At the top of this week’s agenda has been the massacre of 44 people, including pregnant women and children, in the southeastern province of Mardin during an engagement ceremony on Monday evening. The tragic and inhuman event is generally blamed on the centuries-old feudal system that prevails in the region.
The majority of those arrested in connection with the massacre were village guards; once again, this raises questions over the usefulness of the system created in 1985 to help combat the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Taraf daily, on Wednesday, described the tragic event as “a massacre with arms provided by the state.” Village guards are paid by the state and provided with arms.
Soon after this event came a long-delayed government announcement that an undersecretariat would be set up to increase the effectiveness of the fight against the PKK. This announcement was paradoxical in the sense that the Mardin massacre requires measures to be announced immediately to address the root causes of this regional feudal system rather than looking for immediate measures to increase the effectiveness of the fight against terror. We need to make a serious mental adjustment to be able to diagnose problems correctly so that the right measures can be applied to solving the problems.
This week’s other leading agenda item continued to be developments in the Ergenekon trial, where the investigation centered on alleged plans to incite an armed rebellion to topple the government. Almost daily, excerpts from the second indictment have been released, and some, published by the media, have revealed, among other things, how former top commanders engaged in a smear campaign against each other. A fresh development is the alleged involvement of Osman Paksüt, a diplomat turned vice president of the Constitutional Court, in the Ergenekon investigation. Paksüt is being urged to resign from his post so as not to further cast a shadow over the impartial status of the court. His wife, Ferda Paksüt, is already listed among the Ergekenon suspects in the second indictment as legal wiretaps have revealed her alleged connection with some of the other suspects in the investigation, attempting to influence a Constitutional Court hearing last year over the closure of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). The court did not close the party, but punished it with a heavy fine.
In the meantime, the spread of swine flu around the world and the measures taken by Turkey to prevent its arrival have continued to dominate the agenda. A friend of a famous Turkish soccer player, upon his arrival at İstanbul Ataturk Airport from abroad, got into a fistfight with police due to his refusal to be screened by a thermal camera set up to detect travelers with serious flu symptoms. This reminded me of how some Turks can become violent -- even in situations that require common sense.
One of the other spectacular events this week was former Turkish Chief of General Staff retired Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt’s remarks that triggered a strong reaction from former Prime Minister and President Süleyman Demirel.
Büyükanıt, in a speech he made at İstanbul-based Beykent University several weeks ago but that only became public when the Hürriyet daily published a story on it on Monday, described the Turkish state as sick. He based his description of the state on his mistrust of the intelligence collected by the government's Security General Directorate. “A state organization responsible for bringing intelligence information to me has been collecting information about me,” Gen. Büyükanıt complained.
He is assumed to have been referring to the Ergenekon investigation, in which some retired generals, arrested over their links with the probe, have been revealed by the media to have been gathering information about him, too. “If there is mistrust and suspicion among state institutions, that state will have problems,” Büyükanıt continued.
However, Büyükanıt has fallen short of highlighting problems stemming from the intelligence unit of the General Staff; it has long failed to share intelligence information with political authorities, a reflection of a deep power struggle among the military-led bureaucrats and the elected civilian political authority.
Demirel, a six-time Turkish prime minister who was removed from power three times as a result of military coups, responded furiously to retired Gen. Büyükanıt’s remarks upon a question from reporters last Wednesday in İstanbul.
“The state may have some problems, and it is the responsibility of state authorities themselves to correct these problems. Nobody should put the blame on the state for their own weaknesses,” Demirel noted.
Some of the major events that I have mentioned above require a serious overhaul of the state so that it can act like a true democratic state, setting an example for its citizens
