GCHQ
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In short, Turkey was to the American NSA what Cyprus was to GCHQ, hosting a vast network of aerial farms, dishes and monitoring stations. There was overlap: just as NSA had some small bases on Cyprus, GCHQ had some small stations in Turkey. As early as 1952 the two countries had agreed to ‘concert Anglo– American operations in the field’ with regard to Turkey. F.M. Smith, the GCHQ officer in charge of the British units in Turkey, worked with local US Army Security Agency units to agree on a suitable division of labour.9 Britain also carried out many of its sigint and imagery flights from Cyprus over Turkey or Iran, following the border and going out over the Black Sea or the Caspian Sea. In the mid-1960s Britain was carrying out more than a thousand overflights a year across Turkey, many of them for intelligence purposes.10
The rising tide of leftist violence and the large foreign intelligence presence inside Turkey was a volatile combination. In the 1960s the sigint facilities were protected by their extreme secrecy. Although large and visible with their domes and dishes, few knew of their real purpose or importance. Instead, the brunt of leftist anger was borne by the CIA, which radicals asserted was exerting a malign influence over the Turkish government, and was behind the growing efforts to repress the left. The Americans had certainly assisted with the development of MIT, the Turkish intelligence agency, and various groups of special forces. In November 1968 Robert Komer, who had previously served in Vietnam with the CIA, arrived as US Ambassador in Ankara, provoking much comment. In January 1969 his visit to the campus of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, a bastion of radicalism, triggered a major riot.11
Increasing numbers of young Turkish officers and government officials joined the radicals, and this translated into an unwelcome interest in the more sensitive installations. On 29 January 1971 a group of about twenty students attacked America’s TUSLOG headquarters in Ankara, throwing a bomb and a Molotov cocktail, followed by sporadic small-arms fire. The bomb destroyed a vehicle, and Turkish soldiers returned fire.12 The next month, an armed group abducted a US Air Force sergeant at Balgat, on the outskirts of Ankara. Although he was freed after seventeen hours, the incident pointed to future trouble.13 Finally, on 4 March, a group of militants from the TPLA kidnapped four US airmen from a US sigint base in Ankara known as USM-49.14
The hostages were returning to their accommodation in an Air Force station wagon manned by a Turkish driver after a monitoring shift. They were following their usual route, a narrow and icy road, when they were forced to stop by a roadblock. Several men loitering by the side of the road were suddenly joined by others brandishing sub-machine guns and grenades. The airmen expected to be shot immediately, but instead they were frogmarched away to a waiting car. The whole party then drove off in convoy, led by the captured station wagon. Although they were asked to keep their eyes shut, the Americans were neither bound nor blindfolded. At least one of them reckoned he could probably have made a successful getaway, but he feared the consequences for the remaining captives.15
One of the kidnappers then took the station wagon for disposal. Foolishly, he attempted to abandon it near the Soviet Embassy, which had a strong police presence. He was immediately arrested and successfully interrogated, revealing the names of the leading kidnappers, but not their location. He explained that they had all been trained by the Palestinian group ‘Fatah’ in Syria during 1970. MIT, the Turkish National Intelligence Agency, concluded that the hostages were being held on the nearby campus of the Middle East Technical University. Accordingly, early on 5 March the campus was cordoned off, and a massive security search began. The campus was vast, and included five miles of underground heating ducts which were examined inch by inch. Armed students barricaded themselves in the dormitories, and there were prolonged exchanges of fire. A student and a soldier were killed, and many were wounded. Weapons were recovered and two thousand students were detained, but there was no sign of the US airmen.16
Improbably, the hostages had been taken to a luxury apartment not far from the embassy quarter. For the next five days they were kept cooped up in a closet, interspersed with occasional periods when they were allowed to sit in the hallway for relief. The kidnappers treated their captives respectfully. They provided playing cards, and eventually the airmen developed an improvised chess set. The Americans had offered all their valuables in return for release, but their captors showed no interest. The TPLA began to issue demands, and threatened to put all the four airmen in front of a firing squad unless they were complied with. They included broadcasts of anti-American declamations on Turkish radio, and the payment of $400,000 within thirty-six hours. A little later they contacted the US Embassy, extending the deadline and sending a package containing short letters from the airmen to their families, together with one of their identity cards. There was now extensive press coverage of the crisis, but the real role of the airmen as sigint operators remained a secret.
President Nixon took a hard line. On the day of the abduction he told a White House news conference that he was not asking the Turkish government to negotiate with the kidnappers, and would leave operational decisions to Ankara.17 Unbeknown to Nixon, the airmen were allowed to listen to the radio, and his comments sent them into a deep depression. They feared their chances were now ‘down the drain’. The US Ambassador in Turkey, William J. Hanley, received a cable from Washington on the same day underlining Nixon’s tough position and opposing any ransom payment, for fear that it would encourage further kidnappings. Nevertheless, the Turkish government broadcast a version of one of the TPLA’s Marxist proclamations, in order to play for time. Meanwhile, MIT masterminded an extraordinary security operation. Thirty thousand troops and police were mobilised in a massive sweep of several sections of Ankara. The security forces combed the poorer areas of the city and revisited parts of the university campus. One member of the Turkish Cabinet declared, ‘You don’t bargain with bandits.’18
Behind the scenes, the US Information Service arranged for Turkish television to interview the pregnant wife of one of the airmen, Jimmie Sexton, and sent photographs of their thirteen-month-old son Anthony to local newspapers. Her direct and emotional appeal had a substantial effect on public opinion. Later, under police questioning, the kidnappers would concede that they had felt the tide of public sentiment turning against them. Once the deadlines expired, the five kidnappers became more nervous. They chose to relieve their anxiety by cleaning their guns in full view of the airmen, and took pleasure in aiming their unloaded weapons at them and pulling the trigger. They clearly loved their abundant weaponry: one of them was so festooned with belts of ammunition and hand grenades that the airmen christened him ‘the walking arsenal’. The kidnappers began to discuss taking their captives away to the east and then out of the country. At one point the airmen feared they would be taken to Syria, and then perhaps even on to the Soviet Union.19
At about 10 o’clock in the evening of 8 March, by complete chance, local police were called to investigate a domestic quarrel close to the kidnappers’ apartment. The kidnappers believed that they had been located, and told the airmen to lie on the floor in the dark. Waiting in the pitch black, they expected a gun battle to erupt at any moment. After a long period of time they realised their kidnappers had fled. Putting on civilian clothes they found in the apartment, they crept out and eventually found a taxi. First they went to the American Embassy, but the huge crowd of press and government officials was so alarming that instead they headed back to their billets, and reported their escape there. It turned out that they had been held only seven hundred yards from the American Embassy. Later, Ambassador Hanley tried to defend the policy of not paying the ransom. The airmen were not impressed, and retorted that when you are being held at gunpoint ‘you don’t really care about what might happen to somebody else. All you care about is getting out in one piece yourself.’20
The broad effect of the kidnap operation was to ratchet up the pressure on all sides. In April 1971 a new government was formed under Nihar Erim, which wasted
no time in rounding up hundreds of suspects and declaring martial law in eleven provinces. Many trade unionists and academics who had nothing to do with the TPLA were jailed, and newspapers were shut down.21 Four of the five kidnappers were caught on their way to the TPLA’s headquarters at the mountain stronghold of Malatya in south-eastern Turkey. The only one who remained at large, Sinan Cemgil, was soon planning another attack. The target was the important American intelligence site at Pirinclik Air Base in south-east Turkey, near Diyarbakir. This was a combined radar and elint operation that monitored missiles launched from the ultra-modern Soviet testing grounds at Tyuratam on the Aral Sea.22 On 28 April, having trained a new cadre of militants, the TPLA force made their way towards the site, but Turkish intelligence had an agent on the inside, and they were intercepted by the security forces. Cemgill and many of his adherents died in the prolonged gun battle that followed.23
By early May the security situation seemed superficially to be under control. One of the kidnappers of the US airmen was dead, and the remaining four were in prison. During the summer three of these prisoners, who were prominent figures in the TPLA, would be sentenced to be hanged. However, it was clear that the terrorists now considered themselves to be at war with the intelligence and security services – not only the Turkish agencies like MIT, but also those of Turkey’s allies. Moreover, with good contacts inside the government ministries, they were able to secure sensitive information about which bases had intelligence functions and constituted the most attractive targets. The presence of several key terrorist leaders awaiting the death sentence in Turkish jails was also a likely spur to further action.
Just after midday on 17 May 1971, members of the TPLF kidnapped Ephraim Elrom, the Israeli Consul General in Istanbul, as he returned to his apartment for lunch. He did this every day, never varying his schedule, and his predictable movements made him an easy target. After the kidnapping of the US airmen he had been offered a bodyguard, but had refused. Heavily armed kidnappers took over the flat across the hall from his, holding twelve people prisoner while they waited. Elrom was greeted at gunpoint and resisted, but was pistol-whipped until he was semi-conscious. Bundled into a large leather bag, he was taken away in a stolen car. The terrorists were quick to announce their demands, which amounted simply to the release of all previously captured TPLA members and publicity for their Marxist manifesto. They set a three-day deadline of 5 o’clock on the afternoon of 20 May.
The public were not aware of Ephraim Elrom’s true profile. Although fifty-eight years old, he had only entered the Israeli diplomatic corps less than three years previously, after the tragic death of his son in an aircraft accident. Istanbul was his first diplomatic posting, and he had served there for nineteen months. Previously he had been a distinguished security intelligence officer, and Israel’s most skilled interrogator. Most importantly, he had been the lead member of the team that had interrogated Adolf Eichmann after his capture by Mossad in Argentina in May 1960. The widespread assumption amongst the foreign diplomatic corps in Ankara was that Elrom had been targeted for anti-Zionist reasons, reflecting his role in bringing Eichmann to justice. However, the British Ambassador in Turkey, Sir Roderick Sarell, knew he had really been selected because of his intelligence liaison role. Elrom’s main functions in Turkey seem to have been to exchange intelligence with the Turkish agencies on Turks who had joined Arab terrorist groups such as Fatah, and to help with the training of Turkish counter-terror units. Sarell learned from the Israelis that they had been watching the TPLA, and knew that over a hundred Turks were training in Syria, Jordan and the Lebanon.24 It was now clear that the extremists were deliberately going after intelligence personnel.25
On 17 May the Turkish government warned that if Elrom was not released, many more people would be imprisoned. They were also preparing a law that made sheltering or supporting kidnap groups automatically subject to the death penalty, and threatened to make this retroactive, executing anyone associated with the kidnapping of Elrom. The Israelis backed this tough response. The next day, Turkey’s National Security Council met and was given an intelligence briefing by MIT. Afterwards they rounded up four hundred leftists, students and dissidents. Torture was used in the hope of extracting information about the kidnappers. Their hard line reflected a growing conviction on the part of Turkish intelligence that there was strong Syrian or even Soviet support for both the TPLF and the TPLA; some of the activists involved in the kidnapping of the airmen had been part of the original group of eleven students caught on the Syrian border with explosives and guns in 1970.26
The TPLF operation to kidnap Elrom was complex. Several apartments had been rented as safe houses, and numerous members of the group were involved indirectly in support teams. On 19 May the kidnappers held a meeting in a nearby safe house with other TPLF leaders, but they were divided about Elrom’s fate. On 20 May Elrom’s wife issued a public statement asking the kidnappers to release her husband, adding that they had lost their only child, and that she could not bear the further loss of her husband. At this point most Turkish politicians believed that no extremist group would execute a foreign diplomat. The following day, the authorities announced a curfew and began a methodical search of houses in the Istanbul area, a sprawling city of two million people.
By midday, two members of the kidnappers’ extensive support team had been caught, and pressure was building. They opted to try to move Elrom using a furniture removal van as cover. Fearing that they had been spotted, they panicked and decided to kill their hostage, flipping a coin to determine who would do the deed before the rest fled to various bolt-holes around Istanbul. Mahir Cayan, to whom the task had fallen, turned a radio up as loud as possible to try to mask the sound of the execution. At exactly 6.30 p.m. he approached Elrom, who was bound to a chair, and fired three shots into his temple. His body was found by a routine search team in the early hours of the following morning, in an apartment block only five hundred yards from the Israeli Consulate.27
The government reaction was draconian. Four thousand suspects were arrested, many further leftist newspapers were banned and civil rights were drastically curtailed. All the members of the gang that had taken Elrom were eventually located, and either died resisting arrest or were imprisoned. It transpired that their initial target had been the CIA station in Istanbul, but they had concluded that the security there was too good. With security for military and diplomatic personnel in Turkey’s major cities greatly strengthened, many concluded that the spate of kidnappings was now over.
The following autumn the Turkish government announced death sentences for eighteen members of the TPLA and the TPLF. Istanbul’s educated elite were shocked, and Western diplomats who moved in middle-class circles reported that many visibly ‘shudder at the thought of the barbarities of hanging’. However, in the street, the taxi drivers and cobblers expressed satisfaction; their ‘virtually unanimous reaction’ was that the ‘students must hang’. They added that the terrorists were the ‘spoiled children of wealth’, and stern action was needed to halt the attacks.28
In fact the worst was yet to come. The impending execution of some of their comrades prompted the radical groups to use their ingenuity. On 29 November 1971, five of the most prominent militants escaped from a high-security military prison. They consisted of the three survivors from the killing of Elrom – including Mahir Cayan, who had pulled the trigger – and two members of the group that had kidnapped the sigint airmen. The press reported that they had escaped through a tunnel during an orchestrated riot. In fact the escape was facilitated by military officers sympathetic to the prisoners’ anti-imperialist agenda. Some of the guards were later convicted of deliberately not taking roll calls and could not explain how the escapees had been able to drive away calmly in a military vehicle. Meanwhile, the fighters from the terrorist units of the hitherto largely separate TPLF and TPLA had now made common cause in jail.29
One of the five escapees was soon killed by the security services, having chosen
to hide out in a flat immediately beneath that of one of Istanbul’s senior police officers. Another was recaptured in Istanbul. However, in early 1972 the other three were still on the loose.30 No one doubted that they would seek to obtain the release of their remaining comrades in prison by taking further hostages. Those still incarcerated included Deniz Gezmis¸, who had led the kidnapping of the sigint airmen and whose death sentence had been confirmed by the Turkish Court of Appeal on 10 January, and two of the TPLA group that had killed Elrom, who were also sentenced to death. With a total of 353 activists sentenced to long terms in prison and a further eighteen facing the death penalty, the stakes were now high.31
Led by Mahir Cayan, the escapees made their way to Ankara, where they enjoyed a strong network of support. On 24 January the Turkish Interior Minister told parliament that intelligence on further plots had been obtained, and new groups of terrorists were training abroad. As a result, the parliament voted to extend the period of martial law.32 Although the trials of most of the activists were public, additional military tribunals were proceeding in secret. In March no fewer than fifty-seven officers were removed from the armed forces and were awaiting trial on charges of assisting the TPLA. Their crimes ranged from providing target intelligence and supplying arms, to aiding the five prison escapees in November 1971.33 Nervous of further escape attempts, some of the convoys taking the accused from jails to the courts were now escorted by tanks.34
On 14 March 1972 the American Embassy received a warning from the Turkish intelligence services that because of the impending execution of three of the most prominent terrorists, including Deniz Gezmis¸, further kidnap attempts were likely. The Americans regarded the warning as ‘particularly significant’, and concluded that the danger of kidnapping would remain high for some time to come.35 A week later, President Cevdet Sunay signed the order for the executions to go ahead in the next few weeks.36