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Top Story Spiegel - Targeting Turkey: How Germany Spies on Its Friends
| It was mid-July, and … a spy for the Americans had been exposed inside Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and the government in Berlin ordered the CIA's top official in Germany to leave the country, demonstrating to Washington that it refused to put up with just anything. Berlin seemed to be going on the offensive.
It didn't last long. Four weeks later, Chancellor Angela Merkel's team is backpedaling. On Friday, the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the BND -- even if apparently unintentionally -- had eavesdropped on a telephone conversation by then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The revelation made Merkel's dictum, "Spying among friends? That's unacceptable," ring a bit hollow… SPIEGEL has learned from sources that Turkey is one of the BND focuses included in the BND order profile, making the country an official target for the foreign intelligence agency's espionage efforts. The fact that the German intelligence service, at the behest of the government, has targeted a NATO ally could undermine recent efforts by the German government to resolve tensions between Berlin and Ankara. Turkey's reaction has thus far been muted, with Ankara apparently at pains to avoid a potentially damaging confrontation. Germany's ambassador to Turkey on Monday was asked by the Foreign Ministry in Ankara to come in for a meeting, but both sides insisted the atmosphere of the conversation was "friendly." Later on Monday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that, if the reports were true, such espionage would be "absolutely unacceptable." |