SECOND CASE ON ASSASSINATION PLOT MERGED WITH ERGENEKON
Today’s Zaman
Aug 3, 2011
Turkey
A second case regarding a suspected assassination plot against Armenian
community leader Minas Durmazguler was merged on Wednesday with the
ongoing case into Ergenekon, a clandestine criminal network charged
with plotting to overthrow the government by creating large-scale
chaos in the country.
The Ä°stanbul 13th High Criminal Court, which is hearing what is known
as the second Ergenekon trial since it was initiated on the basis of
a second indictment prepared by the prosecution during the course of
the investigation, ruled to merge the assassination plot case with
the second Ergenekon trial on the grounds that there are legal and
evidentiary links between the two cases.
The prosecution claims that Garip Ä°rfan Torun, one of the suspects
in the assassination case, was given a Glock gun to kill Durmazguler
by Ä°brahim Å~^ahin, currently under arrest on charges of membership
in the coup-plotting clandestine organization known as Ergenekon.
The first case filed regarding the assassination plot was earlier
merged with Ergenekon. Bekir Celik and Emrah Gönenci are the two
suspects in that case. Investigators conducting the probe into the
assassination plot to kill Durmazguler have found that the two men were
connected to Å~^ahin. In October 2010, the two were apprehended in the
investigation, but released pending trial. The Ä°stanbul 13th High
Criminal Court accepted the indictment for the plot after a Sivas
prosecutor asked that the case be merged with one of the ongoing
Ergenekon trials. The court merged the two cases.
Å~^ahin, a former senior police official who was the deputy head
of the National Police Department’s Special Operations Unit, was
arrested after investigators in the Ergenekon trial established
that he was recruiting police officers to join his S1 death squads,
which would have staged attacks and assassinated important community
leaders to serve Ergenekon’s goal of causing chaos in Turkey with
the ultimate hope of triggering a military coup. Tracking Gönenci’s
connections revealed his ties to Å~^ahin. The police found that he
had gathered intelligence about would-be victim Durmazguler under
Å~^ahin’s instructions and relayed this information to the former
police official. The indictment notes that during a visit from Å~^ahin
to Sivas, he stayed at Gönenci’s home and that the two men drove to
Kayseri and Tokat together.