I believe so many things which to the naked eye seem sporadic and incidental were actually, most of the time, planned and orchestrated by deep state elements in Turkey. Nothing is a coincidence.
If certain patterns repeat themselves or if so many things happen to a certain group or on a certain territory, you should always suspect the hand of the Turkish deep state.
This country’s minorities know very well this unexplainable evil that descends upon them like a nightmare. If their territory, their land and their lives were targeted by deep state elements for whatever reason, then they began to feel as if they were in a horror movie, as if everything was cursed. They knew something was wrong; all that happened could not have simply been the result of a coincidence. They knew a dark shadow swept through their land and their homes, and that whatever it touched was devastated.
What happened on Gökçeada (Imbros)?
We have two major islands at the mouth of the Dardanelles: Gökçeada and Bozcaada, or Imbros and Tenedos, as they are known in Greek. Many things have happened to the Greek inhabitants of these islands over a long period of time. At the time of the Treaty of Lausanne, there were very few Turkish inhabitants on these islands and their population comprised almost entirely of Turkish citizens of Greek descent.
Today there are no Greeks on Bozcaada, while Gökçeada’s Greeks were reduced from 7,000 to a few hundred. Today, mostly Turks who migrated from Anatolia live there. While these population rates changed, from exclusively Greek to exclusively Turkish, so have many “mysterious” things happened to “somehow” only the Greek inhabitants of these islands.
Don’t think that these “mysterious” things just stopped. The most recent event was on Oct. 29 of last year. “Unknown” people destroyed 78 graves in a Greek cemetery.
Was it a coincidence that the Cage plan (of Ergenekon) mentioned targeting Christian cemeteries? Like everything else that happened on these islands, of course this last attack was no coincidence.
Sledgehammer
I keep saying in this column that Ergenekon files are full of evidence showing that concerted activities of this group target Christians and that somehow all this evidence has been ignored. The records you will read below are from the Sledgehammer case, which concerns a coup attempt in 2003, allegedly planned by Gen. Çetin Doğan, the 1st Army commander at the time.
If you read the transcripts below carefully, you will get a clear picture of how the Greek inhabitants of the island were targeted and scared away over time. Listen to the general explain to his subordinates what happened on Gökçeada:
“Ç.D.: See now, I would like to always probe while sharing this with you. Of course some things are done that have to be done. Our friends…us. What are we to do with some things that are very private and very confidential, we are going to talk and this is what the main purpose of the project plan is.
“Gökçeada, the islands on the fore of the Dardanelles was within the domain of disarmament during our first unit placement and then we changed our minds. The others were armed. But we said that they weren’t our islands to that end. During the initial phase, uh, we sent a gendarmerie commando unit there to get the Greeks there to leave. We built an open prison in the area and, as a result, there was a significant amount of emigration from the area.
“I think, step by step, step by step, by governmental institutions, there was, like things done at the open prisons, some planting and sewing. I do not debate the subjects proliferating from this. With the conditions at the time, it’s impossible to do something like that now; however, as part of Turkish-Greek relations at the time, there was a necessity that emerged against them in the face of the practices in Western Thrace. Then when we withdrew the forces, we stationed a ranger unit there; however, there is no need for a ranger unit in defending an island. But now we are making that an indispensable part of our defense plans and we wish that it had not been a commando unit but a regular infantry unit.
“In actuality it hasn’t changed. And let me tell my friends, what has been implemented is this, meaning men who’ve received ranger training are not [the ones] coming to the unit. Regular things are coming. Soldiers are coming, meaning they are no different than regular infantry soldiers, but we continue to call them rangers. In one respect, the activity taking place, and I had brought forth suggestions to this end before, can be said to have been fulfilled by the Aegean Army, yes.”
(The Sledgehammer Case, File 46, Pg. 124)
Some circles, including two Harvard professors who are the daughter and son-in-law of Gen. Doğan, are trying to convince Turkey and the world that this whole Ergenekon trial has been fabricated by the government. Their propaganda is very effective. As I tried to explain in this column before, I myself have some reservations about how these cases are handled. But objecting to some elements and trying to wash away everything these gangs have done are completely different things.
It is very unfortunate that we do not have any pressure on prosecutors to make a full and fair investigation of Ergenekon’s anti-Christian activities, which would lead to a brand new understanding of Turkey and its dark past, and lead us to a full understanding of the suffering of our non-Muslim citizens, including the unfortunate inhabitants of Gökçeada and Bozcaada, who had to leave their homes and became scattered around the world.
P.S.: I would like to thank Emre Uslu, a fellow columnist at Today’s Zaman, who kindly helped me get access to these records from the Sledgehammer case.
