Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 15 2008

Court remains silent on deep state links of judge shooter

A court on Wednesday sentenced a lawyer to life in prison for killing
a senior judge in 2006, but the suspect’s links to a shadowy crime
network with connections to the military were not mentioned in the
ruling.

In the May 2006 gun attack inside the Council of State, the country’s
top administrative court, attorney Alparslan Arslan killed one judge
and wounded four others. Arslan had stated previously that he had
acted in protest of a ban on the Muslim headscarf in schools and
universities. The attack shocked Turkey and triggered mass secularist
protests against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
However, police investigations into another gang later suggest
Arslan’s attack was incited by people whose motives had little to do
with religious concerns.
During the trial Arslan had been quoted as saying that the aim of the
attack was to punish the "shameful actions against God’s religion,
the Prophet and Muslims." He had also been quoted as saying that he
planned to kill the then-president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a staunch
defender of the secular order. However, the fundamentalist remarks
seem to be part of a front, as another prosecutor’s ongoing
investigation into a crime gang called Ergenekon — which was
involved in a number of politically motivated attacks, including the
murder of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink — revealed connections to
Arslan.

Ergenekon, which was unearthed in police raids last month, is a
neo-nationalist group with links to groups in the military and
bureaucracy aiming to discredit the government and its efforts to
boost freedoms in Turkey. Gangs like Ergenekon in Turkey are believed
to operate as branches of a mechanism referred to as the "deep
state," which takes illegal and often violent measures to shape the
country to suit its own political interests and nationalistic
sentiment.

Arslan has also been charged with bombing the secularist newspaper
Cumhuriyet. The hand grenade used in the attack was part of a batch
produced by the state and was found in a house full of munitions and
explosives in Ýstanbul. Plenty of other evidence documented by a
prosecutor currently working on the Ergenekon investigation links the
Dink murder, the Cumhuriyet attack and Arslan’s attack on the Council
of State to the group’s plans to create chaos before a military
takeover of the government planned for 2009.

15.02.2008

Today’s Zaman Ýstanbul

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress