EIGHT MORE DETAINED IN ERGENEKON OPERATION

Zaman
23.02.2008
Ä°stanbul

A further eight people with suspected ties to the Ergenekon gang,
a shadowy and deep-state-linked criminal organization, were detained
yesterday by the Ä°stanbul police.

Those taken into custody as part of the operation, carried out as a
joint effort by the organized crime and counterterrorism departments
of the Ä°stanbul police, included two university lecturers and a
journalist — Associate Professor Emin Gurses from Sakarya University,
Associate Professor Umit Sayın and journalist Vedat Yerener.

On Wednesday, PaÅ~_a Umit Erenerol, the self-declared head of the
so-called Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate, based in Ä°stanbul, was also
detained due to his alleged links to Ergenekon.

A police raid in June of last year uncovered an arms depot in a
house in Ä°stanbul’s Umraniye district. The discovery sparked an
investigation that culminated in the arrests of dozens of members
of the Ergenekon gang, a neo-nationalist group that is accused
of involvement in plans to stage a violent uprising against the
government.

The prosecutor in the Ergenekon case has said the gang worked to
create disorder and chaos through divisive and violent acts so the
public would be willing to accept the intervention of the military
to restore order.

The group is also suspected of involvement in the murder of three
Christian missionaries in Malatya in 2007, the 2006 murder of a priest
in the northern city of Trabzon, the murder of Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink in 2007, a 2006 attack on the Council of State and a
grenade attack on the Cumhuriyet newspaper in 2006. These are only
some of the accusations the prosecution has made so far in the course
of the investigation.

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