A joint operation by Syrian intelligence and Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation, MIT, led to the arrest of a Turkish officer accused of delivering Hussein Harmoush, one of the earliest Syrian army defectors, to the former Assad regime.
Syria’s state news agency, SANA, reported Monday, March 30, citing an unnamed security source, that Turkish officer Önder Sığırcıkoğlu was arrested while attempting to cross the Syrian border, in cooperation between Syrian and Turkish intelligence.
Turkish media outlets, including the semi-official Anadolu Agency, reported that Turkish intelligence carried out a joint operation with its Syrian counterpart and arrested the officer, Sığırcıkoğlu, on the Syria-Lebanon border.
Turkish intelligence then handed the suspect over to judicial authorities in coordination with the public prosecutor’s office in Ankara and the counterterrorism directorate. Turkish media also published a photo showing him handcuffed beside a Turkish flag.
Fled after sentencing
Sığırcıkoğlu is a Turkish officer accused of delivering two defected Syrian officers to the former regime, Harmoush and Mustafa Qassem, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In September 2014, the public prosecution reduced the charges and prepared a document lowering his sentence to 10 years and transferring him to an open prison, at his request.
According to Turkish media outlets, including Yeni Safak, Sığırcıkoğlu later escaped after being transferred from the closed Osmaniye prison in southern Turkey to an open prison, after being granted a 10-hour leave.
Confession
Sığırcıkoğlu confessed to abducting the two Syrian officers and handing them over to the former Syrian regime for sectarian reasons, according to statements he gave to OdaTV. Access to the interview was later blocked at the request of the Turkish judiciary.
Sığırcıkoğlu is from the city of Adana in southern Turkey and belongs to the Alawite community, to which deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad also belongs. He also speaks Arabic due to his family origins.
The Turkish officer worked as a translator in the intelligence service for 20 years, according to the Turkish opposition outlet Aydinlik, which did not mention any other roles he held during his intelligence career.
According to Turkish media reports citing MIT, Sığırcıkoğlu had also been carrying out espionage operations against Turkey.
Who is Hussein Harmoush?
On June 9, 2011, Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Harmoush announced his defection from the Syrian regime’s forces over what he described as the regime’s “mass killings of unarmed civilians across Syria.”
At the time, Harmoush said another reason for his defection was that the regime was forcing officers and non-commissioned officers to raid safe towns and villages, commit mass killings, and kill children, women, and the elderly, especially in the Jisr al-Shughur massacre on June 4, 2011.
After defecting, Harmoush founded the Free Officers Brigade and led what was considered the first armed operation against regime forces by confronting an attack on the Jisr al-Shughur area west of Idlib, where he was accused at the time of killing at least 120 security personnel.
Harmoush later fled to Turkey, where he stayed for two months before being abducted on Turkish soil on August 29, 2011, and handed over in an intelligence operation to the Syrian regime, which broadcast his confessions on September 15 of the same year.
On February 2, 2025, Baraa Harmoush mourned his father, the defected lieutenant colonel, after learning that he had been killed in the notorious Saydnaya prison on January 19, 2012, according to information he received from eyewitnesses.
According to Baraa, his father said shortly before his execution, “Our revolution is a revolution of truth, so do not abandon it.”
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