The paper reported that incriminating documents were uncovered during a police raid in connection with the Ergenekon investigations and included another covert strategy to portray the Gülen movement as blood-curdling fanatics. If not more sinister was a blueprint to whip up sentiment against Greece and Armenia in a misguided attempt to give Turkey's limp but highly nationalistic opposition a dose of electoral Viagra. If Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan does indeed succeed in initiating legal proceedings against the armed forces, it will be revenge eaten cold. This time last year, the military was encouraging the courts to shut down the AK Party altogether.The Taraf exposé has been deeply embarrassing for the military. Either it stands accused of plotting the overturning of the elected government, or it is guilty of incompetence, allowing a rogue unit within the ranks of conspiring to break the law of the land. The chief of command's first reaction was to promise to look into the matter, but the second was to seek a court order to prevent the press from pursuing the story. In retrospect, the injunction seems not so much a serious attempt to muzzle the press as to give the anti-government media a pretext not to have to report the story. This did not stop the leader writers in Milliyet from demanding a full investigation into the matter, and even Hürriyet, once the open channel to the deep state, issued an appeal to the top brass (and I paraphrase): “Come on guys. We're your friends. Help us with this.” By Monday morning, the chiefs of staff did release a terse statement that no such evil plan had been drawn up by any of its departments and that they were waiting to assess whether the documents had been forged.
We can all see where this is going. Those who support the government are honing their sense of outrage and shouting, “Democracy in peril!” Those who oppose the government will turn the plot into a “so-called plot” and view the leaking of the story to Taraf as a dirty trick in its own right and a crude attempt to boost the credibility of the flagging Ergenekon investigation.
For this column to rule on the matter would be premature. I even harbor a sneaking suspicion that as the charges and counter-charges begin to fly and the air grows dark, we may never see the light. Yet the onus is certainly on the military as defenders of the nation to deal with this matter quickly and with a high degree of transparency. The instinctive response to use the courts to prevent further disclosure was a response worthy of the newly selected Iranian president, a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is also incredibly divisive.
It is, after all, no great secret that the Turkish military believe themselves possessed of a wide mandate to become involved in the day-to-day running of the country. This is a country that has had three actual coups d'état and witnessed other determined interventions. It is a country where the military has acted not just in response to public opinion but has manipulated public opinion in order to be able to respond. This autonomy and sometimes sense of impunity is regarded by Turkey's allies with alarm.
By contrast, it is a common cry in Turkish public life that mysteriously potent foreign cabals from Washington to Brussels to bunkers in Tel Aviv conspire to weaken and divide the Turkish nation. Yet, why would they bother when the Turkish nation seems to be doing such a good job on its own? How is it that the Ergenekon investigators never seem to discover a nefarious plot to provide the Turkish nation with a sense of direction and common purpose? Where is the Clean Tricks Department when we need it most?
