An unnamed politician is stirring the pot in Germany, stating Sunday that Turkish intelligence, known as MIT, has a network of more than 800 agents operating 6,000 informants inside Germany.
What that figure amounts to is one informant for every 500 Turks in Germany, reports the German newspaper Die Welt.
Not even the Stasi, the once feared legendary East German secret police, managed to run a network inside the German Federal Republic this extensive, Deutsche Welle reports.
“This is no longer about an agency acquiring intelligence, but increasing performing repression,” Erich Schmidt-Eenboom said. “Even the Stasi did not succeed in building up such a large army of agents in the federal republic.”
MIT agents exist in Germany to put massive pressure on Turks, who may have valuable information or connections. There are approximately 3 million Turks living in Germany.
Green Party Member of Parliament (MP) Hans-Christian Ströbele noted there was an “unbelievable” amount of “secret activities” perpetrated by MIT.
Many of these agents have gone completely undetected because they are employed in Turkish banks and airlines in the country and do not receive a lot of money for their services from the Turkish government.
Instead, agents are honored just to be working for MIT and so are content with meager compensation, preferring the glory of nationalism instead as payment.
As a result, German MPs are calling for the government to investigate these allegations, especially because of increasing cooperation between Germany and Turkey regarding the refugee deal.
“I want to get answers from the German government,” Ströbele told the Financial Times. “If MIT really is active in Germany with its own agenda and with 6,000 informants, and is putting pressure on Turkish people, then this is against the law.”
But German intelligence has for a long time cooperated with MIT for the purpose of keeping tabs on radical Islamic groups. Revelation of MIT’s additional activities, which is at cross-purpose with cooperation in the first place, has now placed German intelligence in an incredibly difficult position.
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