The leader of Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP), Zeki Sezer, also confirmed that several retired senior generals at the time had "expressed their wish" to see Ecevit resign. Although there is now a general consensus that the generals put some pressure on Ecevit to urge him to resign, it is a matter of discussion whether this was a coup attempt and whether those generals had any links to Ergenekon.Radikal's Murat Yetkin, a journalist who closely followed the Ecevit government, admits that high-ranking military officers pressured the late prime minister in 2001 to resign; however, he says he has no idea whether those generals were part of the Ergenekon organization. "I personally witnessed them meddling in politics, though it was not tantamount to a military coup," says Yetkin. Since the full text of the Ergenekon indictment has not yet been made public, he says it is hard to know whether allegations about a coup attempt against Ecevit's government are this pressure he witnessed or something entirely different. According to Yetkin, Ecevit did not take any action against these military officers back then and that his lack of influence in the decisions of the Supreme Military Council (YAŞ) of 2002 proves as much.
Sabah's Ergun Babahan complains that those who defend Ergenekon today by downplaying the allegations walked hand in hand in the past to unseat Ecevit. Among those who took part in this plot at that time, he says, were some commanders, retired generals, leading figures in the business sector and, inevitably, the media. "They headlined reckless news about Ecevit's health after he was hospitalized [in an attempt to have him resign]," says Babahan, adding that the same circles are at work again today since they have rolled up their sleeves and are trying to trivialize the Ergenekon case and remove it from Turkey's agenda. The reason these circles are uneasy with the Ergenekon investigation, in his view, is their concern that their real face will come to light as a result of this operation. "They want to make you believe that a group of idle youth killed Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and an attack against the Council of State in 2006 [which left a senior judge dead] was the work of a religious fundamentalist who wanted to protest a ban on Muslim headscarves. They also suggest that the bombs [which had the same serial number as those belonging to the Ergenekon gang] hurled at the Cumhuriyet newspaper were accidentally thrown there. They do not want to ask for an accounting of these incidents because they were personally involved in them. Let them first say what they did to Ecevit, and then we can talk about today," says Babahan.
Vatan daily's Bilal Çetin asked Hüsamettin Özkan, the deputy prime minister in Ecevit's government and a close ally of Ecevit, about a coup attempt against Ecevit's government in which Özkan allegedly demanded to take over the prime ministry from Ecevit. Çetin, quoting Özkan, says: "Never, ever. None of the commanders of the time even made such an implication. These allegations were only brought forward by Radikal columnist Murat Yetkin. I heard this only from him. Other than this, no one said anything to me about it." Çetin, referring to what Yetkin wrote, says it is very obvious that the commanders of the time had voiced wishes to see Ecevit resign; however, it is not certain whether this was tantamount to a coup attempt.
