DETENTIONS REVEAL ERGENEKON’S COVERT ASSASSINATION PLOTS
Today’s Zaman
Jan 12 2009
Turkey
A new wave of detentions last week from the clandestine terrorist
network Ergenekon has revealed that the group was planning to
assassinate Alevi and Armenian community leaders, the prime minister
and members of the Supreme Court of Appeals, acts that would have
dragged Turkey into chaos if they had been carried out.
Nearly 40 individuals were detained last week 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 prosecutors, who made public the rationale for the detention
warrant, indicated that the police, who had been monitoring the
suspects’ phone conversations for months, had found evidence
that Ergenekon was engaged in preparations for a number of
assassinations. The group was plotting to kill prominent Alevi
community leaders such as Ali Balkız and Kazım Genc as well as
Sivas Armenian Community President Minas Durmaz Guler along with a
number of journalists.
The prosecutions states that the police have established that two
grenade attacks on the Cumhuriyet daily in May 2006 and a shooting
at the Council of State in 2006 that left a senior judge dead and two
others injured were acts of the Ergenekon terrorist organization. The
warrant further noted that under the investigation an Ergenekon house
full of munitions and 27 hand grenades was discovered in June 2007,
along with another arms depot in EskiÅ~_ehir, also in June 2007, and
it in addition referred to the existence of top-secret information
concerning state security and plots to assassinate journalists,
members of the high judiciary, the prime minister and journalists.
The warrant further said that technical monitoring on the part of the
police revealed that Ergenekon was preparing to assassinate a prominent
figure who is a member of the Armenian community in the city of Sivas
and that those detained in the recent wave of detentions were taken
in on suspicion of membership in Ergenekon, carrying out activities
in accordance with the organization’s purposes and acquiring weapons
to facilitate the implementation of the sensational assassinations.
Ergenekon’s munitions inventory
Meanwhile, two separate arms depots were found during last week’s
operations. On Friday the police discovered a weapons cache buried
in a forest in Ankara’s GölbaÅ~_ı district through a map found in
the home of one of the newest suspects. Searches in five other areas
were also launched based on evidence seized by police during sweeps
of homes and offices of the suspect. These searches yielded no results.
In GölbaÅ~_ı, officers discovered 30 hand grenades, three
flame-throwers, many plastic explosives, ammunitions for Uzi machine
guns and other ammunition buried close to a road near the capital,
officials said.
Weapons were also seized in the home of Lt. Col. Mustafa Dönmez
in Ä°stanbul’s Sapanca district. Long-range Kalashnikov rifles,
bullets, hunting rifles, binoculars, bayonets and a pair of car
license plates were also discovered. Twenty-two hand grenades were
found in Dönmez’s laundry basket. Dönmez himself escaped and is
now considered a suspect at large.
Details of Eregnekon’s coup plans
Evidence gathered from last week’s searches have shed light on
Ergenekon’s coup plans for the year 2009. The munitions were found
based maps discovered in the home of the former deputy chairman of
the police department’s special operations unit, Ä°brahim Å~^ahin,
who was detained last week. The GölbaÅ~_ı weapons are significant
and provide important clues as to what last week’s detainees would have
done had they not been captured. The police also established that the
maps were professionally drawn up at the time of the Council of State
attack in 2006. The investigators are now looking for the person who
drafted the maps, unlikely to have been created by Å~^ahin himself,
given their precision and level of professionalism.
Evidence and the prosecution’s opinion indicate that the group could
have dragged Turkey into chaos. Å~^ahin and the retired generals
were detained after months of surveillance established that they
had organized meetings to plot a coup to overthrow the government in
2009. Indeed, during the Ergenekon trial, in which 86 suspects are
already being indicted, it became obvious that suspect Umit Sayın
was expecting a coup to take place every morning.
The lower-ranked military officers currently on active duty detained
on Wednesday, such as Bekir C., Ersin D and Oguz B., were supposed
to carry out some of the operations, including the assassination of
an Armenian leader in the city of Sivas. Flamethrowers, grenades and
TNT found in GölbaÅ~_ı, the police believe, will not only expose
the future plans of the organization but will also illuminate some
incidents of the past.
Some sources close to the investigation believe that former Mayor
of Ä°stanbul Bedrettin Dalan, who is also on the run in the US, is
the head of Ergenekon’s financial department. Also, the prosecution
now has reason to believe that a coup plan, called Glove, was put
into motion two months ago. Ergenekon’s plans for the coup were
so detailed that the organization had already decided who would be
prime minister and president. The coup, planned shortly before or
after the local elections scheduled for March, 29, 2009, would be a
small-scale takeover aimed at disabling the government. Sources allege
that retired Gen. Tuncer Kılınc in Ankara and retired Gen. Kemal
Yavuz in Ä°stanbul were leading and training the military cadets who
would participate in the takeover. The police now have records of
every coup meeting.
The first step would be the killing of important non-Muslim community
leaders in Sivas. Two hand grenades were found in the house of Oguz
Bulut, assigned the job of killing Sivas Armenian Community leader
Minas Durmaz Guler. Bulut is the former president of the Sivas Idealist
Clubs, youth groups formerly closely associated with the Nationalist
Movement Party (MHP), although the party has made significant efforts
under its current leader, Devlet Bahceli, to distance itself from them.
A similar case in Italy
Meanwhile, analysts point out that when Italy was cleaning out in "its
own Ergenekon," known as Gladio, which was set up in the 1950s with
the support of the US and UK intelligence services under the Italian
Defense Ministry but which then became an independent group, carrying
out hundreds of terrorist attacks, the same kind of high-profile
detentions took place as in Ergenekon terror organization case. So
far, slightly more than 100 people are suspects under the Ergenekon
investigation, compared to a total of 7,417 against whom criminal
complaints were filed in Italy during the Gladio operation. More than
2,990 public servants were brought before the judiciary during the
course of the investigation. At least 900 businessmen appeared in court
over links with Gladio. The higher-ups who were convicted included
12 former ministers and deputies. The president was forced to resign.
Recent developments in the latest detentions
Ten out of 21 of those who were referred to a court after the police
investigation, including former Deputy Chairman of the Special
Operations Unit Å~^ahin, were arrested by court order. Former
Secretary-General of the National Security Council (MGK) retired
Gen. Tuncer Kılınc and another retired senior member of the army
were released without condition by the court, despite the prosecutor’s
recommendation to free the two with travel restrictions. Seven others
were also released by the court on Saturday. The interrogation of
three others was incomplete as of Sunday.
Guruz, the former head of YOK, was also released yesterday by the
prosecution, without referring him to court.
–Boundary_(ID_cclqHiU7Rtnjp5ZRmELKvA)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress