Devlet Güvenlik Hizmeti (Turkish: State Security Service, often known by its initials DGH) is the agency responsible for internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-terrorism, and counter-intelligence in the Second Empire of Trabzon. Critics of Trabzon's military regime have described it as a secret police force.
It is a successor to the local branch of the Turkish Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MİT; National Intelligence Organization) which operated on Trabzonian territory prior to Doomsday.
History[]
The survival of Trabzon's military regime has always rested on the loyalties of the army and to a lesser extent, the police and gendarmerie. As the regime consolidated itself during the late 1980s, it focused on the expansion of the army and the establishment of an effective internal security apparatus. According to Trabzon's self-styled emperor, Altan Sahin, while the army would always take precedence, the "civil" side of security was also vital to preserving its ascendancy in the state and society. To that end, former military intelligence officers and MİT employees who had defected to the regime after Doomsday were to organize and implement the education and preparatory training of DGH personnel.
The perceived need for the DGH was accelerated by an attempted coup d'état against Sahin by disaffected soldiers in 1988. Thereafter, one of the agency's key roles was to monitor the activities of the Ministry of Defense and its subordinate organs, including the army itself. The DGH was directed to prevent and terminate acts of "political-ideological subversion" within the armed forces; the earliest DGH cadres were assigned to watch military officers and prevent future defections or treason.
During the early 1990s, Sahin ordered the armed forces to invade neighboring New Erzurum, which formed a coalition of militarized communities known as vilayets to coordinate local resistance. In response, the DGH frequently bribed local village heads and religious leaders with various commodities to convince them to deny allegiance to the vilayets. It also penetrated the hostile vilayets with informants, fueling factionalism and suspicions between the various armed groups, and exploiting ethnic divisions. This strategy was much more successful in the former northern Erzurum Province, where the DGH focused its informant recruitment efforts, and Trabzon retains control of the area to this day.
By the 2000s, the DGH increasingly took on duties that had been the responsibility of other jurisdictions. Investigations of those who left Trabzon illegally, or who had applied for travel papers, were technically the purview of the national police, but these duties were transferred to the DGH.
As the military tightened its control over the economy, the DGH became responsible for securing the property of military parastatals from sabotage and monitoring the workforce of these enterprises. The state's economically vital trade in black market goods (namely counterfeit cigarettes) and technological espionage likewise were placed under strict DGH oversight. The DGH was also enlisted in attempts to procure foreign currency, which were needed for black and gray market foreign trade - particularly with nations regarded as politically hostile by the regime. The DGH not only procured most of Trabzon's current foreign exchange reserves but also counterfeited foreign currencies on a grand scale.
Trabzon's access to international financial markets began to re-stabilize during the 2000s, and the military leadership sought to accumulate funds abroad. The DGH became skilled at setting up shell companies and dummy banks registered in other countries - particularly New Erzurum, where state regulation of economic activities bordered on nonexistent - and using them to launder money. These accounts are under strict day-to-day control of the DGH and often used by the regime to purchase consignments of oil, strategic minerals, and technology for import. As Trabzon possessed little industry of its own, these imports were vital for the regime's acquisition of much-needed foreign electronic parts with direct or indirect military applications, such as germanium transistors. Strategic decisions about how the accounts are used are made by Trabzon's ruling Administrative Council, while the DGH is in charge of implementation. Domestic resources such as hazelnuts and timber, which are purchased by a military monopoly at depressed prices, are sold abroad at a mark-up through this system, with the proceeds being funneled into the already established network of shell companies.
The DGH's secret cash stores abroad also functioned as the ultimate contingency: they would enable Trabzon's leadership and military-security agencies to continue bankrolling operations, from exile if necessary, in the event of regime change or foreign invasion. These funds, known as "black cash", would preserve the accumulated economic power of the ruling elite even if the regime itself should collapse.
Organization[]
The DGH is subordinate to the Trabzonian Ministry of Interior and Public Security. Potential applicants to the DGH are drawn by relatively high salaries - about ten times those of a junior officer in the armed forces - and various fringe benefits, including life insurance policies and access to private health clinics at the state's expense. Its staff are among the highest income earners in Trabzon. Typically, only men who belong to politically reliable military families qualify for admission as officers. During the 2010s, the organization has increasingly targeted the adult children of its existing employees as a source for the next generation of DGH officers. An estimated 40% of DGH employees are recruited from the armed forces, and another 10% from the national police and gendarmerie. The remainder were the immediate family members of previous and currently serving DGH employees, or informants who later joined the DGH as full-time officers.
DGH personnel belong to one of several directorates, each with its own specialized focus, including urban districts, rural districts, educational institutions, religious affairs, the armed forces, criminal investigations, foreign operations, counter-intelligence and counter-insurgency. The counter-insurgency directorate includes a branch active in New Erzurum that has allegedly infiltrated many of that country's armed communities (vilayets) with a network of paid informers. The religious affairs directorate assumes responsibility for vetting imams of mosques in the capital and other major cities, giving the state influence over public religious discourse. It also monitors unconventional religious groups; the DGH distinguishes between pre-approved, state-sponsored religious organizations and mosques and those it considers extremist, including those espousing Islamic fundamentalism. Several broad activities can earn a religious group or figure the label of extremist, including support for Islamic terrorism, foreign connections, and religious competition with state-sponsored imams and mosques.
The foreign operations directorate is allegedly involved in infiltrating and cultivating ties with international terrorist organizations, such as the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist (TKP/ML). It has been known to carry out assassinations outside Trabzon, particularly targeting Trabzonian political exiles. One of the directorate's secondary goals is to establish intelligence-gathering capabilities in all the Turkish-speaking nations. Nationals of other Turkish states make useful informants because they are relatively easy to recruit due to familial connections, shared culture, and language, and their exposure would not cause significant damage to Trabzon's own intelligence interests. The regime's urgency to strengthen DGH's reach within neighboring states grew in the early 2000s, when Hatay and Elazig were invaded and conquered by the encroaching Sultanate of Turkey. The growing DGH presence in the Sultanate (and its ally Greater Patnos) provides both a warning mechanism for potential military action against Trabzon and a platform from which to manipulate events in those countries.
The DGH's counter-intelligence directorate is believed to staff a network of electronic surveillance outposts along the country's borders with New Erzurum, the Sultanate of Turkey, and Greater Patnos. These listening stations monitor radio traffic inside Trabzon, and also between the territory of Trabzon and its neighbors.
In 2024, the DGH was estimated to have up to 8,000 full-time employees and another 10,000 paid informants in Trabzon and abroad.
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