MİT Trucks related to Syrian Turkmens, says President Erdoğan

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Sunday that Turkey provides humanitarian aid to Syrian Turkmens and the Syria-bound trucks belonging to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) which were raided in an unauthorized operation in 2014, are an issue related to a Turkish minority group called Bayır-Bucak Turkmens living in Syria.

The president made the comments on a live program on Turkey's national broadcaster, TRT.

In response to claims that the MİT trucks contained ammunition to support terrorist groups in Syria such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the president said, such allegations were slander on MİT and the interception of the trucks was a "spying" attempt of the Gülen Movement.

The Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet claimed on Friday that the trucks had contained arms, after which prosecutors launched investigation in to the chief editor of the newspaper, Can Dündar. The President Erdoğan said, the newspaper cooperated with the Gülen Movement in its allegations and therefore pressed charges against the newspaper.

He said the operation against MİT trucks, carried out in January last year, was "illegal", adding: "These allegations amount to spying. This daily also took part in this espionage."

Erdoğan added that Can Dündar, the editor-in-chief of the Cumhuriyet daily, would be held accountable.

Cumhuriyet ran a front-page story on Friday with the headline: "Here are the arms Erdoğan said did not exist."

Accompanying photos showed several vehicles filled with weapons and ammunition, stacked under cardboard boxes containing medication. In one photograph, the serial numbers on the ammunition are visible.

The president said that he repeatedly held meetings with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, during which logistic assistance and training were discussed for the Turkmen minority group, whose population exceeds 100,000 in Syria.

Many Turkmen villages have recently been occupied by the ISIS militants, who have swept large territories in Syria. "Not only did we not leave them [Syrian Turkmens] on their own, but also we have brought some in difficulty into Turkey, and then sent them back," President

Istanbul prosecutor's office on Friday launched a probe into Dündar.

A court has accepted the prosecutor's request for banning access to the online content showing the trucks.

In January 2014, several trucks were stopped by local gendarmerie in southern Adana and Hatay provinces on the grounds that they were loaded with ammunition, despite a national security law forbidding such a search.

The case saw the arrests of 26 soldiers.

Turkey's Interior Ministry said at the time that the trucks, which were reportedly carrying arms into northern Syria, were in reality conveying humanitarian aid to the Turkmen community in the war-torn country.