PROSECUTOR LINKS ERGENEKON TO COUNCIL OF STATE ATTACK
Today’s Zaman
July 8 2008
Turkey
A state prosecutor has established in the course of an official
investigation that the Ergenekon group, a shadowy crime network
accused of plotting to overthrow the Justice and Development Party
(AK Party) government, possibly played a role in the 2006 shooting
at the Council of State that left a senior judge dead.
The Ergenekon case prosecutor is likely to submit the indictment
to a court this week, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday
evening. The operation into the gang has been going on for a year since
suspicious relationships were revealed for the first time when a house
being used as an arms depot in Ä°stanbul was discovered by police.
A criminal court in Ankara concluded in April that there was no link
between the Council of State attack and the Ergenekon network, saying
that the attack was carried out in protest against the country’s
headscarf ban in line with the testimony of the main suspect in the
attack, Alparslan Arslan. In its verdict, the Ankara 11th High Criminal
Court said Arslan was guilty of attempting to forcefully change the
constitutional order of the country and sentenced him to life in
prison. Arslan insisted throughout the trial that he had carried out
the attack in protest of a Council of State decision prohibiting a
public school teacher from wearing a headscarf outside of school.
"The suspects in the Council of State shootings had the objective
of attacking individuals in protest against the headscarf ban. The
attack was perpetrated following some caricatures mocking the use of
the Islamic headscarf that found wide coverage in the media as well as
a ruling by the Council of State’s Second Chamber on a covered teacher
who was not allowed to serve in a nursery school while wearing her
headscarf," the court then said. But Osman Yıldırım, another suspect
in the attack, had said in his testimony that the decision to attack
the Council of State was made in meetings between himself, Arslan and
a prime suspect of the Ergenekon investigation. In his testimony to a
prosecutor, Yıldırım said he and Arslan were provided the necessary
guns and munitions to carry out the attack by the Ergenekon gang.
Arslan has also been charged with bombing the secularist
Cumhuriyet daily in 2006, and the hand grenade used in the attack
was part of a batch produced by the state that was found in the
stockpile of ammunition and explosives discovered in the Ä°stanbul
house. Fifty-eight individuals, including retired generals, have so
far been arrested in the Ergenekon operation, and many others have
been detained.
There are dozens who were released from arrest but await trial as
part of the case. The absence of an indictment has led to criticism
of the operation among some circles.
The indictment directs various charges to 85 people, including
Gen. Veli Kucuk, a retired officer who is the alleged founder of an
illegal intelligence unit in the gendarmerie, and Workers’ Party (Ä°P)
leader Dogu Perincek, Anatolia reported. The indictment is expected
to be around 2,500 pages long, Anatolia said.
A number of politically motivated attacks and assassinations that have
shaken Turkey over the last few years have also been included in the
indictment. The investigation into the terrorist group has not only
exposed links between the Council of State shooting with the group
but also links of its members to various threats and attacks against
people accused of being unpatriotic and to the Susurluk affair, in
which a car accident in 1996 revealed links between a senior police
chief, an internationally wanted mafia boss and a deputy whose Kurdish
village in the Southeast had been armed by the state to fight ethnic
terrorism. The group is also suspected of having played a role in
the 2007 murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and other
crimes against non-Muslims in Turkey.
A separate indictment will be submitted for suspects detained in last
week’s raids, including former commander of the 1st Army retired
Gen. HurÅ~_it Tolon, former commander of the Gendarmerie Forces
retired Gen. Å~^ener Eruygur, Cumhuriyet daily’s Ankara representative
Mustafa Balbay and Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO) President Sinan
Aygun. The court is expected to merge the two indictments into a
single court case.
Meanwhile the prosecutor filed an objection to the release of nine
suspects, including Balbay, in the Ergenekon probe. Balbay had been
detained as part of the probe but was released on July 5.
Prosecutor Zekeriya Oz filed an objection to the 13th Ä°stanbul
Criminal Court’s decision to release the detainees. The prosecutors
in charge of the probe argued that Balbay, Professor Ercument Ovalı,
released on a YTL 20,000 bail, Murat Avar, Ufuk Buyukcelebi, the
editor-in-chief of the Tercuman newspaper, Tunc Akkoc, the deputy
chairman of the Ä°P’s Pioneer Youth Association, Siyami Yalcın,
Neriman Aydın, retired Gen. İlker Guven and Hamza Demir should not
be released. The court will assess the prosecutor’s demands and may
decide that the nine suspects should be detained again.
Upon the growing threats against the life of Prosecutor Oz, the Justice
Ministry was informed about the situation. The number of bodyguards
protecting Oz was increased to four and three vehicles — two of
which are armored — were allotted for his use. Moreover, a team of
15 security professionals was set up and is on duty 24 hours a day
in and around Oz’s house. Bodyguards are also providing protection
to Oz’s family. The police are conducting a detailed investigation
into the issue.
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