EX-PM SAYS ILLEGALITY IN 90S CREATED ERGENEKON

Hurriyet
Jan 15 2009
Turkey

ANKARA – A former prime minister has admitted that Turkey used
illegal methods in its fight against terrorism during the 1990s and
that today’s Ergenekon investigation could be seen as a consequence
of those actions.

During a television show late Tuesday, the former prime minister and
Rize independent deputy, Mesut Yılmaz, said: "We accept today that
no political agenda can justify acts of terrorism. What we still
could not agree on, however, was that the rule of law could not be
cast aside. Illegal anti-terror operations caused corruption in the
institutions that ignored it, and people employed for those purposes
became the scourge of the state," Yılmaz said.

The use of illegal operations was due to practical needs, he
said. Police formed a special unit to use against the Armenian Secret
Army for the Liberation of Armenia, or ASALA (a terrorist group that
killed more than 40 Turkish diplomats and their family members),
he said.

"That unit is the core of the group of people that we are now dealing
with. They were 40 or 50 at the beginning. They received special
training and sent to foreign countries. ASALA was dismantled, but
then the terrorist (outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party) PKK started
in 1990s," Yılmaz said. "Then the government, under Prime Minister
Tansu Ciller, in 1993 and 1994 reorganized these units under the
Special Operations Unit. The illegal movements of some anti-terror
members were known to the state, but "those institutions, including
the government, that supported them for legitimate purposes did not
want to compromise them." Yılmaz was the leader of the Motherland
Party until 2002 and prime minister for brief intervals in 1991, 1996,
and between 1997 and 1999. Yılmaz also sounded pessimistic about
the outcome of the Ergenekon case. Susurluk was an apparent incident,
whereas Ergenekon is an ambiguous concept, he said.

"People are held in custody for 10 months without any concrete charges
against them. I do not think anything of value will emerge from this,"
Yılmaz said.

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