Turkey Tensions To Persist Unless Ergenekon Leaders Arrested

TURKEY TENSIONS TO PERSIST UNLESS ERGENEKON LEADERS ARRESTED

PanARMENIAN.Net
21.01.2009 15:44 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ With the Turkish political elite being divided into
Kemalists and Islamists, the current situation in Turkey is rather
complicated, an Armenian professor said.

"Kemalists, who are linked tightly to Ergenekon, are losing influence,"
professor Ruben Safrastyan, director of the Institute of Oriental
Studies at the RA Academy of Sciences, told a news conference in
Yerevan today.

"The ruling AK party pursues a more balanced policy that
Kemalists. Nevertheless, tensions in Turkey will persist unless
Ergenekon leaders are arrested," he said.

The investigation exposed links between Ergenekon and an armed attack
on the Turkish Council of State in 2006 that left a judge dead,
a bombing of a secularist newspaper, threats and attacks against
people accused of being unpatriotic and the 1996 Susurluk incident,
as well as links to the plans of some groups in the Turkish Armed
Forces (TSK) to overthrow the present government. Ergenekon is also
supposed to have a role in the murder of Hrant Dink.