Stopping Turkish intel trucks was organized act: Court

ANKARA

The illegal stopping of Turkish intelligence trucks near the Syrian border constituted a planned terrorist group act meant to harm the Turkish state, according to a detailed court ruling released Wednesday.

The legal judgement came in a top Turkish court ruling in a case decided this June concerning National Intelligence Organization (MIT) trucks stopped illegally in 2014.

In June 28, the court gave all but two of the defendants, convicted of obtaining and revealing state secrets, sentences of at least two decades behind bars.

According to the 1,320-page ruling, the MIT trucks case has links with the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) and directly targeted the government and the MIT.

The FETO terror group aimed to disclose the Turkish government's activities in Syria to put the government in a difficult position in the international arena, said the ruling.

The Turkish Republic has the right to take proportional preventative measures to defend itself in the face of the ongoing civil war in Syria, the ruling added.

"No state can wait for disasters to come," it said.

According to the detailed ruling, the MIT trucks case was far from being individual but in fact was an "organizational act" carried out by proven members of the FETO terror group.

Almost all the defendants in the MIT truck case were intelligence agents or prosecutors who abused their positions in public institutions to carry out the planned act, said the ruling.

"It is necessary to accept that stopping the MIT trucks was a planned act of FETO," it said.

In the incident which led to the convictions, in January 2014 gendarmerie officers affiliated with FETO stopped a group of MIT trucks on their way to Syria, despite government orders to let them pass.

A total of 54 people, including high-ranking military and judicial officials got lengthy prison terms.

On July 15, 2016, FETO and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gulen also orchestrated a defeated coup in Turkey, leaving 251 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured.

Ankara also accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the Turkish state through the infiltration of Institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.