[ ERGENEKON CASE]
"Ergenekon" is the name given to a clandestine, ultra-nationalist organization in Turkey with ties to members of the country's military and security forces. The group is accused of terrorism in Turkey. Its agenda has variously been described as Anti-American, anti-EU and isolationist.
ERGENEKON CASE
The Clandestine Paramilitary Organization:
Biggest threat to the democracy in Turkey and to the US-Turkish Relations
"Ergenekon" is the name given to a clandestine,ultra-nationalistorganization inTurkeywith ties to members of the country'smilitaryandsecurityforces.The group is accused ofterrorisminTurkey. Its agenda has variously been described as Anti-Americanist, anti-EU and isolationist.
Over a hundred people, including several generals, party officials, and a formersecretary generalof theNational Security Council, have been detained or questioned since July 2008. Hearings began on 20 October 2008, and are expected to continue for over a year. Commentators in the Turkish press have called Ergenekon "the case of the century". According to the indictment of the trial against the organization, the group's claim to legitimacy is that it allegedly protectsnational interests, which the defendants believe are incompatible with the rule of thedemocraticallyelected governmentand are harmed by Turkey's alleged concessions to the United States and European Countries, in short, West. In Turkey, the extensions of the state—the establishment—that are considered responsible for this are referred to as the "deep state".
Members have been indicted on charges of plotting tofoment unrest, among other things by assassinating intellectuals, politicians, judges, military staff, and religious leaders, with the ultimate goal of toppling the incumbent government in a coup that was planned to take place in 2009. This follows allegations published ina news magazine, Nokta, that severalabortive coupswith the same intent were planned a few years ago. The proximate motive behind thesefalse flagactivities is said to be to discredit the incumbentruling party and derailTurkey's accession process to the European Union. Several months after revealing the coup, the magazine was closed because of the military pressure. In addition, through the judiciary system the clandestine organization is trying to expand the pressure on the media with regard to the court case and trying to have journalists report against the case. Now around 4,000 journalists are facing trials or investigations due to their reports on the Ergenekon case.
Turkey has already been through four (4)"successful"military coupssince democratic elections were first held in 1950. At the first coup d'état in 1960, the junta executed the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the country,Adnan Menderesand two of his ministers. There were more coups in 1971, in 1980 and in 1997, with additional numerous attempted "un-successful" coups all through these years.
Ergenekon'smodus operandihas been compared toOperation Gladio's Turkish branch, theCounter-Guerrilla. It has been said that the people who constitute the "deep state" are members of, or make use of, this covert organization, which was established at the beginning of theCold Warto contain communism.
Executive Summary
The Ergenekon investigation is a collaborative action taken by all criminal justice system’s agencies in Turkey.It initiated with an anonymous phone call to Trabzon Gendarmerie’s tip lineabout that evidence (explosives and weapons) in 2007. Trabzon Gendarmerie submitted the information to Istanbul Gendarmerie. After that, Istanbul Gendarmerie and Istanbul Police Department jointly conducted operation to apartment belonged to Yıldırım Yigit. The grenades and weapons found in that apartment belonged to Oktay Yıldırım who is a retired noncommissioned army officer and he is currently under arrest in relation to the case. According to Yigit, he was constantly threatened to not testify that the explosives belonged to Oktay Yıldırım.
The Chief Prosecutor of Istanbul assigned a team leaded by prosecutor Zekeriya Oz to investigate this organization. The team investigated the case for 16-month and prepared a2,455-page indictment with 30 separate charges against the suspects including being a member of a "terrorist organization" illegal possession of weapons, and provoking the public for armed insurgency against the Turkish government. The Ergenekon case is now called the Turkish Trial of the Century. Even some said Pandora's Box has been opened. Many believe that this trial will help people understand the entire history of aTurkish Gladio. Majority of Turkish public is supporting the case because they believe that this case will enhance the Turkey's democracy.
The organization was attempting to destabilize Turkey and produce support for a coup against the government. Therefore,there are many charges against the suspects of this organization. They are:
· Membership in an armed terrorist group
· Attempting to destroy the Turkish Government
· Provoking people to rebel against the Government
· Murder of Italian priest Father Andrea Santoro in February 2006
· The attack on theState Councilin 2006
· The murder of Turkish-Armenian journalistHrant Dink, a prominent Turkish Armenian journalist,in 2007
· Trying to assassinate prominent Turkish writer Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk
· A shooting at the Council of State
· A grenade attack on Cumhuriyet, a left-wing newspaper
· Several attacks on priests in Malatya, a city of Turkey
· Planning to assassinate Recep T. Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey
There are possible links between the Ergenekon and below listed terrorist networks
· Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
· The extreme-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C),
· The Islamist organization Hizbullah,
· The ultranationalist Turkish Revenge Brigades (TİT),
· The Turkish Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army (TİKKO),
· The Marxist-Leninist Communist Party(MLKP) and
· The Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), an extreme group wishing to reinstate the Islamic Caliphate"
Here is the list of ammunition were recored during the investigation so far (as of December 2008):
39 hand grenades,
2 detonated hand grenades,
11 kg of C-3 explosive,
1160 gr explosive blocks,
1 gas bomb,
10 fuses,
5 signal rockets,
3 smoke bombs,
21 TNT blocks,
1 re bomb,
84 capsules,
24 re cartridges,
50 bomb fuses,
35 bomb fuses of various sizes,
1 training grenade,
2 explosive pipes,
18 gr Emolite explosive,
13-centimeter long fuse for explosive capsules,
3 tubes of hydraulic acid,
3 long-range rifle,
2 rifles,
2 air rifles,
21 shotguns,
3 blank shooting revolvers,
34 cartridges,
1074 shotshells,
73 hunting shotshells,
1 silencer,
2 detonated mortar shells,
9 detonated anti-aircraft shells,
A bayonet, knives, a large number of bearings, time-controlled fuses and other material used in, making bombs, and wireless communication devices.
The Ergenekon Investigation had a direct impact on anti-American sentimentin Turkey since neonationalist groups including key figures of Ergenekon terrorist network was leading promoters of anti-Americanism. According to Transatlantic Trends, Turkish warmth toward the US increased in this year 2008 for the first time since 2006.
Another important aspect of theErgenekon case is its Russian connection. Most of the arrested individuals has strong tie to Russia. Former Gendarmerie General Command intelligence department head Levent Ersöz who was also the alleged sales director of Rosoboronexport, a Russian arms exporter, fled the country since a search warrant has been issued for him in the Ergenekon investigation. An Interpol red bulletin was issued for him. He is currently in Russia free of movement.Alexander Dugin, a loyal supporter of Putin, is a great supporter of the Ergenekon Terrorist network. He asked necessary action to response investigation against anti-American and pro-Russian network from Putin and Medvedev. He is considering this operation as a challenge of Turkey against Russia.
Called the “Cage Operation Action Plan,” the desired result from the intimidation of Turkey’s non-Muslims and the assassination of prominent ones, was that an increase in internal and external pressure on the ruling party would ensue, leading to diminishing public support for the party.
The Cage action plan was signed by Lt. Col. Ercan Kireçtepe and was planned to be put into operation by a team of 41 members of the Naval Forces Command. It envisaged the assassination of prominent non-Muslim figures and the spreading of propaganda to increase internal and external pressure on the AK Party, leading to its demise in politics, according to the plan.
The action plan would be implemented to lend support to suspects arrested so far as part of the Ergenekon investigation, render ineffective so-called psychological warfare waged by the AK Party and its supporters (against the military), change the course of the agenda in Turkey, boost the morale of the junta within the Naval Forces Command, and win the appreciation and support of the public. The blame for each of the assassinations by the junta would be put on the AK Party.
“The Action Plan To Combat (Islamic) Reactionaryism”, which was seized in the Office of Serdar Öztürk, one of the defendants under arrest as part of the Ergenekon probe, comprises 300 pages. The action plan incorporating strategic assessments contains suicides, bombing actions and attacks, which would lead to repercussions in the public.
A 4 page part of the document, which has been allegedly prepared by Senior Colonel Dursun Çiçek working in Support Section Directorate No 3 of the Operations Department in the Office of the Chief of General Staff, was published in the daily, Taraf, on June 12, 2009.
As recent update,in the last wave of the Ergenekonterrorist organization operation, currently, 36 individuals,including three retired generals and 10 active officers of various ranksis in detention in the police facility for interrogation due to their possible link to the terrorist network. In the house of fugitive Lt. Colonel Mustafa Donmez in the city of Sakarya, countless amounts of weapons, including 73 hand grenades, numerous guns and rifles along with Kalashnikov and Kanas firearms, have been found up to this point during raids as part of the ongoing investigation into Ergenekon. In addition to this arsenal, underground arsenals were recovered with 30 types of explosive and LAWs in Ankara’s Golbasi district based on a map found in the home of İbrahim Şahin, a former police chief of SWAT department. He is accused of giving order to assassinate an Armenian communitymember in the city of Sivas. Law Enforcement authorities are expecting other arsenals spread all over the Turkey.
The length of the indictment was received great amount of critics but many intellectuals declared their support to investigation and requested deepen the investigation in order to get rest of the people tied up with the Ergenekon. They see the case as an important step to democratization of Turkey.
Until now many people were taken into police custody (86 suspects by November 2008) in relation to the Ergenekoncase. At the beginning 37 members of the organization were arrested, including well-known military commanders, political leaders, newspaper columnists, and academicians, some of them are;
o Sener Eruygur, Retired Full General and Former Head of Turkish Gendarmerie
o Hursit Tolon,Retired Full General
o Veli Kücük, aretired general,
o Dogu Perincek, the chair of the Workers’ Party (IP),
o Ilhan Selcuk, columnist at theCumhuriyetnewspaper,
o Kemal Alemdaroglu, the former rector of Istanbul University (IU),
o FikretKaradag, aretired colonel,
o Kemal Kerincsiz,ultranationalist lawyer,
o Sevgi Erenerol,press spokeswoman for the “Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate,”
o Tuncay Özkan, journalist, former owner of Kanal Türk TV station, and leader of the anti-Islamist "How many are we?" movement
o AdilSerdar Saçan, former police chief of Istanbul Organized Crime Division
o Sinan Aygün,President of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce
o Sami Hoştan,Susurluk scandal convict
o Ferit Ilsever, General Manager of Ulusal TV Channel
o Emin Gürses, Associate Professor at the Sakarya University.
Turkish Gladio more violent than any other
"The history of the secret army in Turkey is more violent than that of any other stay-behind in Western Europe", Daniele Ganser, a Swiss researcher, states in his seminal work on calendestine organizations in NATO countries.
Ganser describes the shadowy network in Turkey as "Turkish Frankestein".In Turkey the secret NATO stay-behind army was called “Counter-Guerrilla” and operated under the direction of the Special Warfare Department. According to Turkish General Talat Turhan the secret army was involved in terror, torture and coup d’états.
Codenamed "Gladio" ('the sword'), the Italian secret army was exposed in 1990 by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to the Italian Senate, whereupon the press spoke of "The best kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II" (Observer, 18. November 1990) and observed that "The story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller." (The Times, November 19, 1990). Ever since, so-called 'stay-behind' armies of NATO have also been discovered in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece and Turkey. They were internationally coordinated by the Pentagon and NATO and had their last known meeting in the NATO-linked Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) in Brussels in October 1990.
To read Ganser's full article on Turkey,please find Appendix.1
Ergenekon Network Exacerbates Anti-Americanism in Turkey
No matter how the Ergenekon trial ends, it will have a direct impact on anti-American sentiment in Turkey. It is no secret that the neonationalist groups, which include the leading figures of the Ergenekon network, have promoted anti-Americanism in Turkey.
Thereading of the indictment against 86 suspects in the first trial against Ergenekon, a criminal network accused of plotting to overthrow the government, was completed at the trial's 11th hearing. When the process of reading the indictment ended, suspects started giving testimony in their defense. The first of 86 defendants to testify was Oktay Yildirim, a retired noncommissioned army officer with alleged links to the 200 discovery of 27 7 hand grenades inside a house used as an arms depot in Istanbul’s Umraniye district. Despite the fact that Yildirim’s fingerprints were found on the box in which the 27 hand grenades stored, he claimed that neither he nor his lawyer had seen the hand grenades in the Umraniye house (Today’s Zaman, November 12).
From the very beginning of the Ergenekon investigation and throughout the trial process the country has been divided into two camps. On the one hand, liberal, moderate Islamists argue that Ergenekon is a criminal network that carried out most of the unsolved political murders in recent Turkish history. On the other hand, Kemalists and neonationalists tend to downplay the importance of the Ergenekon network.