EXPLOSIVE CLAIMS FROM KEY ERGENEKON SUSPECT

Hurriyet
Feb 12 2009
Turkey

ANKARA – Ergenekon suspect Ä°brahim Å~^ahin named the Chief of Staff
General Ä°lker BaÅ~_bug as the man behind the new anti-terror unit he
would be asked to head, according to details of his testimony revealed
yesterday. Air force command proceeded with its own investigation

A former police special operations officer caught in a recent Ergenekon
raid has claimed that Chief of General Staff Gen. Ä°lker BaÅ~_bug was
aware the ex-police officer was asked to head up a new anti-terror
unit, daily Radikal reported yesterday.

Soon after ex-police special operations deputy chief, Ä°brahim Å~^ahin,
was arrested police found a map in his house that led them to a hidden
weapons cache. They also discovered a list containing names of many
police and military officers, some also indicted in the Ergenekon case,
which police have used to connect Å~^ahin to the alleged gang. Å~^ahin
has maintained the list was in relation to the new clandestine unit
he was instructed to form. Military officials have consistently
denied any such instructions were given.Å~^ahin’s text messages,
electronically monitored by police, mentioned a "Bug Pasha."

"My Bug pasha knows, they must be hundred percent reliable," read
one message sent to another detained Ergenekon suspect, Lt. Taylan
Ozgur Kırmızı. "I was told that the president, as well as the
Interior Minister BeÅ~_ir Atalay, signed the order to create a new
unit," Å~^ahin told the prosecutor, Zekeriya Oz. Å~^ahin said he was
to be appointed head of "S-1" on Jan. 12 in a ceremony had he not
been detained.

A document titled "to my honorable Chief of Staff" was also recovered
from Å~^ahin’s house, which according to Å~^ahin was to be offered
to the General Staff during the ceremony.

The General Staff has denied Å~^ahin’s testimony, with a written
statement released Jan. 12. Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek has
also denied any offer to Å~^ahin was ever made.

Meanwhile, the Air Force Command has denied that six of the seven
people arrested yesterday and Tuesday were active duty officers,
contrary to first reports.

The Workers’ Party, or Ä°P’s, deputy leader, Mehmet Bedri Gultekin,
was among those arrested after the Air Force Command began an
investigation into claims of "Headquarter Houses" that brought
together Ä°P members and military officers on duty, according to
the Ergenekon indictment. Ä°P vice-chair, Hasan Basri Ozbey, said
the military prosecutor merely wanted to consult Gultekin and said
"Headquarter Houses" was a sheer lie.

Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Å~^ahin rejected that the courts were
divided in their allegiance, commenting on voice recordings attributed
to the wife of retired Gen. Å~^ener Eruygur, Mukaddes Eruygur, who
said the 12th and 14th courts were "on their side." The 12th Court
took the decision to release retired Gen. HurÅ~_it Tolon, who had
been under arrest in the Ergenekon case for seven months."Such an
impression casts a shadow on justice," Minister Å~^ahin said, but
added that he was not sure whether the voice recording was real or not.

In the voice recordings, Mrs. Eruygur is heard speaking to Col. Nusret
Demircan, the head of GATA Military Hospital Brain Surgery unit,
and asking the military doctor whether her husband would be arrested
again if he were released. A part of the record reveals that retired
Gen. Eruygur, arrested but released due to health problems, was indeed
in good health.

Arrested in January, ex-police officer Å~^ahin gave detailed
information to prosecutor Zekeriya Oz about the proposal, according
to details of his testimony. Å~^ahin, who suffered brain damage
after a traffic accident in 2000, had pointed the finger at the
General Staff’s press information chief, Brig. Gen. Metin Gurak, as
the general who gave him orders to designate personnel for the new
"S-1" anti-terror unit and said he was told to select trustworthy
military men and police.

A list titled "S-1" was found during a search of Å~^ahin’s house and
featured several hundred policemen and soldiers already under arrest
in the Ergenekon case.

Å~^ahin also said he participated in regular meetings with the General
Staff. "Metin Gurak, whom I refer to as BaÅ~_bug Pasha’s number one,
called me from an unknown number," he said.

The organization Å~^ahin was setting up would be responsible for
"cleaning out the interior of Turkey," according to Å~^ahin’s own
voice in a conversation recorded by police.

"The interior and exterior, relating to northern Iraq. Metin Gurak
told me that all members would be Turks," Å~^ahin had told Oz.

Å~^ahin left a bulk of questions unanswered about death lists,
indexes and house plans of non-Muslim and Alevi religious leaders’
houses. He did not give information on the "Safir," which was referred
to as an organization within the military in his conversations with
Cengiz. In most of the conversations, Oz asked Å~^ahin about Fatma
Cengiz, an officer at the Kayseri Airborne Infantry Command who was
sent to jail after a later wave of Ergenekon arrests.

"Asena sit. A duty arrives. The Armenian must be killed," read a text
message he sent to Cengiz, presumably against the Armenian community
leader in Sivas, Minas Duran Guler, whom Å~^ahin tracked. Å~^ahin
did not elaborate on frequent hate speeches against non-Muslims in
his conversations.

Å~^ahin was convicted in 2000 as he was hospitalized for breach of duty
that led to the disappearance of weapons in the Susurluk scandal. He
was pardoned by former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in 2002 when he
was diagnosed with memory loss.

Release Ozbek say unions

Ergenekon drew widespread international reaction yesterday. Industry
workers’ unions from Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan,
Macedonia, Kyrgyzstan and the semi-autonomous regions of Gagauzia and
Bashkortostan, as well as the International Eurasian Metal Workers’
Union, presided by an Ergenekon suspect currently under arrest,
Mustafa Ozbek, asked "independent Turkish courts" to release the
"patriotic and well-known" union leader.

The Ergenekon case officially started when police discovered 27
grenades in a shanty house belonging to a retired noncommissioned
officer in Istanbul in June 2007.

Prosecutors have alleged there is a secret ultra-nationalist group
made up of retired and active military officers, writers, unionists
and journalists who want to spread nationalist violence and overthrow
the government by provoking a coup.

Most of the Ergenekon indictment, some 2,500 pages long, is based
on six sacks of documents about an organization called "Ergenekon"
discovered in 2001 at the house of Tuncay Guney, a controversial figure
arrested for petty fraud but released soon afterward. Guney now lives
in Canada. The Ergenekon case is shrouded in a mist of controversy with
opposition parties claiming the ruling Justice and Development Party,
or AKP, is exploiting the case to suppress secular opposition. Serious
criticism abounds concerning the arrests and detentions that violate
the code of criminal procedure, according to some jurists.
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