FENER PATRIARCHATE IS ‘TROJAN HORSE,’ ERENEROL CLAIMS

Today’s Zaman
Dec 19 2008
Turkey

The spokesperson for a group calling itself the Turkish Orthodox
Patriarchate testified yesterday in the trial against Ergenekon, a
clandestine criminal network charged with plotting to overthrow the
government, and claimed that the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate based
in Fener is a Trojan horse silently waiting to attack Turkey.

In her defense testimony at the Ä°stanbul 13th High Criminal Court
yesterday in the 28th hearing of the trial, which started in late
October in the Ä°stanbul township of Silivri, Sevgi Erenerol gave
an account of her organization’s history and progress over time. She
said "the Orthodox" at some point chose Trabzon for a meeting place,
claiming that businessman Rahmi Koc and Greek Orthodox Patriarch
Bartholomew also had plans to attend the meeting. However, the two
were not allowed to get out of their helicopters by local nationalists,
she maintained. She claimed that this had caused problems in Trabzon,
saying this incident was the reason behind some of the scandalous
murders in the county over the past few years, including the killing
of an Italian priest in Trabzon and the murder of Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink in Ä°stanbul, perpetrated by an ultranationalist
youth from Trabzon Also in her defense statement Erenerol criticized
a recent campaign by Turkish intellectuals and academics to apologize
to Armenians for the pain caused by their forced deportation from
Turkish lands in 1915. She also claimed that those who were defending
the country against the attempted destruction of Turkey by Fener
Greek Patriarch Bartholomew were put in jail as terrorists under the
Ergenekon trial.

Erenerol thought to be high-level administrator

The prosecution accuses Erenerol of being one of the top administrators
of the Ergenekon terrorist organization. She was arrested on Jan. 26
on charges of founding and being the leader of an armed organization,
inciting people to armed revolt against the government and illegally
recording private information.

The indictment claims that the church where Erenerol is the
spokesperson is a secret meeting place for Ergenekon.

However, in yesterday’s hearing she denied all charges directed
against her, saying she was not a member of the Ergenekon terrorist
organization and that she had no knowledge of such an organization. She
said all nationalists in the country had been turned into targets
after the armed attack on the Council of Sate in 2006, after which
a retired captain was arrested.

Relation to other Ergenekon suspects

She admitted that she knew Ergenekon suspects Oktay Yıldırım and
Muzaffer Tekin but added that she wasn’t close to them. She said she
really respected Tekin, adding that she was close to his wife. She
told the court that she had also met Mehmet Zekeriya Ozturk during a
program on the National Channel television station. She also said she
knew suspect Ergun Poyraz from the funeral of Necip Hablemitoglu,
a secularist academic killed in an unsolved murder in 2002. "He
is a gift to me from Necip. He stays at our house when he comes to
Ä°stanbul," she said. Ergenekon is also suspected of orchestrating
the Hablemitoglu murder.

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