Apparently, someone didn’t like the idea of our petition reaching a wider audience. By blocking our assistant’s e-mail accounts they were trying to send us a message. And soon other sophisticated messages would follow.
I became a Turkish Gladio leader
While the case was progressing something happened that would amaze even Hollywood film producers. As the case progressed, I started to develop certain theories about it. I examined all the details, looked at other cases and focused on all the strange circumstances surrounding each case, some of which I have already mentioned. I had thought that three crimes -- namely, the killing of Father Andrea Santoro in Trabzon in 2006, the assassination of Hrant Dink in January 2007 and our case, the Malatya massacre of April 2007 -- may have all been connected. I do not have enough space to explain how I came to this conclusion, but there were too many similarities, starting with the profiles of the hitmen in all these cases. I thought Turkish Gladio, which is known to have orchestrated incidents in Turkey before, may have been responsible for orchestrating all these murders to create chaos and to put international pressure on Turkey by creating an image of a country in which Christians are persecuted after a so-called “Islamist” party comes to power.
All of my conclusions were simply theories, of course. But I had made a mistake. I had begun to discuss my theory over the phone with my colleagues, some of who found it “interesting” and others a little too extreme.
Just a few weeks later I received phone calls from newspapers in Istanbul and Ankara. Journalists were calling to inform and warn me. They said a strange man had visited their offices with a chart in his hand. This man had told all of them that the three murder cases, Santoro, Dink and Malatya, were all connected and that they had been planned by Turkish Gladio. He also claimed he had Turkish Gladio’s organizational schema with him and showed them a hierarchical chart on which my name appeared at the top. To be honest, when I heard this story my blood froze. Knowing something and seeing it proved are completely different things. I got their message. And it was this: You may think of yourself as a smart lawyer and you may have the talent to understand the real nature of the connections between all these cases, but we are much smarter and much more powerful then you may have thought at first.
The case was like a nightmare. Something stood strongly behind it, and the deeper we delved into the case, the more threatening it became.
Conspiracy theories
Another reminder of what this shadowy network was capable of doing came just after the hair-raising Gladio incident. While we were having a legal team meeting in İzmir for the second hearing, we received some news. Journalists kept calling us, asking if we had any information about an “informant letter” that had attributed all the responsibility for all three murder cases to me.
It was a very long letter that attempted to explain the allegations by using conspiracy theories and blaming me entirely, arguing that I was an American agent. The letter was odd enough to be taken seriously, but when we examined it more carefully we fully realized the sophistication of its multilayered purpose. First, it was an attempt to water down some very serious allegations contained in the previous “informant letter” by creating an implausible conspiracy theory surrounding the case. I think they were trying to imply that if the lawyer of the victims could be accused of murder, then anyone else could be accused as well. When I focused on the details of this complex letter I saw there were references to my private life that were made in such a way as only I could understand. For example, it said I organized these murders with the help of my “old relatives.” They were referring to my ex-wife’s family, who is from Malatya. The letter was full of such details. I understood, of course, that they were once again warning me quite seriously.
After these initial letters, I began to receive letters that were addressed only to me and that contained various threats. After these events, my life changed a little bit, of course. Human rights NGOs in Turkey issued joint declarations condemning the threats being sent to me; Amnesty International issued a worldwide urgent call to take measures for my protection. I was provided with a bodyguard, who accompanied me 24 hours a day for a long time.
Well, we are still trying to prove in the case of the Malatya massacre that the deep state and Ergenekon are behind the murders. And some are still trying to convince the domestic and international public that there is no such thing as Ergenekon. I know at a gut level who is behind the Malatya massacre. I hope we will be able to prove it legally as well.
