BILAL IN PITTSBURGH

compared to Russia’s, for example, looked much more dynamic. The country’s population, at around eighty million, and its growth rates were increasing even faster than those of the acknowledged BRICs. Everyone recognised its strategic importance, nestling against the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea while bordering Bulgaria, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia: there is barely a neighbour that hasn’t experienced a major upheaval or war in the past two decades. The unpredictable has been ever present in Turkish politics but, as the millennium turned, Turkey’s burgeoning economic power and sophistication emphasised its pivotal role in several vital geo-strategic regions – the Middle East, Central Asia, the Black Sea and the Balkans.

The country had been slow to develop its Internet infrastructure in the 1990s, but in recent years it had begun to catch up rapidly. Istanbul, Turkey’s economic engine, hosted an explosion of successful start-ups along with the design, media and service companies that benefited from them.

On the downside, the size of the country, its improving infrastructure and the broadening education of the youthful middle class represented an opportunity for cybercrime. Until Bilal Şen’s unit was properly up and running in 2005, there was little to prevent crackers and hackers from operating on the Web from inside Turkey without fear of detec- tion. The Cyber Crime Unit was beginning to make a difference, but it was an uphill struggle. If Inspector Şen were able to track down Cha0, it would be an important feather in the unit’s cap.

But just before the Inspector was due to return to Turkey from Pittsburgh in mid-March 2008, he received another alert that further complicated his investigation into Cha0. This time his Istanbul contacts provided details of a baffling interview given to a well-known news organisation, Haber 7, by a Turkish hacker named Kier, who confessed that he was a fugitive from the law.

Haber 7’s reputation was based in part on the spiritual backing it received from a huge domestic Islamist movement, called The Gülen Community, which promoted the philosophy of its leader, Fethullah Gülen, who was living in exile in the United States. As a Community news organisation, Haber 7 was broadly sympathetic to the governing AK Party, which was pro-Islamic but democratic.

The young hacker, Kier, had approached the news organisation to claim that not only did he know Cha0, but, he hinted, the person or