ERDOGAN, ERGENEKON, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR TURKEY
By Michael Rubin

American Enterprise Institute
ll,pubID.28442/pub_detail.asp
Aug 8 2008
DC

Last month, Turkish prosecutors issued a 2,455 page indictment
detailing an alleged plot to overthrow Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan by an elaborate network of retired military officers,
journalists, academics, businessmen, and other secular opponents
of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Although the
precise facts of the case are not yet clear, the so-called Ergenekon
conspiracy appears to be a largely fictionalized construct, with an
ongoing investigation geared mainly to warding off constitutional
challenges to the ruling party, not coups.

Background

The AKP, the latest of several Turkish Islamist political
reincarnations, rose to power in November 2002 on a wave of popular
dissatisfaction with economic malaise and corruption scandals within
establishment parties. Although the AKP captured barely a third of
the vote, this translated into a two-thirds parliamentary majority
because much of the popular vote went to parties that failed to meet
the 10% electoral threshold for winning seats.

When the AKP came to power, Erdogan disavowed any intention
to implement the Islamist agenda he had embraced in the
past. Nevertheless, his government worked to weaken or disable all
of the inherent checks that would prevent the establishment of an
Islamic state in the longer run.

Although Erdogan has presided over economic growth averaging
nearly 7% per year, his management of the economy has been deeply
politicized. Turkey’s banking and financial board now consists
exclusively of AKP appointees, most of whom had careers in Islamic
finance institutions. A number of civil servants in technocratic
posts have said that the AKP has instituted an interview process,
controlled by party loyalists, to supplement the examination process
that screens government employees.

The AKP has greatly compromised the independence of the media. Its
most notorious encroachment came last year, when the government seized
control of the country’s second largest media group, ATV-Sabah, sold it
to a holding company managed by Erdogan’s son-in-law, and pressed state
banks and the emir of Qatar to provide the financing.[1] In addition
to cultivating a massive loyalist media base, the prime minister has
effectively bought the silence of other large media conglomerates by
distributing lucrative government contracts and privatization deals.

The AKP has also limited the military’s influence in politics by
reducing the power of the National Security Council and placing it
under a civilian head. This is not a cosmetic change. Almost every
month, government ministers appear before the council to answer
questions and justify government actions. The cabinet prioritizes the
National Security Council’s recommendations. Civilian leadership has
removed the military’s ability to set the agenda and, in practice,
strengthened the separation between uniformed services and civilian
governance.

The Erdogan government has tried to undermine Turkey’s secular
educational tradition, most notably by lifting a long-standing ban
on religious attire in universities. According to Egitim-Sen, a
left-of-center teachers’ union, Islamic influences are creeping into
textbooks.[2] Only fierce public opposition stalled more sweeping
educational initiatives.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer served as a critical check on the AKP’s
ambitions. During his presidency, he vetoed 65 bills, largely on
constitutional grounds, negating more than 6% of those submitted
by the AKP-dominated parliament.[3] For example, he vetoed a bill
that would have lowered the mandatory retirement age of judges. Had
it passed, the bill would have greatly expedited Erdogan’s drive to
replace Turkey’s justices with party loyalists. Since the AKP gained
control of the presidency last year, this check has been eliminated.

This leaves the judiciary as most powerful check on the AKP’s
power. The Constitutional Court, which has sweeping authority both
to overturn legislation and ban political parties that contravene
Turkey’s secular constitution, has remained staunchly independent
thus far because the president appoints the justices (from among
candidates nominated by other judicial organs). Although AKP
co-founder and parliamentary speaker Bulent Arinc warned in 2005
that the Constitutional Court could be dissolved if it continued
to veto legislation,[4] it remains intact and resolute. However,
the election of AKP loyalist Abdullah Gul as president means that
its independence won’t last forever.

The AKP has had more success exerting influence over the lower
courts. In December 2007, the government enacted a new law that
requires all judicial candidates to take an oral exam administered
by the AKP-controlled Ministry of Justice (codifying a practice
already in place). The Union of Turkish Bar Associations organized a
demonstration by thousands of lawyers, arguing that this law would
allow the ministry to screen candidates based on their political
and religious views. According to the US State Department’s annual
report on human rights practices in Turkey, the Erdogan government
has "launched formal investigations against judges who had spoken
critically of the government."[5]

Wherever the AKP has managed to penetrate the judiciary, the results
have been worrisome. Pro-AKP judges have placed liens against the
property of political opponents, seized media outlets, and overturned
earlier decisions levied against Islamists.

The AKP has extensive control over the police. Followers of Fethullah
Gulen, a cult leader whose followers seek to Islamize Turkish society
if not overthrow the secular order have, according to a broad range of
Turkish journalists, civil society leaders, and even Gulen followers,
infiltrated the police. The police often target secular opponents
of the AKP on both the national and local level. Businessmen who
donate money to AKP opponents have complained of police harassment
and spurious investigations.

The AKP has also expanded the authority of the police. In February
2007, according to the State Department, parliament "significantly
expand[ed] the authority of security forces to search and detain a
suspect."[6] Four months later, the Turkish news newspaper Radikal
noted a rise in allegations of mistreatment and torture by police
in Istanbul.[7]

One of the most egregious abuses of power in the criminal justice
system involved Yucel Askin, rector of Yuzuncu Yil University in
Van. Askin had staunchly opposed Erdogan’s efforts to reduce barriers
to college admission for students educated in exclusively religious
seminaries and also had enforced the ban on Islamic headscarves
on campus. In 2005, police raided his house in search of illicit
artifacts (Askin was a known collector of antiquities) and hauled
him off to jail. However, they were forced to release him after it
was discovered that he had government licenses for every artifact
in his possession. Three months later, police arrested him again,
this time on charges of accepting kickbacks from the university’s
purchase of medical equipment. Again, however, he was released when
a judge determined that the university bought the medical equipment
in question a year before Askin became rector. While Askin got his
life back, the university’s general secretary was not as lucky. Enver
Arpali committed suicide after being held for months in prison without
trial in the same case.[8]

While the AKP has moderated its Islamist agenda at the national
level in order to maximize its appeal at the ballot box and stave off
the threat of military or judicial intervention, secular opposition
leaders fear that this moderation is tactical–that Erdogan is biding
his time until obstacles are out of the way. "Democracy is like a
streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off," he said when
he was mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s.[9] At the local level, where
tactical caution is not required, the AKP continues to pursue a more
radical agenda in municipalities firmly under its control, such as
banning alcohol and imposing gender segregation in public transport.

Secular leaders also point to the prime minister’s dictatorial
style as a harbinger of what lies ahead. Erdogan, who once bragged
of being "the imam of Istanbul" when he was mayor of the city,[10]
rules over the AKP in much the same fashion. "Erdogan accepts no
advice and no criticism. He’s become a tyrant," one member of the
AKP’s own parliamentary bloc told The Economist.[11] AKP members say
that Erdogan handpicked the slate of parliamentarians who could run
for re-election under his banner. While the dictatorial control of
Turkish political parties is a phenomenon that spans the political
spectrum–affecting the center-left Republican Peoples Party (CHP)
and National People’s Party (MHP) just as much–the problem is more
worrisome in a ruling party that governs without coalition partners.

Rather than bridge the gap between Turkey’s religious and secular
constituents, Erdogan has widened it. Although the AKP won 47% of the
popular vote in the latest parliamentary elections last year, millions
of Turks took part in the waves of anti-government demonstrations
that erupted the preceding May.[12] In one recent public opinion poll,
only 30% of respondents said they would vote for the AKP if elections
were held today.[13]

Staunch secularists believe that this is an insufficient mandate to
make sweeping unilateral decisions on basic national issues, and they
are using one of their last remaining institutional footholds–the
Constitutional Court–to do something about it. In recent months, the
court has overturned Erdogan’s attempt to allow Islamic headscarves
in universities and formally sanctioned the AKP for its contravention
of the constitution (as well as levying financial penalties against
it). Erdogan’s supporters denounce such opposition as anti-democratic
and reactionary, even fascist. It is in this context that the Ergenekon
investigation emerged.

The Investigation

Allegations of a vast conspiracy by prominent secularists to murder
and terrorize civilians first began to dominate the headlines in March
2007, when the left-of-center Turkish political weekly Nokta published
what it claimed to be diary entries of retired admiral Ozden Ornek. The
excerpts discussed a 2004 plot to incite violence as a precursor to
a military coup. Although Ornek denied the authenticity of these
excerpts, their publication revived a long-standing claims that a
shadowy network of generals, intelligence officials, and organized
crime bosses have worked in tandem over the years to stage acts
of violence.[14]

The timing of these explosive revelations raised suspicions,
occurring just weeks before parliament was scheduled to elect a new
president, amid widespread speculation that the AKP would attempt
to put a dedicated Islamist in the post. While Gul (like Erdogan)
has moderated his public pronouncements over time, he was once very
direct. As Islamists rose in political power in the mid-1990s, Gul
said, "This is the end of the republican period . . . the secular
system has failed and we definitely want to change it."[15]

As Erdogan’s attempts to anoint Gul to the presidency faltered for
lack of a parliamentary quorum and the country prepared for early
elections, pro-AKP media outlets produced a stream of stories about
an alleged "deep state" conspiracy, reporting that went hand in hand
with efforts by Erdogan and his allies to portray secularists as the
true enemies of Turkey’s constitutional order.

In June 2007, police raided an apartment belonging to a retired
military officer in the Umraniye district of Istanbul and discovered
a cache of 27 hand grenades,[16] providing a modicum of evidence to
support what heretofore had been only rumor and coincidence. According
to police investigators, the grenades matched another one that was
used (but failed to detonate) in a May 2006 attack on the office of
the center-left newspaper Cumhuriyet.[17]

The government, for its part, argues that many of the Islamist terror
attacks that have taken place in Turkey in recent years are false
flag Ergenekon operations. In May 2006, an assailant swept into the
Danistay, the supreme administrative court. Shouting "God is great"
and "I am a soldier of God," he sprayed the justices with gunfire,
in alleged protest for the Court’s refusal to ease restrictions on
the Islamist headscarf, murdering Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin. Tens of
thousands of Turks attended his funeral, chanting anti-AKP slogans,
and heckling Gul (then foreign minister) when he arrived to represent
the government.[18] According to police, the assailant confessed to
participating in the Cumhuriyet grenade attacks, although his past
Islamism and the lack of evidence showing any linkage leads many
secularists to conclude that the killer gave a false confession to
further glorify his exploits.

In a similar fashion, various pro-AKP media outlets have suggested that
the murders of an Italian Catholic priest, Turkish Armenian writer
Hrant Dink and the April 2007 murder of Christian missionaries were
also Ergenekon corollaries.[19] The problem is that the Islamists
captured in these cases have no credible links to the secular
establishment.

The Umraniye raid led to the first of several arrest sweeps over the
next thirteen months. All of them coincided very closely with major
political developments and lacked adherence to basic investigatory
and judicial protocols. Authorities detained nearly all suspects
prior to issuing an indictment. While such detentions have occurred
before in security cases, seldom if ever did they involve such senior
personalities, continue for so long and with such sensationalist
media leaks.

Most of the arrests occurred in middle-of-the-night raids. Police held
these suspects incommunicado for the first 24 hours without allowing
them even to call their lawyers. In most cases, police initiated
questioning only on the fourth day of detention in order to raise
detainee anxiety. Lawyers for those arrested say that police have
refused to furnish them with transcripts of the interrogations.

Kuddusi Okkir was arrested in June 2007 on suspicion of financing the
alleged Ergenekon plot and held for over a year without charge. For
the first eight months he was held solitary confinement, with the
authorities refusing even to allow his wife to visit. When he was
diagnosed with lung cancer while in prison, officials rejected numerous
petitions to enable him to receive outside medical treatment. They
finally relented when he fell into a coma in early July 2008, but by
then it was too late–he died four days later without ever regaining
consciousness.[20] Another detainee held without charge, Ayse Asuman
Ozdemir, developed liver disease while in captivity and was also denied
critical medical treatment. She finally received furlough after the
death of Okkir caused an embarrassing uproar for the government,
but it may also be too late to save her.[21]

On March 21, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, chief prosecutor of Turkey’s Court
of Appeals, filed a lawsuit in the Constitutional Court demanding the
closure of the AKP and the banning of over 70 top AKP officials from
politics for five years for "violating the principles of a democratic
and secular republic." Erdogan responded hours later with a midnight
roundup of new Ergenekon suspects. Whereas previous suspects arrested
had been largely fringe figures, this time the net was widened to
include some of the most prominent secular intellectuals in Turkey,
such as Dogu Perincek, leader of the Workers’ Party; the bed-ridden
octogenarian editor of Cumhuriyet, Ilhan Selcuk; and Kemal Alemdaroglu,
a former president of Istanbul University. It appears that Erdogan also
put the offending judges under surveillance. A scandal erupted in May
when the vice-president of the Constitutional Court complained that
he was being followed. Uniformed police responding to his complaint
found that his pursuers were undercover officers.[22] However, there
have been neither subsequent charges nor explanations of the incident.

On July 1, as Yalcinkaya stood before the Constitutional Court to
present his case for closing the AKP, Turkish police responded with
another tit-for-tat roundup of leading secularists, including Mustafa
Balbay, the Cumhuriyet Ankara bureau chief; Sinan Aygun, the president
of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce; retired general Sener Eruygur, the
president of the Ataturk Thought Society, and retired general Hursit
Tolon. Once again, the timing of the raid was not coincidental–the
police received their warrant on June 29, but delayed executing it
until Yalcinkaya’s arguments were underway.[23]

On July 24, police detained another 26 people, including several
members of the Workers’ Party and staff members of Milli Cozum,
a right-wing journal, who were charged with "insulting top state
officials via media organs."[24] In total, over one hundred
journalists, politicians, and others have been detained in the
investigation.[25]

Many of the suspects in these later waves of arrests appear to
have been victims of expansive electronic surveillance and guilty
of little more than criticism. Those who have been released from
detention describe interrogations which resemble fishing expeditions,
with police asking them questions such as "Are you aware that you
have insulted government leaders many times?" and "Why do you swear
so much when you talk on the phone?" Police have even asked some
to list with whom they talked when they attended receptions at the
US embassy.[26] Selcuk was confronted with wiretapped conversations
he had with Cumhuriyet foreign correspondents, discussing their work
and story ideas. Ufuk Buyukcelebi, editor of Tercuman, told reporters
that police confronted him with a phone tap showing that he had said
the AKP "would be closed."[27] Balbay says that all police questions
related to his critical reporting on the AKP.[28] G-9, a group of
nine press associations, called the arrests "an effort to silence
opposition journalists."[29]

Another disturbing aspect of the investigation is the cozy relationship
between investigators and pro-AKP media outlets. The most egregious
example of this came in May 2008, when the Islamist daily Vakit
published an apparently wiretapped conversation between the deputy
leader of the CHP and a governor.[30]

When the authorities finally unveiled an indictment in July 2008,
the contents were unconvincing. The prosecutors said they prepared
the indictment with the assistance of 20 witnesses whose identities
they refuse to reveal. According to CNN-Turk, these witnesses will
also testify in secret.[31] The "coup diary" was omitted from the
indictment,[32] even though its alleged contents were the primary
impetus for the Ergenekon prosecution. Accordingly, the accused cannot
address the authenticity of the diary as it will not be entered into
evidence. The indictment appears to absolve both the military and the
Turkish intelligence service,[33] and limits the charges to terrorism
or forming an illegal group, rather than plotting a coup per say.

Especially troubling is that, despite being a couple thousand pages
long, the indictment lacks specificity as to which suspects are charged
with what crimes. Indeed, many of the charges center on incitement
and interfering in government work, the type of language more common
in dictatorships like Syria and Saudi Arabia than in Turkey. Selcuk,
for example, is accused of "providing guidance, with his writings,
to the suspects engaged in a coup effort,"[34] a charge that an
Islamist newspaper has also leveled against this writer.[35]

Another concern is the fact that Zekeriya Oz, the lead prosecutor in
the case, is a virtual unknown, in his early thirties, with previous
experience only as a public prosecutor in two small towns. This has
raised questions as to his competence and whether he has the stature
to resist political interference.

Even the limited amount of physical evidence in the case is only as
reliable as the integrity of the police who uncovered it. Suspiciously,
the grenades seized in Umraniye were reportedly destroyed by court
order (though some reports have suggested that only the explosive cores
were destroyed).[36] Should the justices uphold the police reports,
the defense will be unable to advance alternate theories about the
provenance of the grenades, the availability of their type across
Turkey, or the linkage between them and other incidents.

At any rate, there are widespread suspicions that police investigators
may have planted evidence. On April 10, 2008, workers at the Ankara
Chamber of Commerce reported the discovery of a handgun hidden in
a toilet in Aygun’s private office, which Aygun had them promptly
report. His subsequent arrest led his associates to suspect that
the gun had been planted to be found during a subsequent raid. After
his July 1 arrest, Nuri Gurgur, the organization’s assembly chair,
commented, "If we had not found that handgun then, the police would
surely find it today, and it would be impossible for us to prove
that Aygun had nothing to do with the gun."[37] Such suspicions will
rise as the indictment focuses on secret witnesses and computer files
whose origins are already disputed.

What Next?

Throughout this saga, pundits close to the ruling party have
repeatedly drawn equivalence between the Constitutional Court case
and the Ergenekon investigation. "Circles who invited everyone to have
respect for the judicial process in the [AKP] closure case raised hell
the other day during the Ergenekon arrests and made accusations that
Turkey has become a ‘police state,’" columnist Cengiz Candar wrote,
"But these same groups regarded the closure case as the judiciary’s
business."[38] Ali Aslan, a columnist for the Islamist daily Zaman,
expressed similar logic.[39] The obvious subtext of such columns,
many of which reference private conversations with the prime minister,
is that those who defend Turkey’s secular tradition have no right to
demand rule of law and or complain about prosecutorial misconduct. They
also indicate that the ruling party may be more interested in headlines
than in actually seeing the Ergenekon prosecution through.

In the end, the Constitutional Court did not ban the prime minister
from office or strip his parliamentary immunity, making it more
difficult to determine to what extent the Ergenekon case is fabrication
or exaggeration. An Istanbul court slated to hear the Ergenekon case
has cleared its docket until April 2009. At stake when a verdict
is returned on Ergenekon, though, will not just be Turkish national
security, but also the credibility of the judiciary.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.

Notes

1. "Circulation wars; Turkish media," The Economist, 10 May 2008.

2. "Flags, veils and sharia: Turkey’s future," The Economist, 19
July 2008.

3. Sabah (Istanbul), 30 March 2007.

4. Cited by columnist Sahin Alpay, Zaman, 7 May 2005. Review of the
Turkish Islamist press, BBC Monitoring, 7 May 2005.

5. U.S. State Department, Country Report on Human Rights Practices,
2007.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid; Radikal, 22 June 2007.

8. Sabah, 13 November 2005.

9. "The Erdogan Experiment," New York Times, 11 May 2003.

10. Hurriyet, 8 January 1995.

11. "Flags, veils and sharia: Turkey’s future," The Economist, 19
July 2008.

12. "Thousands stage new pro-secular rally in Turkey," Agence France
Presse 26 May 2007.

13. Milliyet, 30 June 2008. See also Gareth Jenkins, "Poll Suggests
Weakened but Stable Support for AKP," Eurasia Daily Monitor, 30
June 2008.

14. Stephen Kinzer. "State Crimes Shake Turkey as Politicians Face
Charges," New York Times, 1 January 1998.

15. "Turkish Islamists aim for power," Manchester Guardian Weekly,
3 December 1995.

16. "Ergenekon remains hidden in the shadows," Turkish Daily News,
17 July 2008.

17. Yavuz Baydar, "Conspiracies flourish in times of mass
psychosis." Today’s Zaman, 16 June 2007.

18. Sebnem Arsu, "Thousands March in Turkey at Funeral of Slain Judge,"
New York Times, 18 May 2006.

19. Today’s Zaman, the daily newspaper of the Islamist Gulen
movement, urged prosecutors to dig deeper into links between the Dink
assassination and the alleged Ergenekon conspirators. Emine Kart, "Dig
deeper into Dink murder-Ergenekon link." Today’s Zaman, 13 July 2008.

20. Yusuf Kanli. "Death of the ‘financier of a gang,’" Turkish Daily
News, 7 July 2008.

21. "Ayse Asuman Ozdemir tahliye edildi," Radikal (Istanbul), 18
July 2008.

22. See Gareth Jenkins, "Alleged Surveillance of Senior Judges Raises
Questions about Politicization of Turkish Police," Eurasia Daily
Monitor, 20 May 2008.

23. "Opposition says Ergenekon government tool," Turkish Daily News,
2 July 2008.

24. "26 detained in new wave Ergenekon arrests," Turkish Daily News,
24 July 2008.

25. Ibid.

26. Email communication with Turkish academic, Istanbul, 12 July 2008.

27. "Sorguda ilginc sorular," Hurriyet, 5 July 2008.

28. "Former generals arrested as Ergenekon leaders," Turkish Daily
News, 7 July 2008.

29. "Ex-generals, journalists detained in Turkish probe: report,"
Agence France Presse, 1 July 2008.

30. Vakit, 26 May 2008; "Watergate Scenes in Ankara: Who Bugged the
CHP?" Turkish Daily News, 29 May 2008.

31. "Military prosecutor steps into Ergenekon." Turkish Daily News,
15 July 2008; "Ergenekon indictment accepted," Turkish Daily News,
26 July 2008.

32. Ibid.

33. "Ergenekon indictment accepted," Turkish Daily News, 26 July 2008.

34. NTV television, 14 July 2008.

35. Hasan Karakaya, "Ergenekon-dan Neocon’-lara bir yol gider!" Vakit,
5 July 2008.

36. Taraf, 26 July 2008.

37. "A few hours when jeopardy doubled." Turkish Daily News, 2
July 2008.

38. Cengiz Candar, "Waking up to Ergenekon," Turkish Daily News,
3 July 2008.

39. Ali H. Aslan, "Turkey’s American Prosecutors," Today’s Zaman,
18 April 2008.