World Socialist Web Site, MI
Turkey: Coup plot arrests deepen political crisis
By Sinan Ikinci
7 July 2008
With the arrests of 23 people in the early morning hours of July 1 on
charges of involvement in an alleged coup plot, the bitter struggle
within Turkey’s state apparatus has escalated sharply.
The roundup unfolded as the Turkish Constitutional Court was expected
to hand down a ban against the governing Islamist AKP (Justice and
Development Party).
Simultaneous raids were carried out in the cities of Ankara, Istanbul,
Antalya, Erzurum and Trabzon in connection with the so-called
`Ergenekon probe.’
Several pro-AKP papers have since reported that plans for an imminent
military coup were found with one of those arrested, former General
Sener Eruygur, who is head of the Ataturk Thought Association
(ADD). According to these reports, for which there is no independent
confirmation, the conspirators planned demonstrations in 40 cities on
Sunday. Snipers were hired to shoot at demonstrators and assassinate
well-known persons in order to create an atmosphere of fear, which
would allow the military to intervene and topple the
government. According to these allegations, sympathetic journalists
were expected to support the operation.
Sunday’s arrests were the third wave of detentions in connection with
a yearlong investigation into the alleged network of a clandestine
ultra-nationalist group called `Ergenekon.’ The name Ergenekon denotes
a link to the Turkish fascist movement. According to the mythology of
Turkic genesis, a grey wolf showed the Turks the way out of their
legendary homeland Ergenekon. In line with this mythology Turkish
fascists have been using the name and symbol of the `Grey Wolf’ for
decades.
The police investigation into Ergenekon was launched in June 2007
after the discovery of explosives’said to be of the same make that the
military uses’in a house in a shantytown district of
Istanbul. Forty-nine people, including retired army officers, have
been detained for suspected links to the group since the beginning of
the investigation. Thirty-three people were arrested in January.
Among them was retired Brigadier General Veli Kucuk, who throughout
the 1990s was heavily involved in the `deep state.’ This network of
covert groups and organizations targeted members and supporters of the
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as well as common Kurdish people. Kucuk
was one of the main figures in the `Susurluk affair’ of 1996, which
brought to light the close links between security forces, mafia gangs
and fascist death squads. Later on, his name was mentioned in
connection with the murder of the leading judge at the administrative
court in 2006. It was learned that Kucuk had known the perpetrator,
the lawyer Alparslan Aslan, who had links to the same milieu of mafia
and fascist groups.
The Ergenekon gang is also suspected of being behind various
provocations, including three bomb attacks against the staunch
Kemalist daily newspaper Cumhuriyet in May 2006, the assassinations of
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink on January 2007 and nationalist
writer Necip Hablemitoglu on December 18, 2002. People such as the
lawyer of Yasin Aydin, one of the suspects charged in the murder of
Hrant Dink, have appeared before courts as suspects in the Ergenekon
operation.
There are also claims that the Ergenekon gang was planning to kill
some leading members of the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Society
Party (DTP) and Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk. The novelist had been
subjected to a hate campaign by the fascist movement and the
Maoist-Kemalists led by Dogu Perincek, one of those arrested earlier
in connection with the Ergenekon investigation.
There are also indications that the investigation has managed to link
Ergenekon with two failed military coup attempts devised by now
retired military commanders against the AKP government in 2004 and
2005.
More than a year ago, the weekly magazine Nokta printed lengthy
excerpts from a diary allegedly written by former Navy Commander
Admiral Ozden Ornek. According to the diary, some former commanders
led by Sener Aydin had planned two separate coups under the codenames
Sarikiz (Blonde Girl) and Ayisigi (Moonlight). General Eruygur, who
has now been arrested, was a key figure in the diaries of Ornek.
Acting on a complaint filed by Ornek, the Nokta magazine’s offices
were raided by the police for three days as part of an investigation
by the public prosecutor’s office in Istanbul’s Bakirkoy
district. Initially, Ornek had admitted that the diaries belonged to
him. However, following the widespread public attention and reactions
against the reports of the coup attempt, Ornek said the diary was not
his. Later on, technical probes of the diaries proved them to be
authentic.
Accusations against the AKP
While there is strong evidence that many of those arrested are
involved in a right-wing conspiracy against the government, some
Kemalist journalists, like Emin Colasan, claim that the operation is
utterly bogus and nothing more than a frame-up organised by the
Islamist AKP leadership.
Others who feel uneasy about the operation maintain that the
government is making use of an existing conspiracy to suppress its
political opponents. According to them the people who are under arrest
and were detained on July 1 are all personalities who have a
respectable place in society and whose whereabouts is known to
everyone. Thus, they say, under the existing legal framework it is
impossible to justify their arrest and detention. On July 2 Cumhuriyet
wrote: `The Ergenekon investigation has turned into an operation to
silence the Turkish opposition.’
There is a grain of truth in this claim. Some of those taken into
custody’such as Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO) Chairman Sinan Aygun
and Cumhuriyet Ankara bureau chief Mustafa Balbay’give the impression
that a wing of judiciary controlled by the Islamists is taking
advantage of the situation and using the probe against some of its
most outspoken opponents, who probably have no direct involvement with
the Ergenekon gang.
Besides his involvement in plans for a military coup, even General
Eruygur is a well-known political opponent of the government. Along
with General Tolon, he was prominent among the organizers of so-called
republican rallies called ahead of the July elections last year that
protested against an Islamist becoming president of Turkey.
In 1997, similar demonstrations were organised by the military against
the Islamist-led coalition government. The government was finally
toppled under the pressure of the military in what amounted to a `cold
coup.’ It was a carefully planned operation, supported by sections of
the bourgeois media, a number of political parties, business
organisations, trade unions, women’s groups, intellectuals, etc. One
army general was overtly referring to these civilian supporters as
`unarmed forces.’ After his retirement, Eruygur took over the
leadership of the `unarmed forces.’
Some papers also pointed to the fact that some of those arrested have
been detained for months without official charges. Yusuf Kanli of the
Turkish Daily News asked, `What kind of a probe is this, that people
are placed behind bars without a charge for so many months and a
witch-hunt has been continuing for the past year, pro-government media
and pen-slingers of the government have published glossy books about
the activities of the `gang’ and even some of the alleged testimonies
of the accused?’
Kanli also pointed to the fact that the latest arrests were timed to
coincide with the court case against the AKP. The arrests took place
just hours before the Supreme Court of Appeals’ chief prosecutor
presented his oral arguments for banning the governing party. Kanli
asked: `Is the prime minister the `spokesman’ of the prosecutor’s
office regarding the `Ergenekon case’ or is there a `political
connection’ aimed at taking `revenge’ for the closure case against the
ruling AKP?’
In terms of timing, it is an undeniable fact that the Ergenekon
operation had geared up since the case to ban the AKP was filed. In
March, just a week after the case was filed, the `second wave’ of
detentions was carried out. As it seems, the timing of the `third
wave’ of detentions on July 1 was also no accident.
In fact, Erdogan and other leading members of the AKP have publicly
associated the court case filed against them with the Ergenekon
probe’albeit in an inverse fashion. Erdogan has said that the closure
case is a response to the government’s determination to pursue its
probe of the Ergenekon operation.
While the AKP, a bourgeois party, has refrained from appealing to the
masses to counteract its impending ban, it uses sections of the state
apparatus that are under its control’most of the police and a part of
the judiciary’for this purpose.
>From the standpoint of the working class this is extremely
dangerous. The ferocious battle between different wings of the state,
in a climate of conspiracies, murders and provocations, carries with
it an ominous threat to the democratic rights of the masses.
There is nothing principled in the approach of the AKP. Erik Zurcher,
a Dutch professor and author of Turkey: A Modern History, told
Bloomberg news, `It seems the government is throwing down the gauntlet
to the key players in the secular camp.’ He added, “Perhaps it feels
it has nothing left to lose because the party’s shutdown will come
anyway.’
A Turkish official complained to Islamist daily Today’s Zaman that
there has been no indictment since the operations started almost a
year ago, though many people are being held in prison. He said, `To
me, this situation leaves the impression that the ruling AKP is not
seeking to settle scores with the `deep state,’ but rather it is
trying to embarrass it.’
A former military prosecutor, Umit Kardas, told the same paper, `The
AKP appears to have been acting in line with the developments taking
place against it. Sometimes it takes a step forward and sometimes it
takes a step back in the Ergenekon operations. Currently, I get the
impression that Ergenekon has been used as a tool for a power
struggle, rather than going deep into the illegal activities said to
have been taking place within the state.’
As the conflict between the two camps deepens, legal principles have
been turned into a mockery by both sides. Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat,
deputy chief of the AKP, has repeated literally the same words used by
his `secularist’ opponents with regard to the case against the AKP. He
said that the independence of the police and judiciary to conduct
their investigation should be respected. Columnist Cengiz Candar
pointed out this contradiction in an article dated July 3: `Circles
who invited everyone to have respect for the judicial process in the
closure case [against the AKP] raised hell the other day in the face
of the Ergenekon arrests.’
Danger of a military coup
The fact that the AKP uses the Ergenekon operation as an instrument to
take revenge and suppress some of its opponents must not, however,
deflect from the fact that there is a real threat of a military
intervention. It is beyond any doubt that the bombing of the daily
Cumhuriyet, the attack against the Council of State, killing one top
judge and injuring some others (both attacks were designed to look
like acts of Islamist violence), the assassination of Hrant Dink and
the murder of Christians in Malatya were ominous preparations for a
new military intervention. They served as destabilisation operations
to lay the groundwork for it.
This is why for more than two years the World Socialist Web Site has
been warning the Turkish working class and other layers of working
people against the rising threat of a military intervention. This is
unfolding in a climate of nationalism and chauvinism spearheaded by
the Turkish military itself and fuelled by the bourgeois parties (both
right-wing and the nominally `left-wing’) as well as a section of the
news media. Such a military intervention would pose a major threat to
the social and democratic rights of the working class. The WSWS at the
same time has warned that this threat in no way justifies any
political support to the AKP or any other bourgeois force.
During the days preceding the recent Ergenekon detentions, some
critically important information and documents regarding the campaign
of the military against the AKP government were leaked to the
press’namely the daily newspaper Taraf.
It is now known that on the evening of March 4, Osman Paksut, the
second-highest judge on the constitutional court, had a secret meeting
with ground forces commander General Ilker Basbug. It took place just
after two Kemalist parties petitioned the Constitutional Court to
overturn a constitutional change passed by the AKP allowing women to
wear the Islamic headscarf at universities. A month later, the court
accepted the closure case against the AKP brought by the chief
prosecutor.
Paksut first denied the meeting had taken place, but later on he was
forced to admit that he met Basbug. This meeting proves what the WSWS
pointed out after the court case was filed: lying behind the case is
an attempt by the generals to use the courts to overthrow a
democratically elected government.
Taraf also published two documents detailing the plans of the general
staff to mobilise public opinion against the government and carry out
a series of measures to destabilise and overthrow it.
According to the leaked documents entitled `Information Support Plan
and Information Support Plan Activity Table,’ the general staff’s plan
went into effect in September 2007, soon after the July 22 national
elections, which was a huge blow to the line of the military and its
civilian henchmen.
The `Activity Table’ provides the background of Paksut-Basbug meeting
as well as recent harsh statements issued by the top echelons of the
Turkish judiciary, which created a row between the judiciary and the
government and caused the further escalation of political
tensions. (See `Turkey: Conflict escalates between government and
judiciary’).
For example, Article 5 of the `Activity Table’ reads: `Ensuring that
the universities, the presidents of supreme judicial courts, the
members of the press and the artists who have the power of forming
public opinion act in line with the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) by
maintaining contact with these people.’
In the `method’ section the document notes: `The suitable grounds and
opportunities will be created for this contact; [these contacts will
be established] at the level of the chief of General Staff, the deputy
chief of General Staff, the commanders, the General Staff Headquarter
Commands and the Secretariat General of the General Staff; there will
be a great deal of scrutiny to ensure that the people to be contacted
have the necessary qualities of defending and protecting the
fundamental values of the TSK.’
Such leaks’including Ornek’s diaries’show that the military is not
immune to infiltration by the Islamists.
On the same day as the latest arrests, Turkey’s chief prosecutor,
Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, went before the Constitutional Court to
reiterate his demand for the banning of the ruling AKP, once again
claiming that the party seeks to impose an Islamic state and sharia
law. The case is expected to conclude at the end of August.
Behind this seemingly `judicial’ dispute between so-called
`secularist’ and Islamist camps lies a deep historical chasm between
two wings of the Turkish bourgeoisie. These internal political
conflicts have already assumed the form of an internecine war. Given
the lack of a politically independent movement in the Turkish working
class based on a genuinely internationalist and socialist programme,
this crisis has assumed an extremely malignant and threatening
character.