Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 18 2009
Ergenekon investigation saved Turkey’s future
A number of weapons caches found at sites throughout the country in
last week’s Ergenekon operations, a clandestine terrorist organization
charged with attempting to overthrow the government, have brought to
mind the question of what would have happened if this organization had
not been exposed.
The Ergenekon operation started with the discovery of a house being
used as a munitions depot in Ä°stanbul in June 2007. Since then,
more than 100 people have been detained, including retired
generals. Many such caches have been found in the course of the
investigation, but police raids last week yielded the most weapons
thus far, with most of them found not in a closed storage area, but
outside on our streets or buried underground.
Last Friday the police discovered a weapons cache buried in a forest
in Ankara’s GölbaÅ?ı district based on a map found
in the home of one of the newest suspects. At this location police
discovered 30 hand grenades, three light anti-tank weapons (LAW),
plastic explosives, ammunition for Uzi machine guns and other
ammunition buried close to a road near the capital. Another weapons
cache was found in an Ä°stanbul house belonging Lt. Col. Mustafa
Dönmez, who turned himself in earlier this week after running
from the police for two days following last week’s operations. Hand
grenades, bullets, Kalashnikovs, LAWs and explosives have been found
in various locations during police searches based on new evidence
gathered in the previous week of detentions, which revealed that the
group was planning to assassinate Alevi and Armenian community
leaders, the prime minister and members of the Supreme Court of
Appeals, acts that would have dragged Turkey into utter chaos if they
had been carried out. Thirty-seven individuals were detained last week
in the police operations staged in various cities as part of the
ongoing investigation. Seventeen of these people have been arrested,
with most of the remainder released pending trial.
Experts say had these weapons been used to carry out the plots of the
organization, the country would have been thrown into a chaotic period
similar to that before the Sept. 12, 1980 coup, where there were
clashes, bloodshed and carnage every day on the streets between
opposing ideological groups.
What would be the cost of not exposing the deeper branches of
Ergenekon? Å?amil Tayyar, the Ankara bureau chief of the Star
daily and author of the book `Operation Ergenekon,’ gives a brief
answer: `According to the Ergenekon organization, the Justice and
Development Party [AK Party] and everybody who voted for the AK Party
are traitors. Any political party which did not collaborate with them
or vote in line with them are traitors. Everyone who wants Turkey to
join the European Union is a traitor. This is why the front they hate
is very great. If the games they planned to play had not bee exposed,
Turkey could have really turned into a bloodbath. Major murders could
have been committed.’
Tayyar gave the example of the Council of State attack in 2006 that
left a senior judge dead. The act was blamed on Islamist groups at the
time, but now the prosecution has compelling evidence that it was
masterminded by Ergenekon. `They should erect a statue of the cop who
captured the Council of State hit man Alparslan Arslan. Today this
might sound too exaggerated, but thinking in terms of the conditions
of the day, the impact of the attack was huge. ErtuÄ?rul
Ã-zkök had referred to the case as `Turkey’s 9/11.’ If
Ergenekon had not been exposed, the AK Party could have been thrown
out of power somehow, and the European Union negotiation process would
have been halted.’
Tayyar claims that after two previous failed coup attempts, made
public by the now-defunct Nokta newsweekly, Ergenekon had to go
underground and reorganize using its connections in different
terrorist groups and clandestine intelligence organizations. This
collaboration was the force behind the Council of State shooting, the
killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and the killing of
an Italian priest in his church in the Black Sea city of Trabzon.
`The reason they carried out these underground operations was to drag
Turkey into chaos, damage political and economic stability and finally
stage a coup d’état under those conditions. This is because in
a country where everything was on the right track, there wouldn’t be
the motivation or support for a coup d’état. Their plan was to
stage a coup in 2009, and ultimately, create a country cut off from
the world by the year 2023 and that had cut ties completely with the
European Union,’ Tayyar said.
Potential Alevi-Sunni conflict
Another very likely outcome if the Ergenekon terrorist organization
had succeeded would be a conflict between Turkey’s Alevi and Sunni
communities. It is now known that Ergenekon was preparing to
assassinate Alevi leader Kazım Genç. The organization
also had assassination plans against Kurdish deputies. Some experts
claim that had Ergenekon not been exposed, Turkey could have been
dragged into civil war and ultimately divided. `A Turkey that ends its
European Union accession process, that annihilates its democratic
actors and that replaces economic development with chaos and
destruction will be dragged into social chaos. Under such
circumstances no one can stop Kurds from dividing the country,’
DaÄ?ı said.
AK Party KahramanmaraÅ? deputy Avni DoÄ?an states that if
the Ergenekon organization was not discovered, Turkey would have
turned into the Syria of not too long ago. `This was the target of the
organization. They planned to create a country of anarchy and chaos,’
he told Sunday’s Zaman. Columnist Mehmet Altan referred to other
dictatorial countries that Turkey would look like and said the Turkey
envisaged by Ergenekon would strengthen `authoritarian republicanism.’
Sunday’s Zaman has published several articles on the issue, noting
that if the AK Party and the Democratic Society Party (DTP) were
closed down, Turkey’s Kurdish citizens would lose their faith in
democracy and the country would practically be divided in two since an
overwhelming majority of southeastern Anatolia voted for the two
parties in the last elections. Had Ergenekon succeeded in toppling the
AK Party, its next target would be the DTP and other Kurdish political
groups. This would hasten the country’s disintegration.
AK Party Batman deputy Afif Demirkıran says even if the
Ergenekon terrorist organization reached its target of a secularist
coup, the post-coup Turkey would not be like the Turkey of the
post-1960 and post-1980 coups. `We would probably not be able to
return to democracy. We would remain an isolated country, cut off from
the world,’ he told Sunday’s Zaman.
AK Party Samsun deputy Suat Kılıç does not think
Ergenekon would be capable of staging a coup. `They don’t have enough
power for that. But Turkey would continue to be a country of chaos and
we would not know the real perpetrators of many crimes committed in
the recent past,’ he said.
AK Party Bursa deputy Mehmet Ocaktan, who chaired the parliamentary
commission that investigated the Hrant Dink murder, told Sunday’s
Zaman that had Ergenekon not been discovered, Turkey would `be a
country that takes care of its affairs in the dark and would never be
a transparent society.’
DTP MuÅ? deputy Sırrı Sakık agrees that
Turkey would have regressed to conditions in the pre-1980 era if
Ergenekon had not been exposed. `Ergenekon is an organization that fed
on the Kurdish question. It has its hands everywhere in the filthy war
in the Southeast. ¦ its political elements absolutely have to be
exposed. If not, Turkey will continue to move within the dark tunnel
it is in. `
18 January 2009, Sunday
ERCAN YAVUZ ANKARA