WHY THE DEEP STATE TARGETS CHRISTIANS
By Orhan Kemal Cengiz
Zaman
23 May 2009, Saturday
Some central suspects in the Ergenekon trial were also implicated in
the Malatya massacre and the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink on Jan. 19, 2008.
Father Andrea Santoro, a Catholic priest, was killed in Trabzon
in 2006. No one realized then that this was the beginning of a
pattern. The militant nationalist who killed Santoro was just 17
years old. The Santoro case was completed with lightning speed.
The youngster was sentenced, but nothing was revealed. Then, in 2007,
Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian and a liberal journalist, was shot
dead in front his newspaper, Agos, by another militant nationalist,
who was again a 17-year-old boy from Trabzon. Three months after Dink’s
murder, three missionaries were brutally killed in Malatya. After the
Malatya massacre there were many other attacks and murder attempts
targeting Christians once again. A Catholic priest was stabbed in the
stomach during a service at a Catholic church in Ä°zmir. In Samsun,
Diyarbakır and Antalya, other murder attempts were prevented by
successful operations by the police.
In all these "successful" or attempted attacks, the perpetrators
had traits in common. They were all very young, mostly under 18 and
no older than 19. They all were ultranationalists with very obvious
ties to well-known ultranationalist groups. Some good questions to
ask would be: Are all these murders and attacks connected? Were these
youngsters directed from one single center? And, most importantly, were
these murders somehow linked to the illegal apparatus within the state?
The Ergenekon connection
As a lawyer closely watching the Hrant Dink and Malatya massacre cases
(and being directly involved in the latter), I can say that all signs
point to the Ergenekon gang. Some central suspects in the Ergenekon
trial were also indicated in Malatya massacre and Dink cases. Some
suspects had either direct or indirect contacts with Gen. Veli Kucuk,
the retired gendarmerie commander whose name was always involved in
extrajudicial killings (also known as "unsolved murders") carried out
against Kurdish activists in southeastern Turkey. In both cases other
gendarmerie officers were summoned as either suspects or as witnesses.
But if these two incidents, the murder and the massacre, were planned
and orchestrated by the Ergenekon gang, what could the purpose or
motivation behind them be? Without having an insight into the mental
framework of Ergenekon, we can not possibly answer this question.
Ergenekon and past atrocities
Today we have such strong propaganda against the Ergenekon case
(in order to whitewash its suspects) that it is almost impossible
not to lose the sense of direction. The case is presented as if it
were just a fabrication by the government in order20to silence its
political opponents. This is absolutely not the case.
I cannot go into all details about the Ergenekon case here, so I will
just focus on its connection to the attacks against Christians in
Turkey. Even if we just focus on this topic, we can see the "depth"
of the organization.
There are many documents in the Ergenekon file produced by the members
of this organization. One of these documents defines the "Special
Forces" (Ozel Kuvvetler) as "the eye of Ergenekon." The Special Forces,
a military unit, is the successor of the Special Warfare Center
(Ozel Harp Dairesi — OHD), another unit in the Turkish military.
According to a retired commander of the OHD, Sabri YirmibeÅ~_oglu,
the pogroms against Ä°stanbul’s non-Muslims on Sept. 5-6, 1955 "were
the fantastic work of the Special Warfare Center."
Ergenekon and anti-Christian activities
This "fantastic" tradition continues under Ergenekon. Let us start
with one of the organization’s meeting places: the "Turkish Orthodox
Patriarchate" (TOP). TOP was established in the early ’20s with the
financial support of Turkish state to fight against the Greek Orthodox
Church. It is a church with no congregation. Since its inception TOP’s
only work was to fight against Christians in Turkey. Recently though,
the main focus of TOP has been to fight against missionary activity. =0
D Sevgi Erenol, who is the spokesperson of TOP and who is in prison
now in connection with the Ergenekon case, regularly gave briefings
to top officials about the "missionary threat" in Turkey.
Kemal Kerincsiz, an ultranationalist lawyer who was suing liberal
intellectuals for "insulting Turkishness" and who provoked public
opinion against Hrant Dink, has also brought cases against missionaries
before the domestic courts. Ergun Poyraz, who is apparently responsible
for Ergenekon’s propaganda war and who wrote many books about Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, accusing
them having non-Muslim roots, has also published a hate-mongering
book titled "Six Months Amongst Missionaries." This latter book became
the bible of the war against Protestants in Turkey. We now know from
the Ergenekon file that Mr. Poyraz was actively using the archives
of the gendarmerie.
The Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO) also used to publish regular
paranoid reports about missionary activities. These "reports" were
taken very seriously by the National Security Council (MGK), which
is dominated by generals, and those reports led the MGK to declare
that missionary activities were a real threat to national security
in Turkey. Sinan Aygun, the chairman of the ATO since 1998, is now
one of the suspects in the Ergenekon case.
Ergenekon’s mindset
Ergenekon has a long his tory in Turkey, and it is not possible to
go into all of it in one article.
However, if you want to understand what Ergenekon is and what kind of
mentality it has, just look at the Committee of Union and Progress
(Ä°TC), which was responsible for the massacres of Armenians while
the Ottoman Empire was falling apart. Ergenekon has exactly the same
mindset; it is the last inheritor of the Ä°TC in Turkey. Since Turkey
has never faced its dark past, it has never dissolved these shadowy
structures within the state. It therefore was no coincidence that when
NATO sponsored "shadow armies" (widely known as Operation Gladio),
they developed very strong and deep roots in Turkey. The country is
simply fertile ground for these kinds of illegal structures. In fact
Turkey has never attempted to dissolve them. It is the only NATO
member country that has not exposed and dissolved this organization.
When it comes to the question of what the purpose of all these
attacks and propaganda against Christians is, my conclusion would be
as follows: Like its predecessor the Ä°TC, Ergenekon also wants to
"purify" Anatolia.
With all these murders they were trying to send the message to
the members of Christian communities in Turkey that they are not
welcome in this country. On the other hand Ergenekon wants to
give the impression to Turkey and the outside world that as soon
as an Islamic-oriented government came to power, massacres against
Christians started. Finally, with these and remaining unsuccessful
murder attempts, they aim at creating obstacles to Turkey’s EU path.
Why were they specifically trying to create paranoia about missionary
activity? I think this was aimed at making conservative Muslims more
nationalist. They portray missionaries as the agents of "imperialism,"
which seeks to divide Turkey. In this context, Protestants were
used as a kind of scapegoat to provoke Muslims. The main purpose of
Ergenekon, after all, is to create an obsessively nationalist country
cut off from the rest of the world, and especially Europe. Turkey’s
democratic system and the rights of its non-Muslim minorities will
be only secured if this fascist gang, and its mentality, fails.