Burak Bekdil, Ankara
- columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet and a fellow at the Middle East Forum
Colonel Cengiz Özteke, commander of the military General Staff’s division for electronic systems and cyber defense, said that the Turkish military now considered cyber security as the country’s “fifth force” [after land, air, sea, and apparently space].
The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is a group of computer hackers who support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It is the first public, virtual army in the Arab world to openly launch cyber attacks on its opponents.
Using spamming, defacement, malware (including the Blackworm tool), phishing, and denial of service attacks, it mainly targets political opposition groups and western websites including news organizations and human rights groups.
The precise nature of its relationship with the Syrian government is unclear. The SEA claims to be “a group of enthusiastic Syrian youths who could not stay passive towards the massive distortion of facts about the recent uprising in Syria”, though several experts believe the group is supervised by the Syrian state, or possibly Iran.
More recently, Turkish media reported that a shadowy group, which calls itself the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), had leaked official secret and confidential Turkish documents from 2012, exposing Turkish, Saudi, and Qatari support for terrorist groups.
It had obtained by hacking the email communications of top strategic Turkish government agencies, including the President’s and Prime Minister’s offices, the Foreign and Defense Ministries, and the Air Force Command, from March 2009 to November 2012.
Also leaked were U.S. transition plans in Syria, which Washington had shared only with its allies: Turkey, Britain, France and Germany.
Most recently, a jihadist from the Islamic State (IS) implicated Turkey in delivering stockpiles of weapons and military hardware to IS fighters in Syria.
Recently, an Egyptian court in Alexandria met on February 24 for the first hearing to consider a lawsuit demanding that Turkey be designated as a “state that supports terrorism,” according to Turkey’s semi-official news agency, Anadolu.
Tarek Mahmoud, an Egyptian lawyer who filed the lawsuit at the court, claims that President Erdogan had supported the Muslim Brotherhood movement after the ouster of Egypt’s Islamist President, Mohamed Morsi, who was Erdogan’s devoted ally.
Guess what comes up on the Turkish agenda when “top secret Turkey” is no longer top secret? Turkish authorities, on February 17, hosted a meeting that brought together Turkish and other cyber security experts.
Turkey YouTube Ban: Full Transcript of Leaked Syria ‘War’ Conversation Between Erdogan Officials
Western media websites hacked by Syrian Electronic Army
Who is the Syrian Electronic Army?
Syrian Electronic Army – Wikipedia
Syrian Electronic Army — Official Website
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