ERGENEKON TRACES FOUND IN Ä°P’S SOUTHEAST ACTIVITIES

Today’s Zaman
July 25 2008
Turkey

More details have emerged concerning 26 people detained on Wednesday
in raids conducted as part of an investigation into Ergenekon, a
powerful and illegal organization suspected of plotting to overthrow
the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.

No official charges have yet been pressed, but the suspects are being
accused of various offenses such as fomenting chaos, bearing arms
without a license, kidnapping, holding people against their will
and provoking the nation to rebel against the government. Among
the suspects detained on Wednesday are National Solution Journal
Editor-in-Chief Ahmet Akgul and Professor Uckun Geray, who garnered
attention for participation in protests and demonstrations of the
Workers’ Party (Ä°P), the leader of which, Dogu Perincek, was detained
and later arrested by a court earlier on in the investigation.

The police suspect that some of the recently detained individuals were
part of plans to trigger chaos in the Kurdish-dominated Southeast,
including events in a village in Diyarbakır in 2005 that involved
Ä°P leader Perincek and some retired generals. At the time, Perincek
and his retired army friends had taken to supporting residents of
a small village in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır against
a man who they claimed had occupied their land with the support of
the state. Ä°P leaders and their supporters celebrated the Oct. 29
Republic Day in that village in 2005. Both Perincek and a retired
senior general, Servet Cömert, in their speeches encouraged the
villagers to rebel against the state and not to pay taxes because the
"state is oppressing and exploiting you." Cömert told the villagers,
"The bonfire you have lit here will engulf the entire country."

After that celebration, two people died in a fight that broke out
between the villagers claiming to have lost their land and those who
had rented land belonging to the Treasury for agriculture. This fight
turned into a blood feud, in later months resulting in the killings of
two other people. Recent documents that were seized indicate that the
village was part of a pilot project in attempts to overthrow the AK
Party. In addition to Perincek and retired generals, representatives
of the Ulusal Kanal and of the Ataturkist Thought Association (ADD),
whose President Å~^ener Eruygur is currently under arrest for his
involvement in Ergenekon, and some academics had participated in the
southeastern activities of the Ä°P.

The police also say an attack in Diyarbakır in which 11 people died
in September 2006, demonstrations in March of 2006 in the Southeast
in which 10 people died and demonstrations organized by the Ä°P and
the Association for the Union of Patriotic Forces (VKGB) — some of
whose leaders had also been detained earlier — are likely to have been
planned by the Ergenekon network. Police records from those incidents
clearly state that all these events had been planned to foment chaos.

Meanwhile another person was detained yesterday in Konya, bringing
the total number of detainees in this week’s raids staged by the
Konya Police Department to 27. Yesterday’s detention was based on
testimonies of suspects taken into custody on Wednesday.

Investigation to continue in Adana

Konya Chief Prosecutor Fatih Ozdemir in a written statement yesterday
said the investigation into the detentions in Konya will continue in
the southern city of Adana.

So far, 86 people have been charged with involvement in a bid to
stage a coup against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government,
which hard-line secularists accuse of Islamist subversion.

The Ergenekon investigation under which yesterday’s detentions were
made began in the summer of 2007, when a house filled with arms and
ammunition in Ä°stanbul’s Umraniye district was discovered. As the
investigation expanded, an organization was revealed that is suspected
of responsibility for a number of politically motivated murders,
including that of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January
2007 and attacks at newspapers and judicial entities to incite chaos
and engineer a military takeover.

The 86 defendants named in the indictment include the head of the
Ä°P, a small nationalist party, journalists, businessmen, academics,
drug lords and retired army officers. A separate indictment is to be
prepared for two senior retired generals who were found to be involved
with Ergenekon.

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ADD board member resigns abruptly Å~^engul Hablemitoglu, widow of
murdered scientist Necip Hablemitoglu, has unexpectedly resigned from
the Ataturkist Thought Association (ADD).

The professor was elected to the ADD board of directors two weeks
before submitting her resignation, which cited a heavy workload that
would not leave her with enough time for the association’s activities.

ADD President and former Gendarmerie Forces Commander Gen. Å~^ener
Eruygur was recently detained in relation to the investigation
against Ergenekon, a shadowy criminal network made up of retired —
and possibly current — army members, academics, journalists and others
allegedly plotting a coup against the government. Prosecutors have
linked Ergenekon to several unresolved shootings, including Professor
Necip Hablemitoglu’s assassination. Ä°stanbul Today’s Zaman with wires

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress