Nordic Monitor, a Stockholm-based news site that focuses on Turkey, claims to have obtained secret documents which reveal that diplomats working at the Turkish Embassy in Ljubljana collected information on the activities of critics of President Erdoğan in Slovenia, listing their names and profiling their organisations.
According to the report, the groups that were spied on are all believed to be affiliated in some way to Fethullah Gülen, the US-based Muslim cleric who is a prominent Erdoğan critic. The groups the diplomats filed reports on include Ambra, Izobraževanje, Kultura in Turizem d.o.o., an educational and culture organization that was set up in 2005; an intercultural center called Društvo Medkulturni Dialog; and the Ambra Jezikovni Center, which offers language courses in English and Turkish.
Nordic Monitor claims that the collection of data amounts “to refugee spying or unlawful intelligence gathering by embassy and consulate officials,” and goes on to assert that “those who were listed in these embassy documents were often targeted by a campaign of intimidation and harassment and denied consular services abroad, while their relatives and friends back in Turkey risked the possibility of jail time, asset seizure and persecution on fabricated criminal charges.”
The full report can be read here.
