Sunday’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 18 2009

Our military’s suspected role in Ergenekon

by IHSAN YILMAZ

The operation into the Ergenekon terrorist organization is continuing
at full speed. Despite the hundreds of hand grenades, all sorts of
weapons and bombs and recorded telephone conversations of the suspects
speaking about crime plots, some sections of society still seem unsure
about the operation. This shows only one thing: The psychological
warfare machine behind the organization must be magnificently
powerful. In Turkey, only the state can have such a machine.

Some argue that the suspects who are now in jail are adventurous
people who acted on their own, separately from state structures. But
this argument is not convincing. We are not talking about a few
lunatics with handguns. If we look at both the hard evidence and
circumstantial evidence, these suspects have had access to all kinds
of the military’s weapons. It is not just an incident where a few
people stole a few weapons and bombs from the military. We have around
10 — as far as we know — cells, such as Atabeyler, Sauna, Oktay
Yıldırım and Co. and Mustafa Sönmez, who
are either retired or current military officers. And when they are
caught, they are caught with enough military ammunition to create
havoc in Turkey.

There could only be two possibilities with regards to this. First,
while the military was daydreaming or meddling in daily politics,
these officers stole these hundreds of weapons skillfully and without
anyone suspecting a thing. No one in the army has seen them. No one
ever suspected them. No one ever counted the number of bombs and
weapons in the inventory of military compounds or in "Gladiotic
civilian places." Is this what our army is all about? Of course not;
we have been indoctrinated otherwise.

In contrast to undisciplined, lazy and unskillful civilians who only
think about their worldly and carnal pleasures, the army has been the
most perfect, effective and disciplined of our institutions. If that
is the case, how could these military officers steal so many weapons
and bombs not once, not twice or even three times, but every single
time? Even an ailing grocer would catch people stealing apples or
pomegranates from his shop and here we are talking about hundreds of
hand grenades! If our army’s performance is worse than an old ailing
grocer, is this not another convincing reason to ask about the
military’s transparency, accountability and expenditures in line with
universal standards?

But I do not believe that our army is failing us to that horrible
extent. If that were the case, God forbid, we would not be safely
living in Turkey. That takes us to the second possibility and in our
logical cul-de-sac there is no other exit. Our military in almost full
hierarchical order has known about these activities all along and
maybe kept them as both a secret and a kind of bargaining chip. If we
take into account the fact that there has been a kind of implicit
protection of suspect military personnel, we should question why the
military has not been so sensitive about its weapons, bombs and, most
importantly, its prestige and honor. Refusals or extremely slow
reactions of the chief of general staff to investigate the claims are
other intriguing questions.

We now know that the National Intelligence Organization (MÄ°T)
informed the military about the clandestine, illegal activities and
cell structures of these suspect military officers years ago, but the
military prosecuted, accused and convicted no one for these crimes,
which, I am sure, should be conceived as outside the freedom of
expression. If we study the 1971 coup attempts by the usual suspects,
İlhan Selçuk and Co., as detailed by Hasan Cemal, Celil
Gürkan and several others, the four star commanders of the
forces were hoping that the subordinates would be successful in their
coup attempts and these generals would be president and so on. But
when MÄ°T foiled the subordinates’ plot with the help of Mahir
Kaynak, the four-star general switched sides and betrayed the
subordinate officers and their very "respected" civilian helpers.

Could similar things happen in the 2000s? Come on. Adm. Ã-zden
Ã-rnek’s memoirs are simply carbon copies of the 1971 attempts.