TURKEY: CONSPIRACY INVESTIGATION REVIVES CONCERN ABOUT THE "DEEP STATE"
Nicholas Birch
EurasiaNet
Feb 11 2008
NY
An ongoing investigation in Turkey into a gang suspected of
high-profile killings and a plot to murder Nobel Prize-winning novelist
Orhan Pamuk is captivating the nation. The investigation suggests that
the so-called Deep State, a shadowy network of ultra-nationalists that
views itself as above the law, continues to be a force that must be
reckoned with.
In all, 29 people – including a retired general and a prominent
lawyer – have been charged by an Istanbul prosecutor with "provoking
armed rebellion against the government." They allegedly conspired to
assassinate public intellectuals, Kurdish politicians, even military
targets, as part of a campaign to destabilize Turkish society and
force the military to intervene.
Dubbed Ergenekon by the Turkish press, the conspirators apparently
aimed to foment a military coup by 2009. Yet, after two years of
increasing social tensions that culminated in army coup threats in
April 2007, the group already seems to have a lot to account for.
"If only half the rumors about Ergenekon are true, the complete
eradication of this secret network is crucial for Turkey’s future,"
Joost Lagendijk, a member of the European Parliament and chair of that
body’s Committee on Turkey, wrote in a commentary published February
8 by Today’s Zaman.
"Authorities must be praised that they have not given in to fear
and have brought this conspiracy to daylight," Lagendijk continued.
"However, Turkey has won only the first battle. To win the war against
the ‘Deep State,’ the government has to persevere."
One of the men charged in the conspiracy is Alparslan Arslan, currently
on trial for the May 2006 murder of a judge at the High Court in
Ankara. The attack on this secularist bastion triggered a backlash
that culminated in last spring’s massive secular demonstrations. The
judge’s death was blamed at the time on extremist Islamists. Yet,
while Arslan himself appears to be religious, many of those behind
him are secular-minded, self-styled patriots.
It’s a mix Turks call ‘the Red Apple coalition’, a counter-intuitive
collaboration based on rabid nationalism and a determination to block
Turkey’s path from authoritarianism to full democracy.
Unsurprisingly, evidence linking Ergenekon to the murder of Hrant Dink,
a mould-breaking Armenian-Turkish journalist whose assassination last
January sparked deep social polarization, is mounting fast. Press
reports the group has also been linked to the grisly murders of
three evangelical Christians in April 2007 in the southeastern city
of Malatya. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
One of those arrested in a series of police raids in late January
was Kemal Kerincsiz, the lawyer who opened dozens of cases against
dissident intellectuals including Dink and Pamuk. A key suspect,
meanwhile, is retired Gen. Veli Kucuk, whose presence at Dink’s
trial – Dink later wrote – convinced him that the death threats he
was getting were serious. The alleged founder of a shadowy military
police intelligence unit suspected of the murders of dozens of Kurdish
activists in the 1990s, Kucuk also has strong links to Trabzon,
the home town of Dink’s killers.
"He recently set up a security company there, and owns a local
magazine," explains Belma Akcura, an investigative journalist whose
book on state-Mafia links was published in 2007. "Who writes for the
magazine? A retired colonel linked to the nationalist group Dink’s
killers frequented."
Akcura points to another of the bizarre coincidences piling up around
the Ergenekon investigation: the High Court gunman and the Trabzon
man suspected of masterminding the Dink murder attended the same
secondary school in the eastern city of Elazig.
Kucuk rose to notoriety in 1997, when it turned out that he was the
last man to talk to a convicted nationalist multi-murderer who died
when a car carrying a police chief and a pro-state Kurdish MP crashed
at high speed. Dubbed Susurluk, the ensuing scandal shed a grim light
on the Turkish state’s dabbling in organized crime.
For many Turks, Kucuk’s presence in Ergenekon indicates that the
gang is connected to the "Deep State," an amorphous collection of
politicians, civilian and military bureaucrats and Mafiosi that is
trying to foist an anti-democratic agenda on the country.
Back in 1997, the then prime minister blocked a parliamentary
commission’s demand that Kucuk give testimony, and the army promoted
him shortly afterwards. Some see his arrest now as evidence of
progress in Turkey’s democratization process. "It’s early days,
but I’m optimistic we’re seeing signs of a fundamental change in
the balance of power between the elected government and the state,"
says Alper Gormus, editor of a magazine that was shut down in 2007
after it revealed a top admiral’s plans for a military coup.
Others point out that, back then, Kucuk was then an active officer.
Now he’s not. "What we have here is a bunch of retired men trying to
use the influence they once had to their own ends," says Fehmi Koru,
a prominent columnist who was on the gang’s hit-list.
Most analysts think the real crunch will come when magistrates move
against acting officers whose Internet chats on the finer points of
Ergenekon strategy began leaking into the press in late January. The
allegations brought an uncharacteristically cautious public statement
from Turkey’s Chief of Staff. "The Turkish armed forces are not a
criminal organization," declared Gen. Yasar Buyukanit. "Those who
commit an offense as army members will be tried in court and punished."
In an investigation whose success ultimately depends on government
determination, analysts are divided as to how far it will go. Some
think the army – whose coup threats in 2007 served only to boost
the government’s popularity – will think twice before mulling an
intervention again. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Others think the government’s backing for the investigation has more
to do with short-term power struggles with the army than any deep
desire to cleanse the state of its links to crime.
For Belma Akcura, the government’s limitations have become evident in
its lack of interest in following up the Dink murder, an investigation
it has no vested interest in. "I’ve looked into 100s of political
murder cases, and in all of them, all you get at the end are the foot
soldiers, never the top of the pyramid," she says. "’To have the will
to get to the top, you have to believe in law, in democracy. These
people do not."