ERGENEKON: AN URBAN LEGEND?
By Orhan Kemal Cenga°Z
Today’s Zaman
June 26 2009
Turkey
According to some, the ruling party is now taking revenge for the
closure case against it. For some Westerners, the Ergenekon case is
just a part of the dirty war between the Justice and Development Party
(AK Party) and those looking to maintain the status quo in Turkey. I
am trying to put myself in the shoes of the man on the street in
Turkey. If I were them, I would probably reach the same conclusion and
believe that Ergenekon is just a fabricated story by some circles in
Turkey. It is quite easy to reach this kind of conclusion if you read
some "mainstream" media outlets. Certain media groups have actively
been spreading this propaganda, and they are doing it using quite
sophisticated methods.
My perspective though, is completely different from what these media
groups have been trying to convince us of. I am a human rights lawyer,
and I have known "deep state gangs" for such a long time. In 1997 and
1998, I was working on cases of village destruction and extrajudicial
killings in southeastern Turkey. I was representing Kurdish villagers
before the European Court of Human Rights. Since then, I have known
about JÄ°TEM — an infamous illegal apparatus of the gendarmerie,
the very existence of which have always been denied. JÄ°TEM kidnapped
and killed thousands of Kurds who were believed to be members or
supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Today,
founders of this illegal organization are in prison in connection
with the Ergenekon case. Even children in the Kurdish regions of
Turkey knew the names of these JÄ°TEM commanders. These people were
never held accountable for the crimes they committed before. These
JÄ°TEM people were very active in the operational part of Ergenekon.
I also have some other reasons to believe that Ergenekon is much
bigger and much more complex than most people think. These reasons,
once again, spring from my personal experience.
Malatya massacre
In April 2007, three missionaries were killed in quite a barbaric way
in Malatya. Their throats were slit after long being tortured by their
murderers, five ultranationalist youngsters. The protestant community
in Turkey asked me to follow the case and to represent the families
of the victims before the criminal court where the accused would be
tried. After briefly reviewing the file, I came to the conclusion
that the case was much more complex than it first appeared. I also got
the impression that some "deep state elements" may have had a hand in
the case. Therefore, I decided to invite lawyers from different cases
in which the deep state had been implicated to take part in Malatya
case. More than 20 lawyers kindly agreed to join the legal team in
this case. However, this move apparently made the real perpetrators
behind this case very angry. When we went to Malatya, the news in the
local media was shocking. My picture and an agitating story appeared
in the local newspapers. They were portraying me and my colleagues
as provocateurs whose only purpose was to harm the reputation of
Malatya. After a while, I started to receive highly sophisticated
and serious threats. However, the most shocking and disturbing thing
happened later on. After gaining a deeper understanding of the case
file, I came to conclusion that this case and some other murders were
somehow linked to each other. Detecting many similarities in the
murder of Father Andrea Santoro in Trabzon in 2006, the killing of
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007 and the Malatya
massacre case, I thought all these murders were carried out by the
Turkish Gladio (the name given to secret armies established in NATO
countries; Turkey is the only country that has never dissolved this
structure in the state). I started to tell my theory to my colleagues
over the phone: "Hey, I think these cases are linked to each other and
these murders were carried out by the Turkish Gladio. I came to this
conclusion after considering these factors…" After I told this theory
of mine to a couple of colleagues an extremely strange thing happened.
The Turkish Gladio
A week later I got a call from a journalist in Ä°stanbul. He said
a strange guy visited their newspaper and told them, "Santoro, Dink
and the Malatya murders were linked to each other, and they all were
carried out by the Turkish Gladio." He also "explained" the structure
of the Turkish Gladio for them. He was carrying a sketch showing the
organizational structure of Gladio. He said, showing the top of the
"organizational structure," the leader of the Turkish Gladio is Orhan
Kemal Cengiz.
I then understood that my analysis was true. The organization of
course was wiretapping my telephone and apparently they did not like
the idea that the lawyer in the massacre case would make a lot of
noise by alleging that the Malatya massacre was actually of the work
of the deep state. So they decided to make the first hit.
Bulent Varol Aral, the man who visited newspapers and tried to
convince journalists that I was the chief of Gladio, was arrested in
the Malatya massacre case later by the court on suspicion of conspiring
with the murderers.
When I developed this theory, I did not know the name of
Ergenekon. Today, however, I know very well that Ergenekon is the name
of the Turkish Gladio. I also know that the Turkish Gladio is much
bigger and more complex than has been discovered in the Ergenekon case.
However, some want us to believe that there is not such an
organization, that Ergenekon is just an urban legend. I wish they were
right. But I know very well that we just have touched the tentacles
of the octopus with this Ergenekon case, and if we cannot capture
the body of the octopus, democracy in this country will be an urban
legend in the future!