THE ARREST OF THE UNTOUCHABLES
Mustafa Akyol

Turkish Daily News
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Turkey

Something quite unprecedented happened in Turkey the other day. Early
in the morning, a police force of about 6000 launched an operation
to arrest 25 influential men, including two retired four-star
generals. One of them, HurÅ~_it Tolon, is said to have reminded the
police, "I am a general!" Yet, apparently, this did not save him
from being taken from Ankara to Istanbul to be questioned by the
prosecutors who lead the famous and controversial "Ergenekon" case.

In case you have missed it, here is a brief definition of
Ergenekon. The term actually comes from an ancient Turkish legend,
but it has become much more relevant to contemporary politics from
about a year ago. On June 12, 2007, the police found dozens of grenades
and other explosives in an Istanbul apartment. Following the links,
they soon reached a nationalist gang which was apparently planning to
use these weapons, and perhaps others, against the "enemies of the
state." Dozens of people were arrested and some of the information
acquired from them pointed out that these people had established a
network called "Ergenekon" in order to "save" Turkey from the Justice
and Development Party, or AKP, government, the European Union process,
and all the liberal reforms.

Turkey’s Propaganda Due?:

Another important piece of evidence came from the "coup diaries"
of former Navy Commander Ozden Ornek. These personal notes, which
somehow leaked to the press from his personal computer, showed that
a few generals planned a military coup as early as 2004, since they
were so frustrated by the "treacherous" policy of the "Islamist" AKP
government in Cyprus. Having failed to get support from other generals,
and especially the top one, the then Chief of Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkök,
these generals decided to work "from the bottom to the top." Their
idea was to provoke the society, rally the secularist and nationalist
NGOs, and prepare the ground for a military coup. Ergenekon was,
according to this theory, what they organized to achieve this
end. They, apparently, were the masterminds behind crimes such as
the murder of Hrant Dink, the liberal Turkish-Armenian journalist,
and the shoot out in DanıÅ~_tay, the Council of State, which was
designed to look like an act of Islamist violence.

If all this is true, the Ergenekon is something like the Propaganda
Due, or P2, which was an extreme right-wing covert network that
traumatized Italy until its discovery in 1981. And its unraveling
can only be a blessing for Turkey’s democracy.

But we don’t know for sure whether all this is true. The evidence so
far has persuaded many liberals — some secular and some religious —
but what is important is, of course, what the prosecutors will find
out and what the courts will decide upon.

Therefore, it is only natural, and actually welcome, that the
Ergenekon investigation has been broadened the other day. The arrest
and questioning of the two retired generals, and especially of Å~^ener
Uygur, who was apparently right at the center of all the coup plans
of 2004 and 2005, was actually most needed. Yesterday’s news hints
that the Istanbul prosecutors who had ordered these arrests are almost
finished with their indictment, which will be out in a few days. These
recent arrests and searches, it seems, were to give them the final
pieces of information they needed.

The revenge of the AKP?:

Despite all that, quite many people are furious with the arrests. They
ask how such "eminent figures" can be arrested at all. They argue
this is the "revenge" that the AKP government is trying to take
from its secularist opponents. Republican People’s Party, or CHP,
leader Deniz Baykal, as usual, is most insensible and rants about
"the methods of Hitler and Stalin."

This is all nonsense. First of all, it is not the AKP government that
is leading this investigation and thus ordering these arrests. It is a
group of Istanbul prosecutors, who are, by definition, independent. And
it is funny that all those commentators who asked us to "respect
the judicial process" vis-a-vis the closure case of the AKP are now
rallying against another judicial process.

Secondly, if the AKP government wanted to strike back those who wished
to take it down, it would first try to introduce a constitutional
amendment that would minimize the power of the Constitutional Court,
and thus save itself from the closure case. Quite the contrary, AKP
has been quite "reconciliatory" since the beginning of the closure
case. There is no point for them to "hit back" in a way which
will not make their life easier in the Constitutional Court. Some
conspiracy theorists say, "It is no accident that the arrest took
place on the day that the chief prosecutor would speak against the
AKP at the Constitutional Court." If the arrest had taken place a
few days earlier, I bet they would say, "It is no accident that the
arrest took place a few days ago." Despite the presumption of the
conspiracy theorists, most things in the world are accidents.

There is also no point in asking "how such respectable people can be
arrested." In a country governed by the rule of law, everybody can
be arrested and questioned if there are serious signs showing that
they are involved in a criminal organization. I don’t mean that the
gentlemen under arrest are such criminals, and I hope that they are
not, but it is the job of the prosecutors and judges to decide upon
these questions.

At the end of the day, there is not much to worry about. If all these
names are innocent, then it is good for them; they will be cleansed
of charges. If they really had links with this coup-stirring gang,
then it will be good for Turkey to have revealed that.

And, besides everything else, Turkish prosecutors have taken a step
forward for our democracy by daring to question two top generals. For
a long time, we have seen them as untouchable. Yet they are, like
the rest of us, only mortals.

–Boundary_(ID_4v646d3uGQ8Or3lQSviN0g)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress