No one is safe

There is more in the navy officers’ plot: assassinating leaders of Turkey’s non-Muslim community and blaming the crime on conservative Muslim groups in order to put the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, described as the enemy, in trouble and in isolation vis-à-vis the West.

Such a plan does not belong to a criminal network but to a group within the military. This, indeed, points to the source of the problem.

It is obvious that they will never give up. The propensity of the military to stage a military coup is almost genetic. It is a military with officers who continue to camouflage their self-interests with those of the nation. When they claim to be “saving the nation,” what they are really after is securing their own future. Personal or sectarian interests are always disguised in the lofty talk of “getting the nation out of crisis.” Turkey’s number one problem involves preventing these self-proclaimed guardians of the nation from ruining Turkey’s integrity and democracy.

Secularism, Kemalism, a unitary state, the Cyprus question, the Armenian issue -- all have been used to cover up this primitive quest for power and interest. They do not want Turkey to get out of problems, be they domestic or international, in order to be able to exploit them but at the same time to pose as the “ultimate saviors.”

A Turkey that is solving its problems is a Turkey that has slipping out of the hands of these self-interest seeking professional power elites with allies in the judiciary, the media, universities and the civil society. So they oppose the solution of the Kurdish question, the settlement of the Cyprus issue, rapprochement with Armenia, the Ergenekon trial and democratization reforms.

They are reckless, aggressive and determined. No one can blame them for being so simply because they think that once they succeed in toppling the government, they will be in a position to do whatever they wish. And if they fail, these coup plotters are confident that no one would dare bring them to justice for acts whose punishment is life imprisonment.

It is time to change these historical patterns, which is in fact what the Ergenekon trial is doing. But this trial is desperately being targeted by individuals and groups, some of whom are naïve while others are simply part of the dirty Ergenekon propaganda.

I do not know what category the poor Gareth Jenkins belongs to, but he is trying hard to prove that no organization called Ergenekon exists.

I sympathize with him because in a speech he delivered in Washington, D.C., he claimed that his life was in danger due to his description of the Ergenekon case as a political trial to silence the AK Party’s opponents. I indeed fear for his life as well as mine. But I think he is a more likely target.

In order to understand what I mean, Mr. Jenkins should read the latest document of the junta in which plotters planned to kill non-Muslim leaders and public figures in Turkey in an effort to draw the attention of Turkey’s Western allies and put pressure on the government -- and present themselves as the alternative.

If Mr. Jenkins does not understand what I mean, he should investigate the murder of academic Necip Habletmitoğlu. If this is not enough, he should look into the 2006 attack on the Council of State in which one judge was killed. The murderer, Alpaslan Arslan, was caught red-handed and was part of the Ergenekon network. Following a Supreme Court of Appeals decision, his case became part of the Ergenekon trial. If all this is still not enough for Mr. Jenkins, he should note who staged two bomb attacks on the Kemalist Cumhuriyet daily.

In short, Mr. Jenkins must study all these criminal acts. In doing so, he should not only focus on the way these criminal acts were carried out but pay particular attention to the logic behind them. Ergenekon-like gangs have always attacked those who appear on their side to put the blame on the “other side.”