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strongly suggested that they were working for the same organization,
which DSO then codenamed DODGERS.^66
It was subsequently discovered that Fikri was living in Izmir and was
planning to settle permanently in Diyarbakir. While he still owned prop-
erty in Iraq, it was thought unlikely that he would return to liquidate it
and his other assets in person, thereby risking arrest. Consequently, DSO
had little hope that anything more would ever be learnt about the
DODGERS organization.^67 However, the mystery was solved in September
1944 when the Turkish authorities informed DSO that the organization
was directed by their own intelligence services against the activities of the
Armenians and the Kurds.^68 The Turks hoped that this admission would
obtain the release of Mustafa Yusuf and Taha Nuri. Yet, what continued to
bother DSO was the fact that Yusuf had been smuggling intelligence on
the arrival of military supplies in Basra, which had nothing to do with
either the Armenians or the Kurds.^69 The trial of both men therefore pro-
ceeded on 4 November 1944, and both were found guilty. Yusuf was
sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment (not easy for a man of his
age) followed by three years of police surveillance; Nuri received one
plus one.^70
(Narrative 15 [TIS]) SMUDGERS. In January 1944, CICI intercepted
a letter written in Baghdad and addressed to Zahra Babacan, the mother-
in- law of Mahmud Salman al-Gamabi, a resident of Istanbul. The letter
contained some elementary military intelligence in secret writing. From
then on Babacan’s correspondence was closely watched, but no further
examples of secret writing were found. There were reasons for believing
that Babacan was not working for the official Turkish intelligence services;
however, it was considered for various reasons preferable to ascribe the
correspondence to Turkish, rather than German, activity.^71
(Narrative 16 [Arabisches Büro]) Operation TEL AFAR. This opera-
tion was unique in that it was conceived, planned, and mounted by a
German-based, but semi-autonomous, organization outside the German
intelligence services: the ex-Mufti’s so-called Arabisches Büro (Arab
Bureau [AB]). From his offices in Berlin and Oybin (Saxony), the ex-
Mufti organized an extensive espionage network with stations in Geneva
and Istanbul. In neutral Turkey, the AB maintained outstations all along
the Turco-Syrian border at Mersin, Iskenderun, Antakya, Adana, and at
Diyarbakir in Turkish Kurdistan, only 425 km from Tel Afar. It is said that
these AB posts worked in cooperation with local representatives of the
Abwehr.^72 However, given the ex-Mufti’s ties to Himmler and lack of liai-