TURKEY AND THE ARMY: CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Economist
/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13040014
Jan 29 2009

The arrest of still more suspects in the Ergenekon case is raising new
questions about the relationship between the army and the government

SOMEWHERE under the ground between the south-eastern town of Cizre
and the Iraqi border lie scores of corpses of dissident Kurds who
disappeared at the height of the 24-year-long separatist rebellion
by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). They were tortured
and murdered by counter-insurgency forces that had been given free
rein in the battle against the rebels. So go the claims of a former
PKK informant, Abdulkadir Aygan, who made headlines this week as
he described in gruesome detail a slew of extra-judicial killings
allegedly carried out on the orders of the army. A local prosecutor
has agreed to investigate the charges after 47 families petitioned
him to launch a search for the bodies of relatives who have been
missing for years.

Mr Aygan’s confessions are the latest in a series of sensational
revelations unfolding in a case that takes its name from Ergenekon,
a supposedly clandestine organisation. Some 86 people, including
retired generals, journalists and politicians, who purportedly planned
to carry out a string of high-profile murders, sow chaos and provoke
a military coup in Turkey, have been on trial. Some defendants are
said to have ties with the mafia and drug gangs.

On January 22nd a further 39 people (five of them serving
army officers) were rounded up in pre-dawn raids across the
country. These arrests have turned Ergenekon into what many say is
the most significant criminal investigation in Turkey’s history. The
prosecutors are now exploring links with the 2007 murder of Hrant
Dink, a Turkish-Armenian editor, who had been threatened by a retired
general, Veli Kucuk, before his death. Mr Kucuk was arrested in
January 2008 and is alleged to be among Ergenekon’s ringleaders.

If the prosecution ever gets to the bottom of the case, some dark
chapters in Turkey’s recent past will stand revealed. And Turkey will
have taken a giant step towards becoming a full-blooded Western-style
democracy–and a suitable candidate for membership of the European
Union. But at present the if is still big.

Since the trial began in October, claims have grown that the case is
a conspiracy by the mild Islamists ruling Turkey to discredit the
army. The determinedly secular generals have never disguised their
distaste for the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Justice
and Development (AK) Party narrowly escaped a ban by the Constitutional
Court last year on charges of seeking to introduce religious rule.

The leaked diaries of a retired naval commander revealed that some
fellow officers (two of whom are now in jail for alleged links to
Ergenekon) had plotted at least two coups against Mr Erdogan that
were blocked by the then chief of the general staff, Hilmi Ozkok. But
tensions between the army and the government returned when a retired
colonel shot himself dead on January 19th, after allegations in the
Turkish press that he had been involved in the extra-judicial killings
of Kurds. The top brass showed up in force at his funeral and in an
angry statement all but blamed the media for his death. Speculation
is widespread that it was pressure from the army that led to the
swift release of two retired generals detained in an earlier raid on
January 7th.

The Ergenekon case has become so broad and complex, and the arguments
of the 2,500-page indictment so muddling, that it has left most people
utterly confused. Many of those arrested still do not know what they
are being charged with. Yet a recent opinion poll showed that some 60%
of Turks believe in the conspiracy. Even some former prime ministers
have acknowledged the existence of a shadowy network of rogue security
officials and bureaucrats known as the "deep state" who will stop
at nothing to stay in power. Their supposed aims include sabotaging
Turkey’s efforts to join the EU (not that much sabotage is needed just
now: several parts of the EU negotiations remain frozen and when Mr
Erdogan visited Brussels recently he left largely empty-handed).

The number of hidden weapons uncovered during the course of the
Ergenekon investigation has bolstered claims that the gang meant real
business. In early January a map found at a leading suspect’s home
in Ankara led police to an arms cache that included 300 bullets, 700
grams (1.5lb) of plastic explosives and two anti-tank weapons. Further
searches have yielded bombs and other equipment.

The growing body of evidence has embarrassed the generals. It
has also exposed divisions within the army, pitting anti-Western
soldiers who favour closer links with Iran and Russia and are known
as "Eurasianists" against those committed to Turkey’s friendship
with America and its putative membership of the EU. The second group
includes General Ilker Basbug, who is now the chief of the general
staff.

The desire to weed out the Eurasianists may explain the army’s silence
in the face of the arrests of serving soldiers who have been implicated
in the Ergenekon case. It may also explain the apparent truce that
has been struck between Mr Basbug and Mr Erdogan, who have recently
agreed that they should hold weekly consultations.

The worry is that the price of any compromise between the army and the
government may be to let some of the high-ranking officers thought to
be involved in the conspiracy off the hook. An opportunity to assert
civilian control over the army once and for all would then have been
missed. For Turkey’s reputation in the West, especially in Brussels,
much is riding on the outcome of this case.