By Ahval
Turkey is to open an 80,000 square-metre new headquarters for the country’s National Intelligence Organisation (MİT) in Istanbul’s Maslak district on Sunday, state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The complex is surrounded by a high concrete wall designed to withstand unauthorised access and infiltration, Anadolu said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is set to open the complex in a ceremony, it said.
The site will be the second intelligence complex opened by Turkey this year.
In January, Turkish authorities opened a 500-hectare compound for MİT in Ankara, dubbed the Castle by state officials.
Following a failed coup attempt in 2016, Erdoğan issued a decree attaching MİT to the presidency, and the National Intelligence Coordination Board was formed. As MİT’s institutional power grew with the new presidential board, its budget surged from $410 million in 2010 to almost $2 billion in 2017.
