Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı, or MİT) secretly asked the government to make up an arrest warrant in order to spirit away an innocent Turkish woman in Pakistan as part of the illegal rendition of her entire family.
According to a classified MIT document that was submitted to select cabinet members and the chief public prosecutor in Ankara on October 13, 2017, the notorious intelligence service urged the government and prosecutor to create an arrest warrant for Meral Kaçmaz, the director of the Women’s Platform, a Rumi Forum project.
Kaçmaz, a biology teacher by profession, was not facing any criminal investigation in Turkey at the time, and no warrant had been issued for her, but her husband, Mesut Kaçmaz, the former director of the PakTurk schools, was in the crosshairs of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It was clear that the couple, who had two daughters, had been under surveillance by MIT agents on Pakistani soil at the time and that the intelligence service was planning to kidnap them with the help of the Pakistani security services.
Living in Pakistan for years, Meral Kaçmaz advocated gender equality and women’s empowerment, was featured as a speaker at many events and was critical of the authoritarian Erdoğan regime. She was also affiliated with the Gülen movement, a group that is highly critical of the Erdoğan government on a range of issues from pervasive corruption in the administration to Turkey’s aiding and abetting of armed jihadist groups.
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