CAUGHT RED-HANDED
EKREM DUMANLI

Today’s Zaman
June 15 2009
Turkey

There is no need for hemming and hawing. This is simply a situation
of being caught red-handed. This is exactly what happened, when those
preparing the conspiracy of the era were at work, the lights turned
on and their shadowy plans came to the surface.

The Taraf daily reported a historic piece of news on Friday when
it published a document which contains the Turkish Armed Forces’
(TSK) plot to discredit the ruling Justice and Development Party
(AK Party) and the Gulen movement, inspired by respected Islamic
scholar Fethullah Gulen.

What did Taraf’s headline of the lead story say? It said exactly
the following: "The plot to finish off the AK Party and Gulen
movement." You cannot imagine what the document the Taraf daily
published contained! "Agents who were placed in the AK Party will
be mobilized, enabling the discovery of weapons, ammunition and
documents at addresses of Gulen’s followers as if they were members
of a terrorist organization." The Gulen movement will be presented
as having a link to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and a
propaganda campaign will be launched to show Gulen followers as having
relations with institutions such as the CIA and Mossad. Officers who
are suspects in the ongoing trial into Ergenekon, a clandestine crime
network which has alleged links within the state, will be defended
and the media will be mobilized to this effect. News stories will be
prepared about Greece and Armenia that will create reactions among
the people and that will help expand the voter base of nationalist
parties. …"

This is unbelievable!

The sole explanation coming from the General Staff is a statement
released halfheartedly about the launch of an investigation into the
document. Unfortunately, the General Staff fails to meet the public’s
expectations for a full-fledged investigation on such issues. It does
not deal with the essence of the charges or unfortunately leads to
the formation of such an environment because it does not react to
the content of the documents as much as it gets angry over those who
leaked such documents. One should investigate those who leaked those
documents, but one should first investigate the charges. Who dares
prepare a document showing the TSK as a crime organization? First,
the General Staff should give an account of this (or investigate it)
so that everyone can understand the investigation of those leaking
these documents. Then people may naturally ask the General Staff
whether it is flawless regarding this issue.

The name of Col. Dursun Cicek is under the TSK’s "Action Plan to
Fight against Reactionaryism." As we learned from the media, Cicek is
commissioned in the Operations Command 3rd Support Unit, which replaced
the Psychological Warfare Department. This means this plot was prepared
in the center of the General Staff. Moreover, the document is dated
April 2009, meaning it is very new. It was possible for the General
Staff to deny the existence of this document at first. It is obvious
who prepared it and when it was prepared. But the short and ambiguous
explanations made by the General Staff raised suspicions further. The
fact that some media outlets immediately began to defend the General
Staff in the wake of the disclosure of the action plan does not cover
the scandalous picture.

A more terrible situation is in question than the situation regarding
the coup diaries of a former general, which showed the preparations
of some generals to stage a military coup in 2004. Chief of General
Staff Gen. Ä°lker BaÅ~_bug dwelled on the importance of democracy
and supremacy of law in all the speeches he delivered, so he raised
the people’s expectations from the General Staff to respect these
values. What he does now with his staff that was caught red-handed will
set an example. Things such as whether he will remove the colonel in
question from his post "for the safety of the investigation" or whether
he had knowledge about the document are being debated and will continue
to be debated more. The General Staff failed to label the document
prepared two months ago as "fake." After this silence and hesitation,
the things it says no longer have any value. How unfortunate!

In every one of his speeches, the chief of General Staff talks about
democracy and the importance of remaining within the boundaries of
law. I wonder whether some busybodies understood "remaining within
the boundaries of law" as first inventing a crime, creating a criminal
and trying civilians through military courts. I wonder whether this is
the new way to fight against reactionaryism. There is no need to say
more; this is called creating a conspiracy, slander and has nothing
to do with remaining within the boundaries of law. With which reason,
conscience and mind can it be explained for those who keep in mind the
"presumption of innocence" when it comes to the Ergenekon suspects
who were caught with their weapons, maps, action plans and bombs to
invent crimes for innocent people and transfer them to military courts?

Did the police plant the document?

Those caught red-handed are not only wannabe coup plotters and
conspirers that have infiltrated our military. In this incident, some
media institutions have also been caught red-handed. Take newspapers
from June 13 and you’ll understand what I’m saying very clearly. A team
plotting a coup that infiltrated the military is conspiring against the
government and the nation, and only four newspapers are carrying this
to their headlines. Is this your understanding of democracy? Is this
your media responsibility? Is this your journalists’ reflex in action?

Worse, a military court tried to issue a ban on broadcasting
the accusations. If the General Staff had not issued a statement
announcing that it is starting an investigation, readers of some
newspapers would go on with their lives without any knowledge of
the conspiracy of the century. Particularly, two newspapers whose
names I will have to mention or else I will have done a wrong to
future researchers studying media history in Turkey, have acted
this way openly. One is Posta. It is OK for a newspaper to market
itself as "cheap," or "easy" or to even appear "cute" to some of its
readers. But such irresponsibility is detachment from journalism,
nothing else. Look at the headline they chose for the said news story:
"Investigation into and Broadcasting Ban on Plan to End Religious
Fundamentalism." This was the headline? As if there was a "plan to
end religious fundamentalism" and an investigation was started into
that. I don’t think this was worthy of Posta.

Even Haberturk, a daily which likes to challenge others by saying it
has more courage to publish certain news stories than others, chose
not to include any information about the Action Plan for Fighting
Religious Fundamentalism. Normally we would expect them to show the
courage and independence they have shown in energy issues. It is a
confounding situation!

The most perplexing situation, however, is, unfortunately, that of the
Vatan daily. Using the subheading "Strange things are transpiring,"
the daily took a whole new approach by completely twisting the
subject. So what is it? Fethullah Gulen said on April 8 that "they
will present Muslims as terrorists." And so what? What happens if
he said that? They try to appear as if they are implying something
using the curiousness inherent to journalism. If you are a journalist,
you first have to talk about the document at hand; only then can you
express things indirectly. Was it Mr. Gulen who told a colonel working
as the commander of the operations command to create such a ridiculous
document? Who and with what kind of audacity can put together such an
action plan? It is really not difficult to attach meaning to Gulen’s
words. For in the past few years some armed organizations have been
guising their units as "IÅ~_ık houses," keep Gulen’s books in those
houses and this situation has been most disturbing to both Gulen and
those who love him. This is not a secret. This has been written about
many times. It is also known that some organizations known to have
suspicious relationships have been attempting to appear close to the
Gulen movement, which is disturbed by these tactics. This being the
case, is it right for a journalist to blame the victim? Is it OK for
a human being to do that?

Yesterday’s Milliyet daily also slightly leaned toward Vatan’s tactics
and tried to raise question marks. What did it say? "It was trying
to raise suspicion of whether it could be the police that planted
the action plan in the suspect’s office." Luckily, yesterday’s issue
of Star wrote down the process of how the action plan was seized,
second by second, effectively refuting the argument that the police
might have planted this document. According to the story in Star,
the police and the lawyer of the Ergenekon suspect whose office was
being searched entered the office at the same time, and every second
of the search was recorded on video. This being the case, what is
resorting to the claim that "the police planted it" but trying to
water down the case? What’s more, it goes without saying that after
this point those who claim that the action plan was fake will have
to confront scientific methods to prove their claim.

Here is the gist of it: It is important not to hurt the reputation of
our military, no doubt about it. However, apparently, a group within
the TSK is still trying social engineering via illegal means. If
some people have stepped the boundaries of their legal duties and
attempted to conspire against the government, the average citizen
and even against television series, this means that everyone has a
duty. Politicians cannot get rid of this by staying silent. The TSK
cannot overcome this incident just by investigating the source of
the leak. The media cannot save themselves from being collaborators
of propaganda by only producing conspiracy theories. The judiciary
cannot simply overlook various crimes from "trying to overthrow
the government" to slander because there is an obvious crime out
there. What’s more, those who were caught red-handed are simply
standing there in front of our eyes.