CAGE PLAN MENTIONED IN POYRAZKOY INDICTMENT
Today’s Zaman
29 January 2010, Friday
The Poyrazkoy indictment underlines that the accused planned to kill
dozens of young visitors of the Rahmi M. Koc Museum in Istanbul and
assassinate prominent figures, mostly belonging to minority groups,
to foment chaos in the country to help overthrow the Justice and
Development Party (AK Party) government if Ergenekon defendant retired
Col. Levent GöktaÅ~_ is not released from prison.
The subversive plans are part of the Cage Operation Action Plan,
allegedly drafted by active duty naval officers. The plan aimed to
assassinate Turkey’s prominent non-Muslim figures and put the blame
for the killings on the AK Party. The desired result was an increase
in internal and external pressure on the party, leading to diminishing
public support for the government.
The Cage plan also contained a frightening planned act of terror
against young students visiting the Rahmi M. Koc Museum. According
to the plan, several blocks of TNT and other explosives placed at
the bottom of a submarine exhibited at the museum would be detonated
while a large group of students was visiting the museum.
After the discovery of explosives in the submarine, a military
investigation announced that the explosives had been forgotten by
commandos. Ergenekon prosecutors, however, decided that the findings
of the military investigation were too weak to ease concerns over the
discovery of explosives at a museum. The prosecutors examined the
submarine at the museum and reached the conclusion that it was not
possible for the commandos to forget a large amount of explosives in
a submarine.
Cage documents noted that the explosion should occur on a day when
the museum was visited by a large group of students. "Materials to
be planted at the museum have reached operators. We should increase
the number of visitors to the museum. C.G. will tell us when the
visitor numbers at the museum are at their highest. We should increase
publicity and activities [about the museum] in schools. Students are
the most important elements of this project. We should confirm the
day of the operation," read one of the documents.
According to the Poyrazkoy indictment, subscribers to the
Turkish-Armenian biweekly Agos newspaper were to be posted on a number
of Web sites in line with the Cage plan. The editor-in-chief of Agos,
Hrant Dink, was shot dead in 2007 by an ultranationalist Turkish
teenager. Letters that included threatening messages were to be sent
to Agos subscribers, and they were also to receive threatening phone
calls. Similar messages were to be written on a number of walls of
buildings on the Princes’ Islands, home to hundreds of non-Muslim
families.
The Poyrazkoy indictment also recalls that threatening letters were
sent by unidentified individuals to Armenians residing in Turkey.
According to the document, the letters could be part of the Cage plan.
The new indictment also revealed that one of the contributors to the
Cage plan was the West Study Group (BCG), a clandestine unit formed
within the army. According to the indictment, the BCG has remained
active since the Feb. 28, 1997 post-modern coup and contributed
to the preparation of the Cage plan and the Action Plan to Fight
Reactionaryism, another suspected military plot aimed at destroying
the AK Party government.
The BCG, which categorized politicians, intellectuals, soldiers and
bureaucrats, was formed within the military during the Feb. 28, 1997
coup — in which the military overthrew a coalition government led
by a now-defunct conservative party — and continued its existence
as a civilian body after the collapse of the Refah-Yol government
(a coalition of the Welfare Party [RP] and the True Path Party [DYP])
in June 1997.