The Turkish military secretly arranged a visit to Ankara of a North Korean general who was in charge of developing ballistic missile technology to discuss terms of cooperation and technology transfer, according to official documents obtained by Nordic Monitor.

The revelation was made by Aydın Köstem, a Turkish arms smuggler who had long worked with the Turkish military and intelligence agency, at a court hearing in Ankara in February 2023. As he tried to explain his background to a panel of judges to prove his patriotism, Köstem provided details of a secret visit by a North Korean general to Turkey in the 1990s.

He said the assignment to approach North Korea was given to him by Gen. Ahmet Çörekçi, the then-deputy chief of general staff, with whom he had been working since Çörekçi was serving as secretary of the National Security Council (MGK), the highest security body in Turkey which is also described as a shadow government.

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“He invited me to meet with him when he was deputy chief of general staff, so I went to the general staff headquarters. He said they were experiencing shortcomings in the fight against terrorism and were facing problems. He asked me if I could explore where we could get weapons and ammunition that would help our troops. I said I would be happy to do it,” Köstem said during his testimony at the Ankara 28th High Criminal Court.

Read more: Nordic Monitor