Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 24 2009
New Ergenekon indictment in offing
An indictment charging 26 individuals, most of whom served as police
and military officers and were detained on Thursday on charges of
being members of Ergenekon, a clandestine terrorist organization
nested within state organs and charged with plotting to overthrow the
government, is on the way, prosecutors said on Friday.
Ä°stanbul’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor Turan
�olakkadı said yesterday that a comprehensive report
about the group’s ammunition and weapons caches found earlier will
soon be released. He gave a summary of Thursday’s raids, detentions
and searches, adding that new detentions might be around the corner
based on new evidence found.
Two Ergenekon assassination teams were captured in Thursday’s police
operations, conducted in 14 provinces throughout the country in raids
organized as part of an investigation into the group. Most of those
taken into custody were detained on charges of being members of two
assassination teams led by Ä°brahim Å?ahin, a former
senior police official who was the deputy head of the National Police
Department’s Special Operations Unit. Å?ahin was arrested on
Jan. 7.
A wave of detentions on Jan. 7 in the Ergenekon investigation revealed
that the group was planning to assassinate Alevi and Armenian
community leaders, the prime minister and members of the Supreme Court
of Appeals — acts that would have dragged Turkey into chaos had they
been carried out. The dozens taken into custody on Jan. 7 included
some of the hawkish generals behind the Feb. 28, 1997 unarmed military
coup that overthrew a democratically elected coalition government. One
such detainee is retired Gen. Erdal Å?enel, a former legal
undersecretary at the General Staff.
A second indictment is yet to be released and will include close to 20
people, including two former army commanders, a journalist and the
leader of a professional chamber — all detained on June 1 of last
year.
Ã-zbek in spotlight again for extreme wealth
Mustafa Ã-zbek, who has been heading the Türk Metal workers’
union for 33 years, has come into the spotlight with his wealth on
various occasions. Known for his anti-imperialist stance and political
engagements, Ã-zbek has a hard-to-believe amount of money and a
number of immovable properties. Coming from a poor family, Ã-zbek
carved out a fortune soon after he became the head of the metals
sector workers’ union, Türk Metal. He currently holds a 40
percent share of the Cumhuriyet daily, several five-star hotels in
Ankara, Didim and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), the
ART TV network and the Baha news agency. Türk Metal is an
extension of the Milli Ä°Å? Workers’ Union (MÄ°SK),
famous for its stance against leftist and revolutionary workers’
unions. Ã-zbek, who started his career at the Turkish Mechanical
and Chemical Industry Corporation (MKE), worked as a laborer until
1971. He later engaged in unionism and became the head of Türk
Metal in four years. Ã-zbek’s assets are predicted to exceed TL 10
million.
Retired Gen. Å?ener Eruygur, retired Gen. HurÅ?it Tolon,
retired Gen. İlker Güven and former Gendarmerie General
Command Intelligence Department head Levent Ersöz as well as
Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO) Chairman Sinan Aygün and the
Ankara bureau chief of the radically secularist Cumhuriyet daily,
Mustafa Balbay, were among those taken into police custody in that
raids.
More than 100 have been detained since the beginning of the
investigation in July 2007, when an arms cache was discovered inside a
shanty house in Ä°stanbul. Some of those were arrested, some
were released pending trial. As the investigation expanded from the
July 2007 discovery, a structure suspected of being responsible for a
number of politically motivated murders, including that of
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007 and attacks on
newspapers and judicial entities to foment chaos and engineer a
military takeover, became more and more visible. Every new wave of
raids has produced more documents, evidence, findings and testimonies
leading to more detentions.
Arms caches
Early in January, the police discovered a weapons cache buried in a
forest in Ankara’s GölbaÅ?ı region through a map
found in suspect Å?ahin’s home. Officers discovered 30 hand
grenades, three light anti-tank weapons (LAW), many plastic
explosives, ammunition for Uzi machine guns and other ammunition
buried close to a road near the capital. Other weapons storage sites
as well as munitions were found in some of the suspect’s homes. Police
seized a large number of bombs and ammunition during searches made in
the house of Lit. Col. Mustafa Dönmez, in the Sapanca district
of Balıkesir. A sketch found in his house also helped police to
unearth explosives and ammunition on Jan. 12 at a historic site in the
Sincan suburb of Ankara.
Military statement on recent detentions
In a press briefing it held yesterday General Staff Communications’
Unit President Gen. Metin Gürak responded to a question on the
munitions found in Lt. Col. Dönmez’s house, saying, "We, more
than everyone else, want this matter to be clarified."
He also said the General Staff had appealed to the Press Council and
Journalists’ Union to impose sanctions on certain newspapers that
published news stories about Col. Abdülkerim
Kırca. Kırca was an alleged leader of JİTEM, a
clandestine and illegal gendarmerie intelligence unit whose existence
has thus far been officially denied, who was, allegedly, responsible
for hundreds of unsolved murders, kidnappings and killings of mostly
Kurdish individuals in the Southeast. Kırca was found dead last
Monday afternoon in his Ankara home.
Criticism from opposition
Ergenekon has also been a source of political tension since the
investigation’s start. Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz
Baykal, who spoke at a party convention yesterday, accused the Justice
and Development Party (AK Party) of being behind the operation. "They
have undermined secularism and the social state. Now they are trying
to destroy the rule of law and democracy," he said, referring to the
four pillars of the Turkish Republic.
He referred to the Ergenekon investigation as a "social trauma" and
accused the government of trying to crush opposition voices.
Another criticism came from Haydar Ã-zbek, the son of Mustafa
Ã-zbek, chairman of the Türk Metal Ä°Å? workers’
union, also detained in Thursday’s operations. Mustafa Ã-zbek is
being charged with financing the Ergenekon terrorist organization
using the union’s money. Haydar Ã-zbek yesterday said the latest
wave of operations would be the wave "that will capsize this ship." He
said: "That wave will drown those who made it. They are trying to
silence the people. The day will come when they will be silenced. They
will not be allowed to talk."
A number of Türk Metal Ä°Å? officials were detained
on Thursday in addition to Mustafa Ã-zbek. Deputy Chairman Mecit
Hızır, Secretary-General Muharrem Aslıyüce
and former Secretary-General Süleyman Erdinç were also
detained. Prosecutors have long suspected that Mustafa Ã-zbek was
one of Ergenekon’s major backers. The Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office
had previously seized the past five years of the union’s financial
records and requested its financial statements and other bookkeeping
records from the Labor Ministry. The prosecutors reportedly found
important clues about the link between Ergenekon and Türk Metal
Ä°Å? in these files.
Mustafa Ã-zbek was a member of the movement Türkiyem (My
Turkey), founded by a number of people who are currently in jail as
Ergenekon suspects. The movement, which was being financed by the
union, was attempting to become a political party. Kemal
Kerinçsiz, an ultranationalist lawyer known for filing lawsuits
against intellectuals and writers whose opinions do not match the
official state line on various issues, was the president of the
İstanbul branch of Türkiyem. Retired Gen. Tolon was on
the movement’s consultative board. Tolon was also arrested in the
Ergenekon investigation.
24 January 2009, Saturday
TODAY’S ZAMAN Ä°STANBUL