Turkey’s main opposition leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has sounded the alarm on the dangers posed by paramilitary forces, highlighting similarities between Russia’s Wagner group and Turkey’s self-proclaimed “Defence Consultancy” SADAT.
The opposition leader’s remarks came in response to recent events in Russia, where Wagner’s mercenary chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, started a rebellion on Friday night and ordered his troops to march on Moscow, accusing Russia’s military leadership of killing his forces.
Kılıçdaroğlu shared his concerns about paramilitary groups in a post on social media, stating, “Russia’s Wagner is Turkey’s SADAT.”
However, by Sunday morning, after Kılıçdaroğlu’s tweet, Prigozhin was on his way into exile in Belarus.
SADAT, a self-proclaimed “Defence Consultancy” founded on 28 February 2012 by retired Brigadier General Adnan Tanrıverdi, has been a subject of discussion in Turkey due to its role in training various military factions supported by Turkey for cross-border missions, particularly in Syria and Libya. Tanrıverdi, who served in top military positions for 30 years, including as the head of the Cyprus Defence Organisation and the head of the General Staff Special Warfare Office, was appointed to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s chief advisory board in 2016. He was also known to have attended the Security Summit chaired by Erdoğan during Turkey’s offensive in Afrin (Efrin) in 2018.
Critics have accused SADAT of providing military training to jihadist factions by using camps along Turkey’s border with Syria and in the province of Kırşehir in central Turkey. It has been alleged that SADAT sponsored and aided the Sultan Murad Division, which has been directly involved in Operation Euphrates Shield (northern Syria 2017), Operation Olive Branch (Afrin 2018) and the Libyan Civil War, and which has faced accusations of war crimes. There have been claims that SADAT provided special warfare training to jihadist groups like Al-Nusra Front, sending them to Syria to fight alongside ISIS.
