A retired officer submitted to Taraf editors the plan which, in a nearly 5,000-page-long document, covers in minute detail the design and execution of a full-fledged military coup. In order to prepare public opinion for the coup, the plan stipulates detonating bombs at two of the most-frequented historic mosques in İstanbul to ensure large numbers of casualties, and provoking clashes between Turkish and Greek warplanes over the Aegean. If the Greek warplanes fail to shoot down a Turkish warplane, other Turkish planes would be ordered to do it. The plan names the people who would form the government after the coup, the program this government was to implement and the lists of bureaucrats to be removed and journalists to be arrested. It also envisages measures to undo economic liberalization and globalization reforms.
The Sledgehammer plan clearly reveals that the real danger to Turkey’s democratic and Western orientation lies not with the (allegedly Islamist) AKP government, but with hard-line secular nationalists in military ranks.
The coup plots against the AKP government devised by various military groups that are now being taken up in the Ergenekon probe have all failed, probably due to opposition by the higher command of the TSK, which has always disapproved of juntas in its ranks and reserved the right and method of intervening in politics for itself. The fact that the coup plans are being leaked to the media by retired officers seems to be a manifestation of the concern among the military ranks that such conspiracies are not only a grave threat to the country’s security and stability but also seriously damage the integrity and subvert internal army discipline.
The General Staff, which has denied the existence of coup plots, such as the Action Plan to Fight Reactionaryism and the Cage Operation Action Plan, both of which were also disclosed by Taraf, confirmed the existence of the Sledgehammer Security Operation Plan, stating, however, that it involved not a coup conspiracy but a routine military exercise scenario. It referred to the bombing of mosques and shooting down of warplanes envisaged in the plan as acts “no sensible and conscientious person could approve of.”
The next day Ergenekon prosecutors in İstanbul announced the start of a judicial probe into the plan, the Constitutional Court in Ankara announced its decision to declare unconstitutional recent legislation that allowed military personnel implicated in such crimes as coup conspiracies to be prosecuted by civilian courts. The General Staff’s behavior in the latest coup plan case, and the Constitutional Court’s latest decision, raise suspicions of attempts by both to protect acting, if not retired, officers involved in the conspiracies under investigation. Rumors are spreading in the media that the chief public prosecutor is preparing a new indictment for the closure of the AKP by the Constitutional Court, possibly this time for having become the focus of activities against the territorial integrity of the state by introducing the “Kurdish initiative.”
What we are witnessing is the intensification of the fight between the forces that want to preserve the military-bureaucratic guardianship over the regime and those who favor the consolidation of democracy along European norms. The fight for a liberal and pluralistic democracy in Turkey can be won because the reactionary mindset that lies behind the Sledgehammer and all other coup plans is on the wane and bound to lose. Pro-democracy forces are prevailing not only among the people and Parliament but in nearly all segments of the country’s elites, including even the military. This is why all coup plans have failed and are being exposed; this is why the Ergenekon case has been possible, although whether it will be able to punish the coup plotters is not certain.
It is necessary, however, for the AKP government to introduce, through a referendum if need be, legislation essential to establishing full democratic control of the military and to bring rules concerning the closure of political parties fully in line with the norms set by the European Court of Human Rights.
For the consolidation of democracy, it is necessary that Turkey strongly anchor itself in the European Union. The AKP government should revitalize the determination and energy it displayed in the 2002-2005 period to adopt all reforms and policies required to clear obstacles on the way of accession. It is also hoped that our Western allies, and especially those who try to block Turkey’s accession to the EU, will eventually grasp what the stakes here are.
