hillary Clinton, German magazine Der Spiegel reported Aug. 16, as it also said the German intelligence targeted Turkey.  

The news weekly reported that the agency, known by itsGerman acronym BND, tapped a satellite phone conversation Kerry made in 2013 as part of its surveillance of telecommunications in the Middle East. The agency also recorded a conversation between Clinton and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan a year earlier, Der Spiegel claimed.

The magazine didn't give a source for its information, but said the calls were collected accidentally, that the three officials weren't directly targeted, and the recordings were ordered destroyed immediately. In Clinton's case, the call reportedly took place on the same "frequency" as a terror suspect, according to Der Spiegel.

The tapping of Clinton's call was reported Aug. 15 byGerman public broadcaster ARD and Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

If true, the revelations would be embarrassing for theGerman government, which has spent months complaining to Washington about alleged American spy activity in Germany. Last year German media reports based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden prompted a sharp rebuke from Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was allegedly among the U.S. intelligence agency's targets.

A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Berlin declined to comment on the latest reports.

In its report, Der Spiegel also cited a confidential 2009 BND document listing fellow NATO member Turkey as a target for German intelligence gathering.

The Germany intelligence agency didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.