ARRESTS SKYROCKET IN ALLEGED TURKISH ULTRANATIONALIST TERRORIST RING
by Anne Szustek
findingDulcinea
http://www.findingdulcine a.com/news/Europe/2009/jan/Arrests-Skyrocket-in-Al leged-Turkish-Ultranationalist-Terrorist-Ring.html
Jan 12 2009
New York
More than 100 people in Turkey have now been arrested in connection
with an alleged plot to overthrow the country’s Islamist-leaning
government.
Over the weekend of Jan. 10-11, 14 more people were formally arrested
by a Turkish court, part of a group of some 40 people detained, for
their alleged ties to an ultranationalist, secularist terrorist ring,
bringing the number of defendants in the so-called Ergenekon case to
more than 100.
The supposed network is accused of being behind high-profile
murders and bombings and plotting to overthrow the Islamist-rooted
government. The wave of arrests, which followed an investigation that
revealed a cache of weapons in a forest near Turkish capital Ankara,
is the 10th of a series of arrests that began nearly a year ago in a
case emblematic of the widening gulf between Turkey’s conservatives
of two different stripes: ultranationalists who see Turkey as a
secular nation in which citizens are Turks first, Muslims second,
and Islamist-leaning politicos who espouse Islam as more important
than Turkish identity.
Judges began hearing the indictment on Oct. 20, after a lengthy police
investigation. Prosecutors allege that the Ergenekon waged their
violent campaign in an attempt to "breed chaos and public despair,
paving the way for a military coup and derailing Turkey’s European
Union-mandated democratic reforms," reported Time magazine.
There was a delay in court proceedings when defendants and lawyers
said that they could not hear what was going on and the proceedings
"descended into chaos," reported Turkish newspaper Hurriyet. On
Oct. 23, the court resumed hearings and ruled to detain 46 suspects
out of the 86 accused.
The indictment itself, at 2,455 pages, describes an intricate
conspiracy involving lawyers, journalists, police, academics, the
mafia, hit men and former military members, reports the BBC. The
group is linked to the murder of a secular judge in 2006 and a
grenade attack on an office of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, which is
known for its opposition to the government–but takes a liberal,
rather than a far-right bent. Yet at the same time, Ilhan Selcuk,
a prominent columnist for the newspaper, is among Ergenekon defendants.
Time magazine wrote about the case, "billed as an historic opportunity
for Turkey to rein in renegade security elements that see themselves
operating beyond the reach of law–many Turks have long suspected
the existence of such a network, popularly referred to as the ‘deep
state,’" an alleged underground fascist network thought to wield
power to preserve the vaguely definable concept of "Turkishness."
Background: The Ergenekon case; nationalism in Turkey
The Ergenekon group is thought to have named itself after a valley
in Central Asia that is the mythical birthplace of the Turkish
people. Due to deep anti-Western sentiment, they hold a strongly
isolationist stance.
The government’s case against it was kick-started last year when
a weapons cache was discovered in the house of a former military
officer. Members of the group face charges ranging from possessing
firearms to running an armed terrorist organization. The indictment
also accuses them of creating a hit list of targets, including Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Nobel Prize-winning writer Orhan
Pamuk.
On the night of Jan. 26, Turkish authorities arrested 13
ultranationalists suspected of planning assassinations of
dissidents. The group is also thought to have connections to the
government.
"The Ergenekon terror organisation is known as the ‘deep state’ in
our country and organises many bloody activities aiming to create
an atmosphere of serious crisis, chaos, anarchy and terror," wrote
prosecutor Zekeriya Oz in the indictment, according to the BBC.
But anti-Western sentiment, stemming largely from what many Turks
see as endless pre-EU accession demands, is on the rise as a whole
within the country. Statistics compiled by the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy show Turkish popular support for EU accession
dropping from 65 to 49 percent between 2002 and 2007.
Article 301, a law that had banned criticism of "Turkishness" was
amended in late April to criminalize insulting only the "Turkish
state" and Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. Previously,
the law made illegal any communication found to be disparaging of the
vaguely defined concept of "Turkishness." But with a recent rise in
nationalism, not all Turks welcome the new leniency.
Lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, one of the defendants in the Ergenekon case,
has brought cases under Article 301 against at least 40 writers and was
indicted in January along with 12 others for conspiring to assassinate
known Turkish dissidents, including ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink. After Dink was killed by a hard-line nationalist teenager,
his murderer was photographed being embraced by police officers
sympathetic to his cause. Novelist Pamuk’s statements about the
Armenian Genocide prompted death threats and a Kerincsiz-led Article
301 case against him.
Andrew Anthony wrote in U.K. paper The Guardian about the recent surge
of Turkish nationalism. Anthony met with former pro soccer player
Samim Uygun, a leader of a group of businessmen and politicians, who
believes that foreign investment is a threat to Turkish sovereignty,
that Israel fancies claims on Turkish territory, that Dink’s murder
"was unimportant" and that Pamuk’s writing is but a shill for
Armenia. Anthony writes, "Uygun saw himself on the center right,
which set the imagination racing over what a member of the Turkish
far-right might sound like."
Opinion & Analysis: Deep state trial polarizes Turkey, emblematic
of rising nationalism The trial has divided public opinion, reports
the BBC. Critics say the case is a misapplication of justice. They
accuse the prime minister’s ruling Islamist-leaning AK Party, tried
earlier this year for trying to Islamize the nation, of targeting
its opponents and the military.
"I think this government is using the case to establish a dictatorship
in Turkey," says Leyla Tavsanoglu, a columnist for newspaper
Cumhuriyet. "Now everyone is subdued. They have clamped down on the
democratic opposition and everyone is afraid that one day they will
be included in another wave of arrests."
Others contend that the trial is a key step forward for
democratization. The arrest of two retired generals in the case is
without precedent in a country with a recent history of coups d’état
and the military has a strong political presence.
But as The Guardian’s run-in with ultranationalists shows, such
fervent nationalism has been simmering for years, fomented by seemingly
endless EU accession demands and what is seen as U.S. foreign policy
myopia. This has come to the fore in Turkey in public reaction to
pop culture: both foreign and home-grown.
The television drama "24," starring Kiefer Sutherland and featuring
"real-time" accounts of U.S. government stake-outs on terrorist
operations, has been wildly popular in Turkey. The first three seasons
of it aired on CNBC-e, a Turkish-owned franchise of the CNBC networks
that broadcasts financial news by day and subtitled English-language
programming in the evenings.
Season 4 featured as its main antagonist Habib Marwan, a recent Turkish
immigrant, apparently still involved with a fictional terrorist group
in his country.
First off, Habib Marwan is not even a Turkish name, but an Arab one–a
mistake, however often made by Westerners, does not sit well among
Turks. The season was temporarily suspended. This is not to say,
however, that there wasn’t already popular animosity towards America
in Turkey.
On July 4, 2003, U.S. troops in northern Iraq arrested, handcuffed
and put bags over the heads of a Turkish special forces squad that
was apparently channeling arms to squads that were fighting a group
of Kurds, considered U.S. allies in the region. The ensuing coverage
in the Turkish media rallied the local nationalist cause while posing
a public diplomacy dilemma for the United States.
"Kurtlar Vadisi," or "Valley of the Wolves," a Turkish television
series with a wide fan base, already played off of popularly held
conspiracy theories in the country, namely the "deep state." The
very title of the show itself, as well as that of the youth wing of
the far-right Turkish Nationalist Action Party, is a paean to local
legend that the Turks were guided out of captivity by a she-wolf.
A movie spin-off of the series, "Valley of the Wolves, Iraq,"
was released in 2006. The film, the most expensive made in Turkish
cinema history, wove in both elements of the 2003 incident as well
as its penchant for feeding off sentiments held by some segments of
its viewership.
Among the characters spun in the movie are a Jewish-American doctor,
portrayed by Gary Busey, who is intent on taking organs from injured
Iraqi prisoners for resale in London, New York and Tel Aviv, and a
bloodthirsty U.S. special forces commander, played by Billy Zane,
who proclaims himself "the Son of God" and has a picture of the Last
Supper decorating his base.
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