Turkey to form new intelligence coordination unit

By Orhan Onur Gemici

ANKARA

Turkey will establish a new coordination unit to evaluate information gathered by intelligence agencies, create policies, and demonstrate results, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said Friday.

The structure, function and deficiencies of the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) is currently being discussed, Ala said in remarks during a live program aired on the private Turkish channel NTV.

“Now we need an agency to evaluate the gathered intelligence providing the coordination more effectively.

"A coordination unit to evaluate the intelligence gathered by the state's intelligence agencies and to contribute to create policies, to lead [the policies] and to show what is happening will be established," he said.

Ala said the intelligence services of the state had to be more than one and be based on separation of powers, which will provide a crosscheck.

Underlining that the intelligence services were required to be structured so as not to pose a threat to the civil authorities during peacetime, Ala said: "A solution for this is to balance the Powers separately, to affiliate them to different places. It is the same in England, America and France. When you design like this, you have separate [intelligence] power units. You have armed units. They defend the country in unification whenever needed."

Asked about the intelligence agency's structuring after the July 15 coup attempt, Ala said: "Currently we have an intelligence agency in the police in department level. Almost 6,500 of 7,000 staff in this intelligence department had been linked to FETO. We cleared all of them, either appointed to another place or dismissed."

Ala said the intelligence department of gendarme would be restructured cleaning the department of FETO-linked staff.