Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 28 2008
Wanted: Backers of Ergenekon
Thirteen people in the deep-state linked Ergenekon organization were
arrested and jailed by order of a court on Saturday after being
charged with inciting people to revolt, but many commentators say it
remains unclear whether the investigation will go any deeper.
The 13 included retired Maj. Gen. Veli Küçük and retired Col. Fikri
Karadað. The Ergenekon group had been the top story of all of
Turkey’s newspapers last week after it was uncovered as the
organization apparently has strong ties to the deep state — a phrase
used to describe a phenomenon in which illegal groups in the security
forces and state bureaucracy take the law into their own hands to
serve their own political ends. Küçük is the first of his rank to be
arrested by a civilian court. There are many faces currently in the
bureaucracy and the military behind the faces in Ergenekon, and they
should be identified, demanded many analysts and newspapers over the
weekend.
The court decision followed the arrests of dozens of people last week
in a police investigation into an ultra-nationalist group known as
Ergenekon. The investigation has shown that the group had been
planning to kill Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk and Todays’s
Zaman columnist Fehmi Koru as well as several Kurdish politicians.
The nine people in custody under suspicion of membership in the
Ergenekon organization — part of a shadowy network with apparent
inside links to the military, bureaucracy and some other state
agencies thought to be responsible for assassinations of certain
public figures, including Armenian journalist Hrant Dink — were on
Saturday taken to the Ýstanbul courthouse located in Beþiktaþ.
Officials have declined to comment on the case, which began last
summer with the seizure of explosives and weapons at a house in the
Ümraniye district of Ýstanbul.
The suspects arrested by the court on Saturday included Küçük, a
retired general who is also the alleged founder of a secret
intelligence unit in the gendarmerie, the existence of which is
denied by officials; controversial ultranationalist lawyer Kemal
Kerinçsiz, who filed countless suits against Turkish writers and
intellectuals who were at odds with Turkey’s official policies;
Fikret Karadað, a retired army colonel who also heads the Association
for the Union of Patriotic Forces (VKGB); Sevgi Erenerol, the press
spokesperson for a group called the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate;
Sami Hoþtan, a key figure in the Susurluk investigation; Hüseyin
Görüm; Hüseyin Gazi Oðuz; and Oðuz Alparsalan Abdülkadir. The
arrested are facing charges of inciting people to armed revolt
against the government.
The Susurluk investigation was launched in 1996 after a car crash
near the small town of Susurluk that uncovered links between a police
chief, a convicted fugitive, who was an ultranationalist, and a
deputy. At the time hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens across
the nation had protested, turning their lights out for a moment at 9
p.m. and calling on authorities to put an end to the shady insider
gangs known as the "deep state."
Güler Kömürcü, a columnist for the Akþam daily who was taken into
custody in the operation last week, was released Saturday by the
court, but she remains banned from traveling abroad.
The suspects were taken out of the courthouse on Saturday under tight
security. Photojournalists were not allowed to take any pictures.
Meanwhile, Hüseyin Görüm, one of the suspects, yelled out, `Kuvayý
Milliye 1919 won!’ The phrase is a reference to the right-wing Kuvayý
Milliye (National Forces) movement that started in 1919 to purge
Turkey of invading Western powers and resulted in the establishment
of the Republic of Turkey.
Two more detained
Retired Maj. Zekeriya Öztürk, Kahraman Þahin, Erol Ölmez, Erkut Ersoy
and Muhammet Yüce were also arrested.
Twelve people, including the lawyer of a Dink murder suspect, and Ali
Yasak, also known as Drej Ali, another figure in the Susurluk
investigation, were released after their initial interrogation.
The investigation has so far revealed that the group was preparing a
series of bomb attacks aimed at fomenting chaos ahead of a coup in
2009 against Turkey’s center-right government, whose European
Union-linked reforms are opposed by ultra-nationalists.
The Ergenekon group may have been behind the murder last January of
Dink, a prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist, outside his office in
Istanbul, newspapers have quoted police sources as saying.
Police have been observing Ergenekon — the name of an epic story in
nationalist mythology explaining how the Turks came into being — for
several years and have compiled a 7,000-page dossier on the group and
its activities, newspapers say.
Gang meetings in church
The Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate, the Taraf daily wrote on Sunday,
was the meeting place of the group. The patriarchate’s spokesperson,
Sevgi Erenerol, hosted the gang’s meetings in the organization’s
`church.’ The daily noted that the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate was
founded in 1924 to break the influence of the Fener Greek
Patriarchate. Although it has no followers, it has become an
important part of the `deep state,’ as it was intended.
`As a church, we have regular meetings with the National Security
Agency (MÝT),’ said Selçuk Erenerol, the third patriarch who is also
the father of Sevgi Erenerol. The group owns two other churches, but
none of them has a congregation.
Many of those arrested on Saturday, including Küçük, Kerinçsiz and
Karadað, had regular meetings at the church and gave their orders
from there.
Some of the gang members are members of the Church of Scientology,
some newspapers reported.
Links with the PKK
Meanwhile the Hürriyet daily on Sunday wrote that the group was
planning to use two members of the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK),
known as the `deep’ extension of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK), in a bombing. Maps of the plot showed that the group was
planning to blow up a bridge along a highway where the air force and
the navy headquarters are located.
The group also had plans to assassinate Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdoðan, sources speaking to Hürriyet claimed.
Who is behind Ergenekon?
The name of Küçük first appeared on Nov. 3, 1996, wrote Radikal
columnist Murat Yetkin on Sunday. `However, neither that date nor
Veli Küçük marks the start of the organizations of paramilitary
militia.’ He said if the allegations that Ergenekon was a group
trying to create chaos through attacks to enable coup planners inside
the military to overthrow the government, then it is necessary to
reach the individuals at the `bottom of the iceberg.’
Yeni Þafak columnist Ali Bayramoðlu, known for his keen knowledge of
Turkey’s political history, on Friday wrote: `One looking for
Ergenekon need not go too far. This is the story of Ergenekon — the
Turkish Gladio — from the assassination of [journalist] Abdi Ýpekçi
[in 1979] to `the massacre of March 16′ [in 1978, when seven students
at an Ýstanbul university were killed in a bomb attack], then peaking
in Susurluk and possibly involved in the Council of State shooting.’
A senior judge was shot dead in an attack at the Council of State in
2006. The attacker was found to have links to shady networks similar
to the Ergenekon gang.
Gladio was an Italian organization founded by NATO in the post World
War I period to perform illegal, behind-the-scenes operations to
counter the Soviet threat. Similar organizations were founded in many
countries in the `50s. Many ended up doing the `dirty work’ of their
own secret services.
28.01.2008
Today’s Zaman Ýstanbul