Levent Kenez / Stockholm

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who was visiting Stockholm for the annual meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) held on 2-3 December, met a controversial figure who spied on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s critics in the country.

On December 1, Çavuşoğlu received representatives of the Swedish branch of the Union of International Democrats (UID), the European organization of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by its regional president Özer Eken, at the Turkish ambassador’s residence. He later announced the meeting on social media, saying: “We will continue to provide all kinds of support to protect the rights of our citizens abroad and to find solutions to their problems.”

The fact that no organizations other than UID were invited confirms that the meeting was a party gathering rather than one for the public. Although it has long been known that the UID is the AKP’s European arm, party officials and ministers who meet UID delegations in Europe at Turkish diplomatic missions deliberately present them as open to all meetings with Turkish citizens abroad. As a side note, unlike many countries in Europe, Islamist AKP receives significantly less support in Sweden because Kurdish, Alevi and secular groups make up the majority of voters.

Eken came on the agenda for the first time in 2017 with a spy scandal revealed by state Swedish Radio (SR). In an audio recording released by SR, Özer is heard threatening a businessman who was sympathetic to the Gülen movement, a loud critic of Erdoğan, to get him to report what members of the Gülen movement did in Sweden and to give him the names of those who had fled to the country after a failed coup in Turkey in 2016 that triggered a witch hunt against critics. Eken threatened the businessman that his wife, who was then in Turkey, would be arrested. Özer is heard saying to the businessman: “If you help the state, the state will also help you.” He also ordered the man to give him concrete information.

In his initial reaction to the allegations, Eken claimed that the band had been manipulated; however, he later admitted that the recording was by him but denied all espionage.

A few days after the scandal, the prestigious Dagens Nyheter took daily pictures of Eken spreading AKP propaganda in a mosque. The news also stated that Erdoğan’s opponents were profiled and that this information was transmitted to Turkey through nine mosques run by imams whose salaries were paid by the Turkish state.

According to Swedish media, the Swedish Foreign Ministry had conveyed its discomfort to the Turkish embassy and added that spying on dissent in Sweden would not be tolerated.

Nordic Monitor reported last year that the Turkish embassy had secretly profiled critics of the government in 2017 and 2018 and informed the headquarters in Ankara. The government used the information collected to falsify a mock crime case against Nordic Monitor’s editor-in-chief Abdullah Bozkurt and 27 other critics of the Turkish government living in Sweden. Bozkurt has long been on the Erdoğan government’s target list. He was attacked near his home in Stockholm on September 24, 2020. Shortly after leaving his apartment, he was attacked by three men who hit him to the ground, hit him and then fled the scene. Bozkurt suffered injuries to his face, head, arms and legs and was cared for in the emergency room. The police investigation of the incident is still ongoing.

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The people who were the subject of the embassy were educators, representatives of local associations, professionals and entrepreneurs living in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Helsingborg, Norsborg, Malmö and other cities in Sweden. It is very likely that the profiling list was created with the help of consular registers and names mediated by Özer and his staff.

Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu confirmed systematic espionage of Turkish government critics on foreign soil by Turkish diplomatic missions in February 2020. Çavuşoğlu said that Turkish diplomats assigned to embassies and consulates have been officially commissioned by the government to conduct such activities abroad. “If you look at the definition of a diplomat, it’s clear. … Gathering intelligence is the duty of diplomats,” Çavuşoğlu told Turkish journalists on February 16, 2020, following the Munich Security Conference, adding: “Gathering intelligence and gathering information is a fact. “

Eken is a close friend of Erdoğan’s confidant Metin Külünk, who was investigated for his links to armed and radical Islamist groups in Turkey and helped establish the UID in Europe. Külünk had come to Sweden several times and met Özer.

Özer recently attended the UID delegation that met with President Erdoğan in October in Istanbul. Erdoğan had called Özer’s mother, who was ill, during the meeting and said he hoped she would recover soon. Erdoğan also advised UID representatives to be more aggressive.

The UID was originally founded in Cologne in 2004 as the Union of Turkish Democrats of the European Union (UETD) and changed its name to the UID to improve its image, which had deteriorated dramatically due to violent incidents involving its members, at a convention in Sarajevo where President Erdoğan spoke as keynote speaker in 2018, reflecting the group’s ambitions to expand its operations outside Europe. It currently has 152 offices in 17 countries: Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Northern Macedonia, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.