His surprise absence -- which contradicted various reports -- was enough to raise suspicions of yet another prelude to a cover-up, or at least a deliberate attempt to delay, aimed at pushing the case into a legal labyrinth. This has happened before in other incidents, one way or another linked with the military.Instead of the colonel, military prosecutors have shown up in İstanbul to meet with their civilian counterparts. They have agreed that a technical investigation of the document and signature would have to be concluded before Çiçek would be allowed to be interrogated. He was questioned already, apparently by his superiors, and denied the document belonged to him.
The no-show of Çiçek and scarce information was not helpful for those who are trying to understand where the investigation leads. To add to the confusion, there were statements by the civilian prosecutors that they actually did not have the original of the document. “What we have is a copy,” said one of them, if are to believe the Habertürk daily.
What is the truth? The document was found during a raid on the office of a lawyer (ex-officer); sources told Taraf that the copy was not on the confiscated hard disks, but on the table as a four-page print. It was claimed that it had a wet signature, hinting that it was original.
The information about its authenticity is, due to these contradictory reports, still unsatisfactory. If this is not the original, it will be very difficult to detect whether it belongs to Çiçek. But, if that is the case, where is the original? So far, no authority claimed convincingly that it had access to an original item, which is the key to finding out the truth.
Another question is, whether original or not, why the prosecutors did not rapidly involve their military colleagues about the existence of such “hot stuff.” There is a gap of nine days between the raid and the publication in Taraf. This is yet another part of the puzzle.
Nevertheless, the issue now seems to have been taken over by the military judiciary, and if we pay attention to the comment of Ümit Kardaş, a former military attorney, that “something has been cooked up in the meeting in Ankara between civilian and army officials,” the plot thickens even more.
The only clarity is the stated commitment of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ. The former sounded, so far, as if he believed the document was genuine, while the latter sounded reassuring that the General Staff had nothing to do with it. There are also lawsuits filed by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and suspect Serdar Öztürk's lawyers against the prosecutors and police who were present during the raid.
If we set aside the magnificent inefficiency displayed so far by the authorities, the fact is inevitable that the document, whether genuine or not, is to cause powerful consequences. Several scenarios are at our disposal.
Given that the document is genuine, one of them is that Başbuğ and his top staff had known of the existence of the plan. Previous experience proves that it may be true. One of Başbuğ's predecessors, Hilmi Özkök, knew all along about the “coup simulations” during his tenure and fought fiercely against them. A scenario within this scenario is that Başbuğ might have known but found it useful to get rid of remaining “rogue elements” within the army by the end of August, when the appointments and retirements are decided.
The second scenario is, as it were, everybody's wishful thinking: that the plan was the product of a single officer or a group within the top echelons. Given that Başbuğ assured the public about not keeping “coup plotters” in his institution, this will definitely lead to a broad debate and action to cleanse the army of adventure seekers and possible uniformed gangsters.
The third one is the possibility that a group within the police or a “civilian entity” forged such a document by falsely signing it with Çiçek's name and placed it in the offices of Öztürk. The information so far tells us that procedures at the raid were followed to the letter, although Öztürk's lawyer claimed he was not given the document during the raid. If this scenario proves to be true, it will without a doubt lead to an intense political storm, bringing forth the police as the focal point of attacks and jeopardize the course of Ergenekon.
The last one is the least likely because it is the most devilish: A group, military or not, linked with Ergenekon, did deliver this false document to take “revenge” at Başbuğ for what it sees as a “weak attitude” (to hand over officers to the civilian prosecutors investigating Ergenekon); to discredit and compromise him; and, as the scenario before, inflict damage on the Ergenekon case.
No matter what, the genie is out of the bottle. In whatever direction the inquiry leads Turkey, the processes awaiting us will be rather irreversible.
