The Nordic Monitor, a news web and tracking site run by the Stockholm-based Nordic Research and Monitoring Network, published an article on December 3 that Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay last week stated that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı, MİT) played an active role in the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, helping to tip the military balance in favor of Azerbaijan.

The article says that Oktay made the revelation during a presentation on the annual activities of state institutions operating under the Presidency at the Turkish Parliament’s Planning and Budget Committee on November 26.

The website quotes Oktay as saying:

“In many regions such as Syria, Libya, Upper Karabakh and most recently Afghanistan, the organization has carried out important work that protects our national interests and shapes the balances in the field in favor of our country, in line with our state policy. We have not only carried out the most successful operations in our history against terrorist organizations at our borders and just beyond but have also achieved many successes, from ending the 30-year occupation of Karabakh to the struggle for legitimacy in Libya against the putschists. We are progressing and demonstrating our concrete achievements one by one.”

While it is no secret that Turkey supported Azerbaijan militarily, Ankara has consistently denied that its intelligence services were involved or that they organized and facilitated the deployment of jihadist fighters under its control in Syria to Nagorno-Karabakh.

The article refers to an October 2020 statement by Sergei Naryshkin, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), who raised concerns that Transcaucasia might be transformed into a springboard for members of terrorist organizations amid the armed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. 

“We know the work of Turkish intelligence, and we see certain elements of its work,” Naryshkin said on November 6, 2020, during a TV interview, as reported by the Tass news agency.

Armenia claims that foreign fighters were brought from Syria and Libya via Turkish intelligence channels and that they committed war crimes. 

The Nordic Monitor writes that the Turkish government allocated 3.5 billion lira to the MİT for 2022 and that the intelligence agency spent nearly half a billion lira in secret operations in 2020.

(The Nordic Monitor covers religious, ideological and ethnic extremist movements and radical groups, with a special focus on Turkey.)