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Massive Trial in Turkey Provides Look into 'Deep State' <www.spiegel.de>

01/26/2009

By Daniel Steinvorth in Istanbul




The investigation involved wave upon wave of arrests of politicians, former military leaders and shady, underworld figures. The trial threatens to devolve into a uniquely Turkish power struggle. At issue is a possible putsch -- and Turkey's future.

Go to a cinema in Turkey these days and "Vali" will likely be among the films showing. It centers on an honest governor from the provinces who becomes the pawn of inscrutable powers; people around him start dropping like flies. As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that the strings in the affair are being pulled from abroad -- from the West. The nationalist film's takeaway message is that the fatherland is in grave danger -- and someone must come to the rescue.

For many Turks, this frightening scenario mirrors the realities of their country. There are those who have always felt threatened and persecuted by their enemies. And there are others who consider themselves to be powerless bystanders in a political thriller that has washed over the country -- a thriller which is getting more difficult to understand by the day.

In reality, the drama is called "Ergenekon" and it has led -- this much, at least, is clear -- to one of the biggest and most explosive criminal trials in the country's history.

There are many suspects, many recriminations, and no one knows how it will end.

Roughly 150 politicians, ex-military officials, journalists and powerful demimonde characters stand accused. State prosecutors suspect the group of being behind plans to overthrow the government. As members of a secret network, called Ergenekon, named after a mythical valley celebrated by ancient Turks, the group allegedly planned to assassinate members of the country's political and cultural elite.

The idea, as prosecutors see it, was for Turkey to sink into fear and chaos before being rescued by an army coup that would reinstate peace and order. The armed forces, after all, see themselves as protectors of the nation they inherited from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern-day Turkey. The Turkish military has staged coups three times in the country's recent past: in 1969, 1971 and 1980.

Trial of the Century

The trial, currently underway at a court outside of Istanbul, began in October. At first, it was somewhat muddled, the 2,500 page indictment was full of holes and inconsistencies. Still, the trial of the century presents a unique opportunity to finally shed light upon the backroom dealers responsible for political murders and decades of terror in the name of the state.

It is a state of affairs known in Turkey as the "deep state" and it existed long before the Ergenekon investigation, which began two years ago after the discovery of a weapons cache. There have always been paramilitary organizations that took it upon themselves to protect modern Turkey from alleged enemies both outside and inside the country -- against Greeks and Armenians, then Leftists, and now against Islamists.

In the past, inquiries were always blocked, as in the case of the Susurluk affair. The case involved a deadly accident in which a former police chief, a politician from the True Path party and an internationally wanted mafia leader were found in the same car together on the outskirts of a town called Susurluk. The incident remains unsolved, leading many to fear that the Ergenekon case could meet the same fate.

'The 11th Wave'

An aging labor-union boss and a famous television commentator joined the eclectic group of the accused last Thursday. Early that morning police had searched the offices of the labor union Turk Metal, TV station Avrasya TV, and private apartments and offices in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities. All in all, more than 30 people were arrested. Turkey's media refers to this round-up "the 11th wave" since the first arrests.

The 10th wave, which took place at the beginning of this year, was even more spectacular. That was when investigators dug up a cache of weapons in a pine forest on the outskirts of Ankara that included missile launchers, plastic explosives and ammunition. They'd found the weapons using a map discovered in the house of suspected terrorist Ibrahim Sahin, who once led a police anti-terror force.

Among those arrested was Tuncer Kilinc, the former general secretary of the nation's Security Council, the country's highest military board and long considered immune to questioning.

Shortly afterwards, the Chief of Turkish General Staff Ilker Basbug and Prime Minister Erdogan met privately. Shortly thereafter, Erdogan released Kilinc and two other former military officials. It was the first real setback to the government's zealous handling of the investigation.

Now, there is to be a weekly jour fixe between the military leadership and the government. The purpose could well be to establish limits for those investigating the case. But there could be another reason, as columnist Lale Sariibrahimoglu wrote in the daily Today's Zaman. "Allowing civilian prosecutors to arrest or investigate retired generals and officers alleged to have been involved in Ergenekon," she writes, could help "prevent the TSK as an institution from losing credibility."

'Too Many Inconsistencies'

But in the Kemalist opposition camp, anger is mounting. Politicians from the Republican People's Party (CHP) see the trial as little more than a broad attack on secularism. They are concerned that the investigation is being used as an excuse to go after not just those involved in the planned putsch but also those critical of the government in general.

They see it as just another move in the ongoing power struggle between Turkey's two main political camps: the secular Kemalist-nationalists, strongly represented in the military and the court system, and the followers of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist party, the AKP. After all, it was only last summer that the AKP narrowly survived an attempt by the justice system to ban it.

And there have indeed been indications that investigators have interpreted their mission loosely. One example is the detention of former Higher Education Council president Kemal Gürüz earlier this month. Gürüz was partly responsible for pushing through the headscarf ban at Turkish universities, a move which did little to endear him to Erdogan's party.

Another example is that of Sabih Kanadoglu, whose home was searched two weeks ago. Kanadoglu is a former chief prosecutor who played a leading role in the banning of the Islamist party Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) which was led by former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan. Erbakan was Erdogan's political mentor.

"There are too many inconsistencies," says television commentator Mehmet Ali Birand. "There are too many accused sitting for eight or nine months in prison without knowing why."

Should the investigation continue to be conducted in the same vein, there is a chance that it will lose all credibility and fail to yield any concrete results at all -- providing Turkey with yet one more reason to feel as though there are dark powers afoot.

Thanks marmot. Also check out this thread for a bizarre aspect involving an asset/witness who's now a fake rabbi in Toronto.

thanks, Jeff, for the redirect. there's a lot of good stuff in 'this thread' i overlooked.

Is anybody following this case? I haven't really tried yet, it seems like you need to set a bit of time aside to get into the details. Anyway, the latest:
[url=http://www.sundayszaman.com/sunday/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=197388]
State’s dirty laundry might come out with ‘cosmic room’ search[/url]:

There is an air of expectation as the country awaits the outcome of the investigation into the “cosmic room.” Nobody has an answer to the question of what’s inside the cosmic room.

But most observers are clear on one thing: The search is an important first in the country’s history because it touches untouchables, and this might help to explain some of the most painful events of the past.

“What is cosmic?” political analyst Doğu Ergil asked during our Sunday’s Zaman interview. “There are three types of secrets: secret, top secret and cosmic, which are very, very secret.”

He explained that a state can keep top secret and cosmic information in order to protect a country’s interests from external enemies.

“But when the state considers a part of society to be the ‘enemy’ and there are top secret lists about what needs to be done against that enemy, then that is a serious case,” he said, “because a country cannot have top secret acts against its own people.”

So, what are these acts, and who might be the people that the state could consider to be the enemy?

Part of the answer to these questions lies in the nature of the civilian search of the “cosmic room” which comes under the General Staff’s Special Forces Command and the Tactical Mobilization Group (STK). The searches at the STK in Ankara’s Kirazlıdere district are the first ever police raids on a military facility in Turkey. Although the civilian prosecutors were met with strong resistance, they have still undertaken a historic search.

The Kirazlıdere command was where politicians, including Bülent Ecevit, Necmettin Erbakan and Alparslan Türkeş, were kept under arrest during the Sept. 12, 1980 coup d’état. There also used to be a US base at the location at that time. The Kirazlıdere headquarters is believed to be where clashes between leftist and rightist groups before the 1980 coup were masterminded and coordinated.

“There are unresolved tragic and bloody events in the past like the one on May 1, 1977, and the killings in Çorum, Sivas and Maraş, and the Sept. 6-7 incidents in 1955, plus assassination attempts against then-prime ministers Bülent Ecevit and Turgut Özal,” Ergil said.

He was referring to the May 1 events at the time when unknown perpetrators opened fire from a hotel on a crowd gathered in Taksim Square for May Day celebrations, killing 36. Evidence submitted to a court in 2008 as part of the indictment against Ergenekon, a shady network accused of having plotted to overthrow the government, suggests that the network was behind the incident.

When it comes to the Sept. 6-7, 1955 events, it is sometimes referred to as being the first Gladio-type action, a code name denoting the clandestine NATO stay-behind operation in Italy after World War II, intended to counter a possible communist invasion of Western Europe. Turkey’s Ergenekon is believed by some to be the last surviving version of Gladio.

The unfortunate events of Sept. 6-7 started after a newspaper headline said Atatürk’s home in Greece had been bombed by Greek militants. Fired up by the media, mobs killed and harassed non-Muslim, non-Turkish minorities in a massive campaign.

Ergil indicated that the events might have been plotted by the Special Warfare Unit. This argument was further strengthened because retired Capt. Fikret Emek, currently under arrest in connection with the Ergenekon investigation, was serving as chairman of the Military Mobility Investigation Board during the events. According to the allegations, the board was illegally established within the army in 1952 and created small cells to promote its cause.

Gen. Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, who confessed to then-Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit that the Special Warfare Unit existed, served on the board during the Sept. 6-7 events.

Back to Ergil’s reference to the Çorum, Sivas and Maraş massacres, these provinces were ethnically vulnerable, and provocations led to many deaths as a result of Alevi-Sunni clashes.

‘Military has to open its doors’

The case started with a plot to assassinate Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç on Dec. 19, when police detained a colonel and a major who work for the STK, as their car had been seen several times passing by Arınç’s residence in the capital of Ankara.

They were released, but the Turkish media reported that they were suspected of plotting to assassinate Arınç.

Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ and Land Forces Commander Gen. Işık Koşaner met with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Dec. 26. The search of the STK archives was allowed to proceed after this meeting, although the content of the meeting has not been shared with the press.

“If this investigation had not been conducted, the military could have been divided,” Ergil said. He said it is because there was already a division: pro-Ergenekon investigation forces against pro-NATO forces.

“The military has been mentally divided. It had to open its doors to the judiciary,” he added.

Another view supporting this idea came from Faik Tarımcıoğlu, a former military prosecutor and judge and an ex-Motherland Party (then-ANAP, now ANAVATAN) deputy in the ’80s. He argues that the search has been realized with the agreement of the General Staff and the government.

“The search would not be possible if the government and the military were not in agreement. This is in a way an announcement to eliminate Gladio,” he said.

Fikri Sağlar, a member of the parliamentary commission set up to investigate the Susurluk incident, which revealed connections and cooperation between the police, politicians and criminal gangs, said the recent search is a positive move in Turkey’s struggle to become a state adhering to the rule of law.

“In the 1950s, Turkey accepted many NATO decisions and harbored a Gladio-type organization, sometimes referred to as counter-guerilla, in the name of the war against communism,” he told Sunday’s Zaman. “But it did not get rid of its illegal group like the European countries did in the 1990s.”

Sağlar said the country learned about the counter-guerilla’s extensive role in the making of the Sept. 12, 1980 coup from a book written by Gen. Kenan Evren, who led the coup. Evren assigned the Special Warfare Unit to eliminate the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) terrorist organization, which was responsible for the murders of several Turkish diplomats, but it looked for other options for survival after accomplishing its mission.

So the unit decided to deal with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) after 1985. But it went out of control and became corrupt because of the involvement of some of its members in illegal activities in the Southeast, including drug trafficking and arms smuggling. Even the state officially admitted after the Susurluk accident that the unit was corrupt. European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rulings confirmed the unit’s involvement in illegal activities and some unsolved murders during the fight against terror.

Sağlar said that parliamentary commissions prepared excellent reports about plots staged by shadowy actors in Turkey but that political administrations have failed to implement their recommendations.

Is it going to be different this time?

“The important thing is that it is out in the open and that some documents called state secrets can be inspected by the judiciary,” Sağlar said. “The civilian authorities could have done it before, too, but they didn’t exercise their authority before.”

That’s why the country is wondering what is happening, and there is surprise, he said.

“But there shouldn’t be, because the rule of law can settle in only with the equality of all citizens, civilian or military, before the law.

Meanwhile, all eight soldiers detained in the investigation into the alleged conspiracy to assassinate Arınç were released on Tuesday night. Among those released were three colonels who will face trial over their role in the alleged conspiracy.

In related developments, the commander of the STK applied to prosecutors, calling for a press ban on the search under the Code on Criminal Procedure (CMK), Article 125, which calls for similar measures in relation to state secrets. However, the Ankara 12th High Criminal Court rejected the appeal on Tuesday.

Turks have been watching to see if there is any follow-through this time, having seen other probes into alleged plots drag on without any clear resolution.

Tarımcıoğlu said it is not realistic to expect a swift elimination of Gladio-type organizations in Turkey. “There needs to be patience. But in one year or 10, there will be elimination at the end,” he said.

This is huge. Turkey is the fulcrum. The worm seems to have turned and things are looking better than they have for a while, for the rest of us here in the Middle East. Sorry to seem cryptic, but I don't feel up to writing an epic post, which is what any adequate explanation would require. It has to do with: "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s" and "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian that Israel has been banking on for decades, to leverage it into a global power in its own right, independent from the US.

Without Turkey, the zionists' very long-running plans fall apart. Remember about a year ago, at the Davos Summit of 2009, when Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan publicly accused Shimon Peres of massacring children? There were credible leaks that Peres actually phoned Erdogan the next day to apologize!!!!! Since then, the pattern of increasingly open Turkish hostility and increasingly desperate Israeli wooing has been repeated several times.

Finally, last November, when Turkey abruptly cancelled Israel's participation in the regularly-scheduled Anatolian Eagle military exercises, Israel finally got the message. It was hammered home when Turkey categorically refused to allow the Israeli Air Force to use Turkish airspace to conduct surveillance operations against Iran. Suddenly, Israel was transformed from a love-struck suitor clinging to hope, into a coldly-calculating enemy of the Turkish government. The Ergenekon is the zionists' ace in the hole, and ever since the popular election of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power, it's been activated and placed on high alert in case the new government got out of line. The Turkish government has clearly prepared for this and has been steadily isolating and undermining the Gladio agents within Turkey's military and intelligence establishment, in a vicious covert struggle that only now is coming out into the open.

I'm not only rooting for, I'm betting on the Turkish government winning in the end. Nevertheless, the zionists are not exactly known for giving up easily, especially when the stakes are so astronomically high. The struggle for Turkey will almost certainly start getting really ugly, really soon. The Turkish government clearly understands what it's up against, and for now, seems to have quite a few aces up its own sleeve.