DOZENS MORE DETAINED IN NEW WAVE OF RAIDS ON ERGENEKON
Today’s Zaman
Jan 8 2009
Turkey
Seven retired generals were detained yesterday along with at least
30 others as part of the ongoing Ergenekon investigation. A former
senior prosecutor and the former head of the Higher Education Board
were among those detained.
Nearly 40 individuals were detained yesterday in simultaneous
police operations staged in six cities as part of the ongoing
investigation into Ergenekon, a shady clandestine network of groups
and individuals accused of plotting to overthrow the government. The
new detainees include military officers, an academic with left-wing
political activist background, the former head of the Police Special
Operations Unit, seven retired generals and the former head of the
Higher Education Board (YOK).
The raids, ordered by a court on a query from prosecutors investigating
Ergenekon, started in the early morning hours yesterday in six cities,
including Ankara, Ä°stanbul, Ä°zmir and Sivas. The first person to
be detained was Yalcın Kucuk, a professor who in various left-wing
journals and parties defended an ideology called the National
Democratic Revolution. Kucuk’s computer and some of his documents
were seized during the operation.
In response to the question, "Do you know why you were detained?" from
a journalist as he was being taken to the Ankara Police Department
for interrogation, Kucuk replied, "The dictatorship."
Another person who was detained was Erdal Å~^enel, a retired
senior general who worked as the legal undersecretary of the General
Staff. Å~^enel was still in his post during the Feb. 28, 1997, period,
which started with an unarmed military intervention that forced the
government to resign.
Retired Gen. Kemal Yavuz; retired Col. İlyas Cınar; former head of
the Special Operations Unit of the National Police Department, Ä°brahim
Å~^ahin; and Independent Republican Party (BCP) Deputy Chairman Engin
Aydın were also detained. Tuncer Kılınc, another retired general,
was also detained. Eleven people, including a navy captain and a senior
police officer, were detained in Sivas in yesterday’s operations. The
police officer was identified as E.E., while the identity of the navy
captain was withheld.
The police found 22 hand grenades, four revolvers and one Kalashnikov
rifle in the house of a lieutenant colonel detained yesterday as part
of the operation in the city of Adapazarı, officials said.
Police intelligence indicated that the 10 people detained in Sivas
on suspicion of Ergenekon membership were planning sensational
assassinations, Sivas Gov. Veysel Dalmaz announced yesterday at a
news conference. Two hand grenades, a pen-shaped gun, 36 bullets,
a large number of unlicensed rifles and other ammunition were found
during the raids, the governor said.
Speaking to the police after his client’s arrest, Yalcın Kucuk’s
lawyer Levent Gök said the search in Kucuk’s home was conducted under
a search-and-capture warrant issued by the Ä°stanbul 9th High Crime
Court. Gök said both of Kucuk’s homes were searched by the police,
who seized all the CDs and documents inside the houses.
Gök said his client had maintained his high spirits and had been
cooperative. "He, with his known views, is a public figure, a very
select and special intellectual. He is a valuable writer of ours who
has greatly contributed to democracy in our country. All of Turkey
knows Mr. Kucuk’s views both from his published articles, books and
appearances in the media.
"He, too, has failed to understand why this order to search his home
was given. He is a lover of our republic, a modern and contemporary
individual who believes in democracy. We believe that pressure and
threats against our intellectuals and writers will negatively influence
the democratic environment in our country," he said, adding that his
client would be questioned at the Ankara Police Department.
The police also searched the house of former Chief Prosecutor of the
Supreme Court of Appeals Sabih Kanadoglu yesterday, but Kanadoglu
was not detained.
Dalan to cut short US trip
Bedrettin Dalan, a former mayor of Ä°stanbul and president of the
Ä°stek Foundation’s board of trustees, is also being sought as part
of the Ergenekon investigation warrant. But when the police searched
Dalan and his assistants’ offices and an office at Yeditepe University
owned by the Ä°stek Foundation, they found that Dalan was abroad in
the US. In a statement made later in the day, Dalan said he would
be cutting his trip short and coming back to Turkey early because of
the investigation.
CHP deputies react to Ergenekon investigation
Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal called a press
conference yesterday over the detentions, criticizing the operation as
an attempt to move Turkey from its historical path to a new direction.
"The situation we are faced with shows that we are looking at a
political case and not a legal trial," he said. "In this case, we
don’t see the application of the law but rather a political settling
of accounts by the use of the law. You cannot oppose any state of law
in such a systematic way. We have seen this only in periods of regime
change. Similar to the period before Khomeini and Hitler. Respected
figures in society change places. We are faced with such a picture
again," he said.
He said the investigation was an attempt to scare those protecting the
republic and deter others that might follow in their footsteps. "This
is an effort to make reputable people in society answer [for
history]. These people are being placed in the same position as
members of the mafia. Why is this seen as a special case at a special
court?" he asked, saying the trial was seeking to make people answer
for being decent moral people who love their country.
"There is no doubt that the government is behind the trial. I have been
saying this all along," he said. Baykal also accused the government of
trying to change the structure of the media in the country. He said the
effort had at its target a change in the principles and values of the
republic. "The republic is being dragged into radical change. … There
is more need than ever before to defend the republic. It is obvious
that all these events are a part of this," he said.
He said it was being done to avenge the past, but did not
elaborate. "The kind of revenge that this is can be assessed
individually by everyone," he said.
Meanwhile, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Å~^ahin, in a statement he made
on the recent operation, denied allegations that the detentions were
politically motivated. "It is a completely judicial process. It is
not a political process. I am following it from the press just like
you do," he told press members while addressing their questions at
Parliament yesterday.
The trial of Ergenekon
A criminal court in Istanbul began trying 86 suspects, 45 of whom
are being held in prison, in the Ergenekon terrorist organization
case on Oct. 20. Among the suspects are several retired generals,
including one who headed an ultra-Kemalist organization that organized
massive anti-government rallies in 2007; other retired army officers;
a number of mafia bosses who were also ultranationalist youth
leaders in the ’70s and ’80s; an ultranationalist lawyer who filed
charges of "insulting Turkishness" against various intellectuals —
including writer Orhan Pamuk — over statements that contradicted
the state’s position; journalists; drug lords; the spokesperson of
a dubious organization called the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate;
academics, including the former rector of the Ä°stanbul University;
and a Council of Forensic Medicine expert, among others. A number
of people currently jailed on charges of Ergenekon membership were
also detained or called to testify in the Susurluk investigation
of 1996, which revealed similar shady links between a police chief,
a politician and the crime world.
The indictment, made public in July, accuses the Ergenekon network
of being behind a series of major political assassinations over the
past two decades. The victims include a secularist journalist, Ugur
Mumcu, long believed to have been assassinated by Islamic extremists
in 1993; the head of a business conglomerate, Ozdemir Sabancı, who
was shot dead by militants of the extreme-left Revolutionary People’s
Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) in his high-security office in 1996;
secularist academic Necip Hablemitoglu, who was also believed to have
been killed by Islamic extremists, in 2002; and a 2006 attack on the
Council of State that left a senior judge dead.
Alparslan Arslan, found guilty of the Council of State killing,
said he attacked the court in protest of an anti-headscarf ruling it
had made. But the indictment contains evidence that he was connected
with Ergenekon and that his family received large sums of money from
unidentified sources after the shooting.
The indictment also says retired Gen. Veli Kucuk, believed to be one
of the leading members of the network, had threatened Hrant Dink,
a Turkish-Armenian journalist slain by a teenager in 2007, before
his murder — a sign that Ergenekon could be behind that murder as
well. Kucuk was also detained but later released in the Susurluk
affair of 1996.
Suspects began appearing in court on Oct. 20, facing accusations
that include "membership in an armed terrorist group," "attempting
to destroy the government," "inciting people to rebel against the
Republic of Turkey" and other similar crimes.
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