The Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MİT) has allegedly offered Ardalan Fatih, a Kurdish lawyer from Kurdistan Region of Iraq, a job as a spy, threatening him when he refused, according to audio recordings of a phone call published by Roj News.

In the conversation in the Sorani dialect of Kurdish, a woman identifies herself as Deniz and says she is in Ankara. She offers “friendship” to Fatih, and says that there are Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in the area where he lives. She adds that she will give him all kinds of material and moral support, if he provides information about them.

When Fatih asks “Are you speaking to me as an individual or on behalf of the government of Turkey?” the woman replies “The government of Turkey.”

Fatih listens in silence for a while, trying to understand what they want, then asks where the woman got his phone number from. The woman replies, “We are the state, we can phone anyone we want”.

At one point the woman says, “We have no problem with the Kurds of South Kurdistan. Our problem is with the Kurds of Turkey and with the PKK…”
The lawyer expresses his reservations about getting involved, saying, “I cannot assist you in this matter. I think you too are Kurdish, and I would advise against your own involvement in this affair, as it does not befit a Kurd”.

Deniz then responds, “I am Turkish, I can speak six languages”. At the end of the call, she issues a death threat to Ardalan.

Fatih released a press statement outside Sulaymaniyah courthouse on Monday, in which he revealed that MİT had issued a death threat against him. “I am releasing my audio recording in order to alert the public to these threats and acts of blackmail”, he stated.