A pro-Erdoğan businessman in Turkey is offering TL 3 million ($780,000) prize to anyone whose information leads to the detention of Graham Fuller and Michael Rubin, American experts on Turkey-related issues, Cumhuriyet daily reported on Thursday
The anonymous businessman’s lawyer Özgür Çelebi said that Fuller, a former CIA station chief in Kabul who now writes foreign policy analysis, and Rubin, a former Pentagon official who now works as an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, were “traitors wanting to interfere” in Turkey.
His client, he said, was involved in education in Bursa and was “a person in love with his country, flag and nation.” İstanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office has already issued arrest warrants for both Rubin and Fuller over their alleged roles in the failed July 2016 coup attempt.
Turkish government also issued a detention warrant for Brett McGurk, US Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), reported by Habertürk daily on Wednesday.
A petition has been filed to the Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office accusing McGurk of attempting to overthrow the Turkish government and change the constitutional order of the Turkish Republic through ‘acting in concert with the PKK-PYD-YPG armed terrorist organisations’, the newspaper said.
Turkish government says the Syrian Kurdish PYD and its YPG military wing, which is assisted by the United States in the fight against ISIL, is a wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The newspaper said the petition requested that the Turkish military to arrest McGurk if found in Syria or Iraq and bring him back to Turkey. The petition was made by a non-governmental group set up to fight against the alleged members of the Gülen movement as part of Turkish government’s massive post-coup witch hunt campaign targeting the movement which has been inspired by the US-based Turkish-Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen.
“The suspect has been on the northern Iraq–Syrian axis for a long time acting in concert with terrorist organisations. He has co-ordinated these organisations, provided organisation militants with weapons and ensured they received training,” the petition said.
In April 2017, the İstanbul Chief Prosecutor Office launched an investigation into 17 prominent US figures including Senator Chuck Schumer, former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, former CIA Director John Brenan and US academic Henri Barkey for alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement. The investigation is based on allegations of “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” and “attempting to overthrow the government and Parliament.”
