Russian and Turkish authorities will not confirm or deny reports that the Kremlin warned Turkey’s intelligence services about an impending coup on July 15, several hours before tanks appeared on the streets of major Turkish cities. On Wednesday, several Arab and Iranian news outlets claimed that Russian intelligence officials told the government in Ankara that the Turkish military was preparing a coup. The reports cited anonymous Turkish diplomats who said that Turkish intelligence was urgently alerted by the Russians “hours before [the military coup] was initiated on Friday”.
According to the unconfirmed reports, the
secret preparations for the coup first came to the attention of Russian
military intelligence. Its radio interceptors captured —and were
subsequently able to read— a series of encoded radio messages exchanged
between Turkish commanders in the early hours of July 15. There is no
information about the precise circumstances of the alleged interception,
though media reports note the significant presence of Russian military
intelligence in the northern Syrian province of Latakia, a few miles
south of the Turkish border. The reports state that the intercepted
messages contained “highly sensitive army exchanges” involving a plan to
send army helicopters to the Turkish resort port of Marmaris, where the
Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan was holidaying, in order to kill or
capture him. Russian intelligence officials reportedly shared the
information with senior members of Turkey’s National Intelligence
Organization (MİT). The alleged exchange allegedly took place “several
hours before the start of the coup” in Turkey.
However, government officials in Ankara
will not comment on the possibility that Russian intelligence services
may have warned the MİT about the coup. On Thursday, Russian government
spokesman Dmitri Peskov was asked directly by journalists whether the
Kremlin warned Turkish officials of an impending coup by the military.
He responded saying “I have no information of that kind and I do not
know which sources [the media reports] are citing in making these
claims”. Russia’s TASS news agency interpreted
Peskov’s comment as a denial. However, the wording in his response
shows that he simply denies having personal knowledge of the incident.
He does not deny it happened.
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