damm1t
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Wednesday, 9 March 2011, ANKARA
Control of Turkeys highest-capacity electronic intelligence and wiretapping center will be transferred from the military to intelligence officials on orders from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, military sources have confirmed.
Sources close to both the Turkish General Staff and the National Intelligence Organization, or MİT, said the transfer was being made to save money and improve coordination.
Technically speaking, wiretapping is a very expensive service, both economically and from a personnel point of view, said a source close to MİT. Work to unify such a service for the two organizations has been started recently by the General Staff Command.
The source said the transfer of the system from the General Staff Electronic Systems Command, or GES, to MİT would incur a large savings.
The transfer from military to civil authorities is seen as a turning point in civil-military relations and as one of the most important structural changes regarding the military after the demilitarization of MİT, which had previously been under complete control of the General Staff. That shift, as well as the transformation of the National Security Council to a heavily civil body, began in the early 1990s.
Work on the transfer has reportedly already started and is expected to be finalized soon, although sources said talks between the two organizations were still ongoing and that the details of how the unification would be structured had not been entirely worked out.
As part of the move, MİTs unit for Electronic Technical Intelligence, or ETİ, will be transferred to the GES.
Work is being carried out to improve coordination of the GES and MİT and prevent duplications of the work toward the same objective, a military source said, confirmed the transfer.
The GES command is the largest-capacity intelligence and wiretapping base in the country, a brigade-level unit that serves the General Staffs Combat and Electronic Union Systems Directorate. GES was established in the 1950s and first served as a center for collecting U.S. intelligence information from the Soviet Union. The centers control was later transferred to NATO and national control.
GES wiretapping facilities and antennas are endowed with satellite and terrestrial systems that can provide encrypted communication with Turkish alliances from Afghanistan to Somalia, from the Balkans to the Caucasus and in Middle East countries. Experts say such advanced technology is not available in any other Turkish institutions that also provide intelligence services, such as MİT, the police department, the gendarmerie and the Telecommunication Transmission Directorate, or TİB.
Source
Control of Turkeys highest-capacity electronic intelligence and wiretapping center will be transferred from the military to intelligence officials on orders from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, military sources have confirmed.
Sources close to both the Turkish General Staff and the National Intelligence Organization, or MİT, said the transfer was being made to save money and improve coordination.
Technically speaking, wiretapping is a very expensive service, both economically and from a personnel point of view, said a source close to MİT. Work to unify such a service for the two organizations has been started recently by the General Staff Command.
The source said the transfer of the system from the General Staff Electronic Systems Command, or GES, to MİT would incur a large savings.
The transfer from military to civil authorities is seen as a turning point in civil-military relations and as one of the most important structural changes regarding the military after the demilitarization of MİT, which had previously been under complete control of the General Staff. That shift, as well as the transformation of the National Security Council to a heavily civil body, began in the early 1990s.
Work on the transfer has reportedly already started and is expected to be finalized soon, although sources said talks between the two organizations were still ongoing and that the details of how the unification would be structured had not been entirely worked out.
As part of the move, MİTs unit for Electronic Technical Intelligence, or ETİ, will be transferred to the GES.
Work is being carried out to improve coordination of the GES and MİT and prevent duplications of the work toward the same objective, a military source said, confirmed the transfer.
The GES command is the largest-capacity intelligence and wiretapping base in the country, a brigade-level unit that serves the General Staffs Combat and Electronic Union Systems Directorate. GES was established in the 1950s and first served as a center for collecting U.S. intelligence information from the Soviet Union. The centers control was later transferred to NATO and national control.
GES wiretapping facilities and antennas are endowed with satellite and terrestrial systems that can provide encrypted communication with Turkish alliances from Afghanistan to Somalia, from the Balkans to the Caucasus and in Middle East countries. Experts say such advanced technology is not available in any other Turkish institutions that also provide intelligence services, such as MİT, the police department, the gendarmerie and the Telecommunication Transmission Directorate, or TİB.
Source
