KUCUK REMAINS OBSTINATE DESPITE CLEAR-CUT EVIDENCE

Today’s Zaman
Dec 16 2008
Turkey

A retired general considered one of the most important suspects
in the trial of Ergenekon, a clandestine network with links to
behind-the-scenes intelligence units whose members are charged with
plotting to overthrow the government, refused to answer questions
directed at him by the prosecution and co-plaintiff lawyers at the
Ä°stanbul 13th High Criminal Court yesterday in the 26th hearing of
the trial, which started in late October in the Ä°stanbul township
of Silivri.

Veli Kucuk, a retired brigadier general believed by the prosecution to
be a higher-up in the Ergenekon organization, denied all accusations
against him, including the prosecution’s claim that he was the founder
of a clandestine, unofficial and largely illegitimate intelligence
unit in the gendarmerie, known to the public as JÄ°TEM.

Kucuk was arrested in January. The prosecution seeks two life sentences
with no possibility of parole.

The retired general refused to respond to about 30 questions yesterday,
following the three-hour defense testimony he delivered in the
morning session.

According to the prosecution, Kucuk — who allegedly has close contacts
in the underground world, including in such organizations as Turkish
Hizbullah, the extreme-left groups Revolutionary People’s Liberation
Party/Front (DHKP/C) and Dev-Sol and the separatist terrorist Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) — plays a very significant role in Ergenekon.

In the cross-examination session in the afternoon, the prosecution
asked whether Kucuk had told journalist Talip Karlıbel, during a
meeting the two had in Germany, that "a coup d’état could be staged
in Turkey soon." Kucuk said he did not know the journalist. He also
contradicted his initial testimony to the police in which he admitted
making the statement. "I have never given such an interview in the
past," he said. He also changed his earlier testimony that he knew
retired Gen. Å~^ener Eruygur, another Ergenekon suspect. "He is
a long-time commander. We might have met at the Military House in
Fenerbahce," Kucuk said.

In response to a question from co-plaintiff lawyers representing the
Cumhuriyet daily, a bombed attack on which is suspected of being
carried out Ergenekon, on whether he had participated in a dinner
discussing the sale of the Cumhuriyet daily, he said, "I refuse
to answer."

Kucuk gave the same answer to every question asked by a lawyer
representing Å~^ebnem Korur Fincancı, the former head of Turkey’s
Forensic Medicine Council, who is also a co-plaintiff in the
case. Kucuk’s lawyer objected to the reading of excerpts from a
personal notebook kept by Kucuk, saying this would be a violation
of military confidentiality laws. The objection was sustained by
the court.

There was also brief tension between the judges and one of the lawyers,
who maintained that questions he asked that were not allowed by the
court were pertinent to the indictment.

Accusations against Kucuk

Kucuk faces 17 charges, including "founding and directing an armed
terrorist organization; inciting people to armed revolt against
the government of the Republic of Turkey; attempting to overthrow
the government by force; inciting to murder with malicious intent;
inciting to detonate explosives to create fear and panic; inciting
vandalism and being in possession of explosives illegally; seizing
and publicly disclosing confidential material; violation of the Radio
Communications law; violation of the law on protection of cultural and
natural assets; not informing authorities on the location of a convict
or evidence in a crime; attempted influence on fair justice; inciting
soldiers to disobey orders; recording private information about an
individual; supplying arms and acquiring classified information." He
is being represented in court by his daughter, attorney Zeynep Kucuk.

Kucuk denied all charges directed against him in his testimony
yesterday. "If I was trying to set up an alternative army, as is
alleged, I would have done so before retiring," he said, adding that
the army unit where he served has no relation to JÄ°TEM. He said, "You
can’t find a single unresolved murder in the regions where I served."

Kucuk also denied any relation to the Susurluk affair — a car crash
that blatantly exposed unholy alliances and gangs in the state,
security forces and their links to the crime world for the first
time in 1996 — despite having been taken into custody at the time
of the Susurluk investigation as a suspect. He was not brought to
trial and did not even testify to a parliamentary committee on the
case at the time because a military committee of three generals
did not give permission for him to testify. The generals concluded
through their research that Kucuk was not involved in any criminal
formation. Kucuk at the time said he talked to crime world leaders,
such as Abdullah Catlı, Sami HoÅ~_tan and Sedat Peker, only to get
intelligence. However, a cell phone belonging to Mahmut Yıldırım,
a JÄ°TEM hit man now presumed dead, had been found to be registered
under Kucuk’s name. The same phone had been called dozens of times by
crime leaders, including Catlı. The police found that the same phone
was used to call casinos belonging to Omer Lutfu Topal, a businessman
whose murder is also suspected to be linked to Ergenekon.

In yesterday’s testimony, Kucuk said he heard about the Susurluk
accident in 1996 from speaking to HoÅ~_tan and Peker. He also defended
the two infamous mafia bosses as not being leaders of organized
crime organizations.

Kucuk said he had been in the military for 41 years, noting that he
had served as a brigade commander for 11 months and was promoted to
general despite not being a senior officer. He said he had retired
from the Bilecik command in the year 2000, after which he founded
a private security company with two other people, including former
İstanbul Gov. Erol Cakır.

He also told the court that during the time he served in the Southeast,
he had made 500 copies of a Kurdish tribal leader’s essay and had given
dozens of conferences on the Kurdish question. He said he had traveled
to every village in the region to explain that the eastern question in
reality is not the Kurdish question, but the Armenian problem. "Most
certainly, somebody didn’t like that, and that’s why I’m here."

He denied knowing all but 14 of the suspects, including lawyer Kemal
Kerincsiz and Workers’ Party (Ä°P) leader Dogu Perincek, as well as
HoÅ~_tan and Peker. "And I don’t think they are crime organization
leaders anyway," he told the court.

Kucuk said he had known and cared about Huseyin Kocadag and Sedat
Bucak, both of whom were in the car that crashed in the Susurluk
incident. Kocadag, a former police chief; Bucak, a southeastern clan
leader whose men were armed by the state to fight separatist violence;
and Catlı, an internationally wanted mafia boss, were involved in
an accident in 1996 near the small township of Susurluk while riding
in the same car. Kocadag, Catlı and his girlfriend, a former model,
were killed in the accident. No serious arrests followed the ensuing
investigation, which actually exposed, for the first time in modern
Turkish history, a gang with links to the state.

Kucuk had been suspected of links to the Susurluk gang, but he was
never tried. He refused to testify regarding Susurluk accusations.

Kucuk said there had been a long-term and well-planned effort to ruin
him. "I have never made a mistake in my life; I have never violated
the law. But I never thought the state would devise a conspiracy
like this," he said. He accused the prosecution of wanting to try
the republic of Ataturk and seeking to change the country’s regime.

He claimed that the prosecution was trying to portray people who had
not committed any crime but love their country as terrorists. "I am
proud that I am being tried in such a tragicomic trial," he said.

"This case is a campaign of slander and besmirching. I am sorry about
being a suspect in front of false accusations. This is targeting
all the institutions of the Republic of Turkey and foremost the
armed forces. It shouldn’t have been this easy to accuse people with
laughable lies. The dark mentality that has not absorbed the republic
is trying to silence those voices opposing it by using state agencies,"
he said.

He referred to all the allegations as imaginary. He said the Veli
Kucuk described in the indictment was imaginary. "The allegations
are inconsistent and illogical," he said.

He also said Tuncay Guney, an alleged former Ergenekon member
whose services were apparently also briefly used by the National
Intelligence Organization (MÄ°T), had offered Kucuk a jeep as a
present. He also requested the court investigate why Guney’s name is
not in the indictment.

He also denied any links to an armed attack at the Council of State
in 2006, which killed a senior judge. Pictures of Kucuk standing
next to the hit man were printed soon after the attack. He said the
person in the picture was somebody else. He also denied the testimony
of secret witnesses against him in the case, sharing with the court
his guesses on the identities of some of the secret witnesses.

Eighty six suspects, 44 of whom are being held in the Silivri Prison
are facing trial in the Ergenekon case at the Ä°stanbul 13th High
Criminal Court, being heard at a makeshift courtroom on the prison
grounds.

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