DOCUMENT POINTS TO ALLEGED MILITARY PLOT AGAINST TURKISH GOVERNMENT
By Sinan Ikinci
World Socialist Web Site
k-j23.shtml
June 23 2009
Under conditions of economic crisis and social polarization,
tensions between the Islamist and the secularist wing of the Turkish
establishment are continuing to fester below the surface.
On June 12, the daily newspaper Taraf published a new document, which
allegedly reveals fresh plans by the Turkish military to discredit
and destabilize the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party
(AKP). The plans include a frame-up to weaken the most powerful Sunni
religious sect in Turkey, led by Fetullah Gulen. The action is also
designed to give support to members of the military who were arrested
as part of the ongoing Ergenekon investigation and court case.
Ergenekon is a clandestine, ultra-nationalist organisation, composed
of retired generals, top bureaucrats, mafia members, leading members
of the Kemalist-Maoist Workers Party, and some journalists. Popularly
known as the "deep state," its aim is to topple the government.
The document is entitled, "Action Plan to Fight against Reactionaryism"
and is dated April 2009. It contains a detailed, multi-step plan
drawn up by Naval Forces Senior Colonel Dursun Cicek and submitted
to a department of the General Staff. It was seized in the office of
Serdar Ozturk, lawyer of a retired colonel who was arrested earlier
this year on charges of being a member of the Ergenekon gang.
According to media reports Colonel Cicek is commissioned in the
Operations Command 3rd Support Unit, which replaced the notorious
Psychological Warfare Department some time ago. This means that
the alleged plot was actually tailored in the very centre of the
General Staff.
In his column dated June 15, Ihsan Dagi of the Islamist English daily
Today’s Zaman summarises the measures contained in the plan as follows:
"Planting weapons in some people’s houses and then making it seem as
if they belong to people from the Gulen movement, and then trying to
paint them as terrorist organization; conspiring to provoke hatred
amongst Sunnis and Alevis by fabricating anti-Alevi documents in Sunni
households; fabricating information about the suspects in the Ergenekon
trial and misleading the court; using controlled Islamists leaders
to create a fabricated threat of Shariah; using media to discredit
the Gulen movement and the AK Party; creating division inside the AK
Party through agents planted inside the party; portraying the Gulen
movement as in cooperation with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party
[PKK], the CIA and MOSSAD; appearing on TV and radio and making false
confessions about the Gulen movement, etc…"
The "action plan" also envisages the systematic production of
provocative and chauvinistic news/rumours about Greece and Armenia
in order to widen and strengthen support for right-wing nationalist
parties.
The plan calls for launching a propaganda campaign to emphasise that
the military personnel who are detained or arrested as part of the
Ergenekon operations are in fact innocent and were put behind bars
just because they are against the reactionary powers that are trying
to overthrow the secular regime in the country.
The example of retired Brigadier General Veli Kucuk demonstrates the
true colours of these "innocent" patriots. Throughout the 1990s,
Kucuk was heavily involved in the "deep state" and its network of
covert groups that targeted members and supporters of the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) as well as common Kurdish people. Kucuk was one
of the main figures in the "Susurluk affair" of 1996, which brought
to light the close links between security forces, mafia gangs and
Grey Wolf fascist death squads. Later on, his name was mentioned in
connection with the murder of the leading judge at the administrative
court in 2006. It was learned that Kucuk had known the perpetrator,
the lawyer Alparslan Aslan, who had links to the same milieu of mafia
and fascist groups.
In the 1970s the so-called "deep state" carried out numerous
assassinations and destabilisation operations against the workers’
movement and left-wing organisations.
The General Staff’s "response" On the day the news report hit
the headlines, the General Staff announced it had launched an
investigation into the claims published in Taraf. At a weekly press
briefing, Brigadier General Metin Gurak told reporters, "An order
has been given at once to the General Staff’s Military Prosecutor’s
Office to thoroughly investigate the issue." When asked what would
be probed, the document’s accuracy or who leaked it to the press,
Gurak avoided a clear answer and repeated; "the issue would be
thoroughly investigated."
Three days after Taraf’s news report was published, the General
Staff issued a short statement claiming that the document "has not
reached our office yet. It will be made certain whether the document
is genuine or a fake one."
In the press there are conflicting press reports about the
authenticity of the document. Generally, the Kemalist-leaning media,
citing military sources claim it to be fake while Islamist-leaning
papers, citing police sources, claim it to be authentic. But there
are many reasons to believe the document may be genuine. This latest
"psychological war" plan creates the sense of déja vu for anybody
who closely follows the recent history of Turkish political life.
If the documents were forged, it is likely that the General Staff would
have shown evidence of this straight away. The military has already
staged three coups between 1960 and 1980. In similar incidents in the
recent past, the General Staff adopted the same "policy" of neither
denying responsibility nor accusing the publishers of such documents.
A few hours after the publication of the document a military court
decided to impose a ban on the media coverage "for the protection of
public order." As Resat Petek, a former chief prosecutor told Today’s
Zaman, this is a "scandalous" decision adding, "There is nothing
regarding this issue that threatens public order." Petek also said,
"It is illegal to impose a media ban on a document that was already
published."
The decision of the military court strengthens the belief that
the document is authentic. On Monday legal representatives of
Taraf appealed to an Istanbul court calling for the removal of the
broadcast ban.
On Tuesday Taraf published an interview conducted with a retired
general whose name is kept anonymous by the paper. He confirms the
authenticity of the "action plan" and said, "The preparation of the
document began in January. Two drafts of the plan were submitted to
senior military members." According to his remarks, there are other
military documents outlining similar plans.
Underlying reasons Given the extreme divisions and loss of credibility
and influence on the part of the "secularist" parties, only one force
within the Turkish political establishment that is capable of removing
the AKP government is the military. This continuously threatens the
regime with serious and uninterrupted instability and crisis.
After becoming the ruling party, the AKP distanced itself from the
traditional line of the Turkish Islamist movement, known as the
"national view" doctrine, and adopted a very friendly approach to
Europe and the West and global finance capital. At the same time,
the AKP has sought to further the interests of the Islamist wing of
the Turkish bourgeoisie and has steadily undermined the hegemonic
position of the "secular" wing of the ruling class.
Recently it hardened its line and started to hit out at leading
members of the rival faction of the Turkish bourgeoisie, particularly
the Dogan Media Group. Its deliberate refusal to sign an IMF deal
ensuring the repayment of private debts coming to maturity this and
next year–mainly owned by "secularist" capital– has led to increased
tensions. The Islamist businessmen’s association MUSIAD has repeatedly
spoken out against signing a new standby deal with the IMF.
Although there are many aspects attached to this conflict, including a
struggle between different cultural lifestyles, in the final analyses
it is a cutthroat struggle over financial resources between two rival
factions of the ruling elites. This internecine war is taking place
within the overall context of an international financial crisis and
rising class conflicts, as well as growing tensions in the Middle
East provoked by the American aggression against Iraq and US threats
against Iran.
A warning to the working class The recently leaked "action plan" is
the latest indication of the danger of military intervention not only
against the AKP government. The removal of a democratically elected
government by a campaign of "psychological warfare" would represent
a massive attack on the democratic and social rights of the working
class. Preparations for such a coup are unfolding in a climate of
nationalism and chauvinism spearheaded by the Turkish military itself
and fuelled by the bourgeois parties (both right-wing and the nominally
"left-wing") as well as a section of the news media.
Opposition to the plans of the military however, in no way implies
political support for the AKP or any other bourgeois force, which is
incapable of defending the democratic rights of the working class,
let alone assuring a decent standard of living for the toiling masses.
After suffering a humiliating defeat in the 2007 national elections,
the Turkish military decided to wait in the shadows to restore its
credibility, while in a carefully planned fashion assigning the
judiciary with the task of putting the AKP out of commission. In
response the AKP and the Islamist movement at large, which control
almost the whole police apparatus as well as a section of the
judiciary, responded with the Ergenekon case. The timing of different
detention waves carried out as part of the Ergenekon case was far
from being accidental and was essentially designed to achieve the
political aims of the AKP.
The class character of the Ergenekon case determines its
limitations. It deliberately limits itself to acts of sabotage and
assassination relating to the destabilization of the AKP government and
ignores its activities targeting the Kurdish nationalist movement,
the workers movement and left-wing parties. There are also many
indications that the AKP and the Islamist prosecutors are using the
probe and court case to suppress dissent.
Genuine democracy can only be achieved through the development of
a politically independent movement of the working class based on an
internationalist socialist program and the struggle to establish a
workers’ government.