Lis­ten now: One Seg­ment

The NATO oper­a­tion code-named “Stay Behind” had a Turk­ish com­po­nent. Uti­liz­ing the fas­cist and ultra-nation­al­ist Nation­al Action Par­ty and its youth wing, the Gray Wolves, the Turk­ish “Stay Behind” also result­ed in the type of right-wing ter­ror pro­gram and desta­bi­liza­tion effort that it did in Italy. High­light­ed by the recent death of Gray Wolves vet­er­an Abdul­lah Catli in a high-pro­file auto­mo­bile acci­dent in Italy, the machi­na­tions of the Turk­ish Stay Behind oper­a­tion involved ele­ments con­nect­ed to the assas­si­na­tion attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981. The broad­cast sets forth spec­u­la­tive infor­ma­tion that the Turk­ish and Ital­ian com­po­nents of “Stay Behind” may have been behind that attempt, incor­rect­ly blamed on the Sovi­et Union and Bul­gar­ia.