The CIA and the Gray Wolves

The 'Captive Turks' provided a target of opportunity for U.S. intelligence in the post-World War II years similar to the Byelorussians, Ukranians, and others who joined forces with the Nazis against the Soviet Union and later enlisted in the shadowy East Europian networks of the CIA. That is, there is no reason to suppose that the U.S. motivations and practices toward pro-Nazi East Europeans that have recently been exposed by John Loftus in The Belarus Secret were not also operative in the U.S. approach to the tattered remnants of those units of Soviet Turks which had fought alongside the Germans against the Soviet Union.

A tantalizing link has been discovered by Turkish journalist Ugur Mumcu, who has exposed the CIA ties of Ruzi Nazar, a Turcoman who was born near Tashkent in the Soviet Union and deserted the Red Army to join the Nazis during World War II. After the war Nazar was recruited by the CIA; and according to Mumcu, he 'was successful in penetrating Turkish fascist circles in the days when Agca worked as a hired gun' for the NAP. In the 1950s Nazar was a part-time contributor to the Voice of America, and it was perhaps through this work that he met Paul Henze, who was then working for Radio Free Europe. Nazar apparently joined Henze when the latter was sent by the CIA to the U.S. Embassy in Turkey in 1959. But by the time that Henze had become Chief of Station in 1974, Nazar's cover had been blown and his usefulness in Turkey had come to an end. Nazar was then transferred to the U.S. Embassy in Bonn where, according to Mumcu, his assignment was to penetrate Gray Wolves organizations for the CIA, while maintaining his close ties to Col. Türkes. (1)

Whether the CIA had extensive ties with the Gray Wolves is an open question. The most likely avenue linking the CIA to the Turkish right runs through Turkey's Counter-Guerrilla organization, a branch of the Turkish General Staff's Department of Special Warfare created sometime in the 1960s. According to former Turkish military prosecutor and Supreme court Justice Emin Deger, there was a close, working collaboration between the NAP armed commandos, or Bozkurts, and the Counter-Guerrilla units. There was also a close tie between the Counter-Guerrilla and the CIA. In his book, CIA, Counter-Guerrilla, and Turkey, Deger further charged that the CIA, acting through the Turkish intelligence agency (MIT) and the Counter-Guerrilla, promoted rightwing terrorist actions to destabilize the Turkish government and prepare the way for the military coup of 1971. (2)

Another study of Turkey's Counter-Guerrilla notes that it was headquartered in the same Ankara building that housed the U.S. military mission, and that the training of officers assigned to this unit 'begins in the U.S. and then continues inside Turkey under the direction of CIA officers and military "advisers".' During the 1960s, according to the same study, the CIA assisted the MIT in drawing up plans for the mass arrest of opposition figures; and the study claims that this plan was put into operation following the 1971 coup. (3)

We have noted the contradiction between the Soviet Union's alleged motive for assassinating the Pope and the highly negative effect of the actual assassination attempt on Soviet interests. Turkish 'destabilization' presents another curious contradiction between motives and actions, on the one hand, and the results and the distribution of benefits on the other. Thus is it an act of faith of the Sterling-Henze school that the Soviet Union was trying to destabilize Turkey in the 1960s and 1970's. But once again the actual results of destabilization have turned out to be detrimental to Soviet interests and favorable to those of the United States. Given the weakness of the left in Turkey, the actual outcome would seem obvious and should have been seen as obvious to the Soviet leadership. One possibility is that Soviet leaders are completely incompetent and fail to see the obvious. The other possibility is that the claim of Soviet efforts to destabilize Turkey is a big lie, perpetrated by disinformation specialists of the West to discredit the enemy and possibly to cover over the destabilization efforts of the United Stats and its friends.

1): Mumcu was interviewed ans some of his work summarized in the Atlanta Constitution, January 30, 1983. Mumcu claims to have seen a letter from a leader of the NAP in West Germany to Türkes about Nazar's influence in rightwing Turkish student groups there, and Mumcu also claims to have received information about Nazar's CIA links from a Turkish general who maintained close ties with Nazar.
2): Cited in S. Benhabib, 'Right-Wing Groups Behind Political Violence in Turkey,' MERIP Reports, No. 77 (May 1979), p. 17.
3): Jurgen Roth and Kamil Taylan, Die Turkei - Republik Unter Wolfen (Turkey: A Republic Ruled by Wolves), (Bornheim, West Germany, 1981). Excerpts from this study were translated in CounterSpy, Vol. VI, No. 2 (February- April 1982), pp. 23 and 25.

(from: Brodhead, Frank, Howard Friel, Edward S. Herman, Darkness in Rome, The 'bulgarian connection' revisited, Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 23, spring 1985, p. 15)

Excerpt from: International Round-Up, Searchlight, No. 75, September 1981

'Legion' ex-member'
The same letter reveals that also assisting the Wolves was an ex-member of the Turkistan Legion of the SS: