DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [88]
The Istanbul police were red-faced about his cameo appearance. The implications of his interview – the ease with which he had evaded capture – were troubling. To compound the police’s misery, the hacker warned them that the arrests in the Akbank case would have no impact on the security of Turkish banks because an altogether more formidable criminal was now in the process of skinning them for all the money he could – and that his name was Cha0. (Bilal Sen, of course, had heard of Cha0, but this was the first time he had been talked about in public – and by a mystery man.)
Ortaç had alleged that Cha0 was being protected by government officials. The interview at least confirmed for Sen that Cha0 existed. Nonetheless, when he read it, the Inspector felt himself looking into the abyss. Who could possibly be protecting Cha0, and why?
27
THE SUBLIME PORTAL
Looking up from his notes, Inspector sen felt his unease gradually mutate into fear. Now, it emerged that Cha0 himself had sent a message to the news channel Haber 7 in response to Ortaç’s interview. It was an extraordinary outburst, seasoned with strong pinches of megalomania and iron conviction. ‘I am the ultimate Law Enforcer on DarkMarket,’ he thundered. ‘I prevent the work of cops and rippers. I create the rules and everyone will obey.’
The Inspector’s contacts soon indicated that Cha0 might well be beyond the law. sen spoke to his oldest friend in the Istanbul police. It was frightening stuff: both men were worried that Cha0 might have a mole inside the police, who would obviously be informing his boss of the investigation’s progress. If they were unable to trust their team, their backup and, most importantly, their superiors, then how could they possibly take the case any further?
In the first interview Mert Ortaç had spoken a great deal about the secret police and other forces at work in the DarkMarket case. In some countries, this might smack of conspiracy paranoia, but in Turkey it would be unwise to discount it. Mert had implied that the entire DarkMarket operation could touch people at the very peak of economic, military or political power.
The country’s complicated political structure had assumed a new shape since the AK Party became the dominant force there in the elections of 2002. Given that more than 90 per cent of Turks were Muslim, the fact that an avowedly Islamic party had won a landslide victory was not in itself surprising. The AK Party insisted that its religious faith was subordinate to its commitment to democracy, much as many moderate conservative parties in Europe refer to themselves as Christian Democrats.
But Turkey boasted another ideological tradition of immense power – Kemalism. Named after modern Turkey’s founder, Kemal Atatürk, its guiding principle proposed the complete separation of Church and state. The ubiquitous presence of Atatürk’s image in shops, homes, offices, barracks, hospitals and prisons reflected a deep reverence for his legacy of secularism among Turks (as well as a fear of arrest for non-compliance).
Kemalism, however, comes in a variety of flavours. Its two most fervent supporters come from the secular middle-class elite: intellectuals, professionals and civil servants on the one hand, and the so-called Deep State on the other. Both view the AK Party, and each other, with suspicion.
The Deep State is an appropriately sinister name for the military-industrial complex that acted as the ultimate arbiter of Turkish politics in the post-war period. As one of only two NATO members to share a border with the Soviet Union (the other was Norway), the country played a key role in the Cold War, and its allies, led by the US, were happy to turn a blind eye to the egregious abuses inflicted by the military on its own population.
During its repeated interference in political life, Turkey’s security establishment sank its teeth deep into the country’s economy as well, until it was sometimes