Turkey limits court powers to question state spies

Turkey's parliament voted late on Thursday to stop prosecutors questioning spies without the prime minister's permission, after a row which analysts said revealed divisions inside the state on ending the war with Kurdish militants. The governing AK Party hastily introduced the amendment after prosecutors summoned National Intelligence Agency (MIT) chief Hakan Fidan for questioning over secret talks he held with the militant separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Some analysts interpreted the move against Fidan as a challenge to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan by followers of a rival wing within the ruling AK Party to scupper the prime minister's secret efforts to end the 27-year-old conflict with the PKK. Fidan was working in Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's office at the time of the talks before Erdogan promoted him to lead the MIT. He told the prosecutor he was too busy to appear straight away and two days after the summons was issued the government introduced the amendment. One day after that the prosecutor was removed from the case and then put under investigation himself.
Fidan and MIT have repeatedly clashed with police over the detention and exposure of undercover agents during the arrests of hundreds of suspected PKK sympathisers, media said. Umit Boyner, chairwoman of influential business association TUSIAD, spoke in a television interview of her "horror" at what she called "the power struggle within the state".
The AKP denied any split and there was little evidence of it when government deputies swung behind the prime minister and voted to back the amendment to the law on intelligence agencies. Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said there was nothing wrong with talking to the PKK and that military, security and intelligence officials had repeatedly spoken with PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan since he was captured by Turkish special forces in Kenya in 1999 and jailed on an island on the Sea of Marmara.
"A state that has such a possibility and does not use it to solve such a burning issue must be questioned," he told parliament. President Abdullah Gul, himself a former AK Party member, signed the amendment into law on Friday, one week after it was first drawn up. Opposition parties said the motion was a grab for more power by Erdogan.