A pro-Erdoğan businessman in Turkey is offering a TL 3 million ($780,000) reward to anyone whose information leads to the arrest of Graham Fuller and Michael Rubin, American experts on Turkey, the Cumhuriyet daily reported on Thursday.
The anonymous businessman’s lawyer, Özgür Çelebi, said that Fuller, a former CIA station chief in Kabul who now writes foreign policy analyses, and Rubin, a former Pentagon official who is now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, were “traitors seeking to interfere” in Turkey.
His client, he said, was involved in education in Bursa and was “a person in love with his country, flag and nation.”
The İstanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office has already issued arrest warrants for both Rubin and Fuller over their alleged roles in a failed coup in Turkey in July 2016.
The Turkish government also issued a detention warrant for Brett McGurk, the US special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, as reported by the Habertürk daily on Wednesday.
A complaint has been filed with the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office accusing McGurk of attempting to overthrow the government of Turkey and the constitutional order through “acting in concert with the PKK-PYD-YPG armed terrorist organizations,” the newspaper said.
The Turkish government says the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People’s Protection Units (YPG) military wing, which is assisted by the United States in the fight against ISIL, is an affiliate of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The newspaper said the complaint requested that the Turkish military detain McGurk if found in Syria or Iraq and bring him back to Turkey. The complaint was filed by a nongovernmental group set up to fight against alleged members of the Gülen movement as part of the Turkish government’s massive post-coup witch-hunt targeting the movement, inspired by US-based Turkish-Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen.
“The suspect has been on the northern Iraq–Syrian borders for a long time acting in concert with terrorist organizations. He has coordinated these organizations, provided militants with weapons and ensured they received training,” the complaint alleged.
In April 2017, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into 17 prominent US figures including Senator Chuck Schumer, former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, former CIA Director John Brenan and US academic Henri Barkey for alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement. The investigation is based on allegations of “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” and “attempting to overthrow the government and Parliament.”
(Stockholm Center for Freedom [SCF] with Turkish Minute)
