ERGENEKON INDICTMENT REOPENS GENDARMERIE MAJOR’S MURDER CASE
Today’s Zaman
13 August 2008, Wednesday
Turkey
An investigation into Ergenenekon, a shadowy network whose
suspected members are accused of having planned and staged attacks
and assassinations for the ultimate aim of toppling the government,
has prompted state prosecutors to take a fresh look at the murder of
a gendarmerie major, a case closed as unresolved 15 years ago.
Documents and evidence seized in raids and searches in the homes
and offices of suspects during the Ergenekon investigation — which
started in the summer of 2007 and has expanded to its current state
where at least 80 people are being indicted, including retired army
members — have shown that the group was linked to the assassination
of Cem Ersever, a gendarmerie commander killed in November 1993 after
being kidnapped.
The Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office, which had investigated the
Erserver murder last May, requested and received from the Ä°stanbul
Prosecutor’s Office files on Ersever, which were found during a
search in the home of retired Gen. Veli Kucuk, a major suspect in the
investigation thought to have masterminded many of the organization’s
politically motivated attacks.
Documents seized in the Ergenekon investigation and submitted to a
court of law last month in a 2,455 page indictment, plus more than
400 folders of evidence supporting accusations, shed light on most
of Turkey’s unresolved murder cases — mostly assassinations of
journalists, high-ranking security officials and academics — that
occurred in the 1990s. Files found on JÄ°TEM — a secret intelligence
agency with no legitimate basis and the existence of which has been
denied officially despite substantial evidence to the contrary —
include information that might be key to solving the Ersever case,
even after 15 years.
Ersever’s secret archive
Ersever was a former major who left the army after Gendarmerie
Commander Gen. Etref Bitlis was killed in a suspicious plane
crash. Ersever, in a confession made to the press after he left the
army, informed the public of figures who would later become notorious
in Turkey after a car crash in 1996 in the town of Susurluk. The
car crash — in which a police chief and an internationally sought
criminal were killed, and a deputy who had led a southeastern Kurdish
clan armed by the state against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)
was seriously injured — confirmed for the first time the Turkish
public’s suspicions of a "deep state."
Ersever’s confessions were later compiled in a number of books by
author Soner Yalcın. Before his assassination, the major also said
he had been in charge of JÄ°TEM’s southeastern operations.
Ersever’s body was found in Ankara on Nov. 4, 1993. His girlfriend
and right-hand man were also killed, and his archive disappeared.
The archive, which had been lost for more than a decade and reappeared
in Kucuk’s house, might also shed light on the unlawful activities
Ersever did for JÄ°TEM.
Prosecutor investigates PKK Ergenekon link
Ergenekon prosecutors have demanded records of all contacts the jailed
founder and leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)
has had during his stay as the sole inmate of the İmralı prison
island. A notice discovered by the press this week, addressing the
Bursa Prosecutor’s Office and written on June 27, demands the records
of all of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s contacts.
In the response note, Bursa prosecutors agree to share records of
Ocalan meetings with his lawyers but will withhold records of his
conversations with other persons, saying these should be requested
directly from the İmralı Prison administration.
The news that the prosecutors have already acted comes one day
after the Vatan newspaper reported that Ocalan said he has important
information to share with the prosecution. The notice shows that the
prosecutors have acted before him. The prosecutors have yet to decide
whether to call Ocalan to testify as a witness.
The 2,455 page indictment backed by more than 400 folders of evidence
against the suspected Ergenekon members, who include retired senior
army generals, academics, civil society representatives, journalists
and mafia leaders, draws links between the PKK and the Ergenekon
network. The indictment presents evidence and witness accounts clearly
suggesting that the members of the organization who formerly worked
in various intelligence units of the state had used the PKK to shift
public opinion in favor of their agenda, which aimed to eventually
trigger a military coup.
Malatya, Dink and Santoro murders
The investigation has also uncovered evidence linking Ergenekon
to the assassination of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in
January of last year, the killing of Italian priest Father Andrea
Santoro in February 2006 and the brutal murders of three Christians,
one a German national, killed in the province of Malatya in April
of last year. In all three cases, the perpetrators were uneducated,
violent, ultranationalist young men. Lawyers and prosecutors have
claimed obstruction of evidence on the part of security officials in
the Dink and Malatya murder trials.
The Ergenekon indictment, prepared by public prosecutors Zekeriya Oz,
Mehmet Ali Pekguzel and Nihat TaÅ~_kın, also offers evidence linking
the group to the murder of a secularist judge in a shooting in 2006,
the attempted murder of former Higher Education Board (YOK) President
Erdogan Tezic and a hand grenade attack at the Cumhuriyet daily,
known for its staunch secularism.
"Given the purpose and consequences of these attacks, it is obvious
that they were orchestrated from a single center, seeking to create
chaos, anarchy, terror, disorder and conflict in Turkey and embarrass
the nation before the international community," the prosecutors
wrote. They noted, however, that they had failed to offer enough
evidence from the Dink, Malatya and Santoro murders due to the
structure of the Ergenekon organization, which is made up of cells
that are unaware of and unconnected to each other.
A master plan to create the ideal woman
One of the most curious documents seized during the Ergenekon operation
is a file titled the "Turkish Woman Master Plan," depicting the ideal
Turkish woman in the minds of the organization’s administrators and
methods to make the women in society closer to this ideal prototype.
The plan, which also lists the negative characteristics of Turkish
women, says: "They are socially passive. They live in the past and
have no expectations or confidence for the future." However, it also
praises Turkish women, using almost literary language for their love
of the motherland.
The plan to create the ideal woman makes the following observations
about Turkish women: "The literacy rate of our women is very low. They
have no economic independence. They have accepted poverty as an
act of fate, and their personalities have been suppressed. They
have no confidence. They are afraid to think, and they are in
a state of laziness of thought. They are inclined to believe in
superstitions. They are ineffective inside the family. They have
no knowledge of our Central Asian roots. The properties of our
matriarchal family structural have been erased from their minds. Their
personalities are mostly cowardly or they don’t care about others. They
are under sexual oppression. Their religious preferences are under
the influence of men."
The plan, which seeks to bring the Turkish woman to an effective
position in the "social, political, economic, cultural and educational"
spheres, also went into the indictment as proof of Ergenekon’s social
engineering plans.
Ergenekon phone transcripts reveal secrets
Meanwhile, transcripts of dozens of Ergenekon suspects monitored
by the prosecution for months during the investigation have been
revealing interesting secrets. Records of phone conversations of
Ergenekon suspect Ä°lhan Selcuk, publisher and chief columnist of the
staunchly secularist Cumhuriyet daily, have already made public the
results of a survey showing that Cumhuriyet’s readers did not read
the daily’s columnists, contrary to what had been published previously.
In the transcript, Selcuk tells the person on the other end of the
line that a survey has shown that nobody is interested in their
columnists, but that he will order a false report prepared showing
the opposite of this. In another conversation, he praises an Ak?am
columnist for an anti-religion article, saying, "Yes he is smart,
but he is a homosexual."
–Boundary_(ID_9gjJyXLqi7emCRCN 20lVGw)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress