ERGENEKON AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF TURKEY
By Gerald Knaus, Chairman of the European Stability Initiative
AZG DAILY
24-12-2009
History
Sometimes the exposure of a hidden truth changes the course of history.
A White House tape, recording the US president six days after
the Watergate break-in, sealed President Nixon’s fate, forcing
his resignation within weeks. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag
Archipelago, smuggled out of the USSR and published in 1973, shocked
the world by describing the vast Soviet system of prison labour.
Throughout history, those in power have kept secrets hidden from
the public eye. But if it leads to a culture of impunity for crimes
committed by the state, secrecy becomes dangerous. A culture of
impunity thrives on secrecy, and on complicit media and a passive
civil society.
In Turkey, both secrecy and impunity for those defending the state
against its enemies at home and abroad were long taken for granted.
Attempts to cast light on the activities of groups and institutions
referred to as the "deep state" ( derin devlet ) have invariably
failed. Some have even questioned whether the deep state really exists.
Recent weeks have seen the Turkish veil of secrecy drawn aside in
a spectacular manner. Two documents have emerged which describe, in
detail, operations planned by members of the Turkish armed forces to
terrify, frame and even assassinate innocent civilians, Christians
or Muslim students, and undermine the elected government.
One document is called Operation Cage (Kafes) Action Plan . The
other is the Action Plan to Combat Reaction – Current Status . Each
of these documents in itself, but even more so when read together,
deals a serious blow to the credibility and legitimacy of the Turkish
security structures. Both have come to light as a result of the current
Ergenekon court case. The case has involved Istanbul prosecutors
investigating a range of alleged crimes committed by groups linked
to the Turkish security structures with the apparent intent to topple
the elected government.
An electronic copy of the Cage Plan was found – encrypted – on a CD
seized in April 2009, when a former member of the Turkish Underwater
Assault Team of the Naval Forces was arrested. A signed copy of the
Reaction Plan was found during the arrest of another former military
officer in June 2009. The Turkish General Staff immediately dismissed
it as fake, a mere "piece of paper." The Chief of the General Staff
even alleged a conspiracy against the military. Then, in October 2009,
a whistleblower within the General Staff sent the original signed copy
of the Reaction Plan to a Turkish prosecutor, together with a letter
explaining the role of the former Deputy Chief of the General Staff
in drawing up the plan. This was made public on 24 October. The Cage
Plan was made public on 19 November in an article in the Taraf daily.
What makes these two documents so explosive?
The Cage Plan is remarkably specific. There is a date on it:
March 2009. There is the name of the author: Ercan Kirectepe, Naval
Officer, Acting Special Operations Force Command. The Plan sets out
a distribution of tasks among some 35 members of the Navy, under a
consultative assembly presided over by Vice Admiral Feyyaz Ogutcu. And
there is a clear, concrete target:
"to increase both internal and external pressures on the AKP
Government, to keep the public preoccupied and to change the agenda,
particularly the Ergenekon case, by calling into question the safety
of the life and property of non-Muslims."
Most chilling of all, there is a list of concrete tasks to be prepared
and carried out, including these:
"(d) Operation stage:
(1) Bombs will be detonated at various quarters in the Adalar
district/the Princes islands near Istanbul.
(2) Assassinations will be organized against persons known as fierce
defenders of minority rights.
(3) Sound bombs will be placed in identified locations such as the
vicinity of AGOS Newspaper.
(4) By placing suspicious packages at many spots and informing the
police of them, the security forces will be kept preoccupied.
(5) Actions with bombs will be carried out at piers from which boat
journeys to Adalar originate.
(6) Sensational operations will be executed towards the cemeteries
of non-Muslims.
(7) One or several popular non-Muslim businessmen and artists will
be kidnapped.
(8) In regions with a dense non-Muslim population vehicles, houses
and workplaces will be set on fire at close intervals.
(9) Similar actions will also be conducted in provinces with a high
population of non-Muslims, such as Istanbul and Izmir.
(10) Responsibility for sabotage, kidnapping and assassination
operations will be claimed by reactionary organizations. The
organisations themselves will be determined by way of coordination
with the special plan cell leaders."
The full text of the Cage Plan in English translation can be found
here.
The Action Plan against Reaction, signed by a colonel working directly
in the Office of the General Staff, defines a similar target:
"To put an end to hesitation over this issue by revealing the hidden
face of the religious reactionary elements and to eradicate public
support for such networks. To minimize the impact of the erosive
campaigns staged in the framework of Ergenekon and to put an end to
the negative propaganda against the Turkish Armed Forces."
To achieve this, the Action Plan outlines a set of concrete measures,
directed primarily against the conservative Gulen movement that
supports both the AKP government and Turkey’s EU aspirations:
"The theme, ‘Fethullah Gulen supporters are out of control, attacking
the Turkish Armed forces head on,’ will be pursued and work towards
getting even conservative citizens to say ‘this is too much, we
are all Muslims, but these supporters of Fethullah Gulen are making
provocations in order to attack the Turkish Armed Forces’ will be
carried out."
"During the raids against the addresses of Gulen dormitories (ısık
evleri) to be conducted under military law, weapons, ammunitions,
plans and other material will be arranged to be found so that the
Fethullah Gulen group is described as an armed terrorist organization;
Pro-Fethullah Armed Terror Organisation (FATO) investigations will
be conducted under military jurisdiction."
"News articles will be written that Turkish Armed Forces staff members
arrested under Ergenekon investigation are innocent and that they
are slandered just because they effectively fight reactionary Islam."
"The issue of moderate Islam will be particularly emphasized, with
the fact that Fehtullah Gulen followers act under US guidance and
aim to degrade the originality of Islam being voiced intensively."
"House raids will be carried out and it will be ensured that besides
weapons and munitions, objects are found that will point to relations
with groups that Fethullah Gulen supporters will be made to appear
associated with (Jewishness, CIA, MOSSAD, Moon Sect, Khomeini, etc)."
"It will be ensured that information and documents that arouse
Anti-Alevite feelings are found in such houses as part of house raids."
Pro-European Turkish media, above all the Taraf daily, played a
decisive role in uncovering and disseminating such information.
Turkey’s minority representatives have also been speaking out. On
4 December the Armenian weekly AGOS ran the headline "The Cage did
not Surprise us". The Armenian advisor to (CHP) Mayor of Adalar
(the Princes islands near Istanbul) stated that "we experienced
such incidents in Heybeliada, Kinaliada and Buyukada. We thought
these were separate incidents, but when we saw the Cage plan,
we understood that they were all part of a detailed plot." Greek
Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew told Zaman daily that dark forces
planned to use minorities to overthrow the government, and that "it
is a very satisfactory development that the Turkish police and the
prosecutors have been revealing those dark plans so the responsible
people are captured and tried."
Eyup Can wrote in Hurriyet (21 November) that "if even half of what
is written in Taraf is accurate everybody with a conscience in this
country has to go mad." Hadi Uluengin noted in the same paper on
24 November that "if this is true, then this is the most terrible
conspiracy ever planned within the ranks of the Armed Forces."
Independent left-wing MP Ufuk Uras stated that "those who see this
and do not write about it become accomplices to that crime." ("Uras:
People who ignore Cage Plan are accomplices").
The ongoing Ergenekon investigation will hopefully uncover the
full genesis of these documents. Only a court of law can determine
the guilt of any specific individual. But the debates surrounding
documents are already changing Turkey. In July, a new law passed by
the Turkish Parliament extended the power of civilian courts to try
crimes committed by both former and active members of the military.
And last week three retired four-star generals were for the first
time interrogated by civilian prosecutors on alleged coup plots
in 2003-2004.
The silent revolution in Turkish civil-military relations is in
full swing.
Gerald Knaus (Austria) is founding chairman of the European Stability
Initiative (ESI). He studied in Oxford, Brussels and Bologna. He
taught economics at the State University of Chernivtsi in Ukraine and
worked for five years in Bulgaria and Bosnia for NGOs and international
organizations. He was director of the Lessons Learned Unit of the EU
Pillar of the UN Mission in Kosovo (from 2001 to 2004).
Gerald published many articles that have triggered wide public debates,
including "Travails of the European Raj" on Bosnia (2003) and "Member
State Building and the Helsinki Moment" on the EU role in the Balkans
(2004). He also co-authored more than 60 ESI reports as well as many
scripts for TV documentaries on South East Europe. He is a founding
member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a 2007/2008
Open Society Fellow. Since 2004 he is based in Istanbul.