Military has a hard time determining Ergenekon stance

The unease is understandable since retired generals and other active officers were also detained Wednesday along with others as part of the ongoing Ergenekon investigation. The retired generals all served in the late ‘90s and are known for having played key roles in the process of Feb. 28, 1997, which began when the government was forced to resign as a result of an unarmed military intervention launched on that day.

Force commanders came together on Wednesday for a six-hour meeting immediately after the detentions. On Thursday, Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ visited Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Abdullah Gül. The military admitted in a statement that the meetings were concerning the detentions, but did not elaborate. On Friday, newspapers, relying on various sources, reported that Başbuğ had appealed to the prime minister to be “nice” to retired generals under detention or arrest in the Ergenekon investigation. The move has caused many to wonder, based on past experience, whether the military will try to place an obstacle in the way of the investigation.

In the Feb. 28 process, an intelligence agency official and a military officer were taken to court for exposing army generals’ attempts to influence civilian politics. The judge, Maj. Mesut Kurşun, said Thursday that there was great pressure put on him and other military judges by Gen. Erdal Şenel, who was also detained on Wednesday, not to acquit the suspects. The suspects were first put under arrest and then acquitted. Shortly after the acquittal, Kurşun was called to Şenel’s office at the General Staff Command and was threatened. Kurşun believes that investigating Ergenekon comprehensively and courageously will finally shed light on many dark points in Turkey’s history.

A similar experience took place in the Nov. 9, 2005 Şemdinli affair. On that date, a bookstore in the southeastern township of Şemdinli owned by a former Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) member was bombed. Two noncommissioned army officers and a PKK informant were caught trying to flee the scene after having planted the bomb. The ensuing trial took months. Then Land Forces Commander Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt spoke in favor of one of the noncommissioned officers, referring to him as a “good guy” whom he knew from earlier times when he had served in the region. A campaign to scare off the judiciary not dissimilar to the current one against Ergenekon was started by some segments of society.

At the time, however, the government did not have the political will to stand against the shadier relations within the state hierarchy. The prosecutor, Ferhat Sarıkaya, was disbarred by the Supreme Board of Prosecutors and Judges (HSYK) shortly after he indicted Büyükanıt for being part of a dubious and clandestine formation inside the gendarmerie in the Southeast. The three assailants were sentenced to 40 years in prison after a lengthy trial process in a civilian court. Last year, the Supreme Court of Appeals declared a mistrial and referred the case to a military court to start everything from scratch. The proceedings at the military court have not been shared with the public so far.

Although the military has not criticized the detentions openly since Wednesday, Gen. Başbuğ’s approval of a visit by military generals to two retired Ergenekon generals, Şener Eruygur and Hurşit Tolon, in jail had hinted that the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) was supporting the two generals, who were accused of plotting against the government.

According to Hasan Celal Güzel, a former minister and currently a columnist in the Radikal daily, the visit to the generals was a clear message that the military would protect its retired generals. “It is quite obvious that a TSK administration giving such a message would not try or allow the trial of coup plotters.”

Other obstacles along the way

Güzel said in addition to the military, a potential obstacle to the smooth functioning of the investigation and the trial could be the omission of diaries that were allegedly written by a top navy admiral detailing plans for two separate coup d’etat attempts against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government in 2004. The diaries were made public last year by a newsweekly that has since been shut down by its owner, who felt pressured by authorities. No investigation was made into the diaries or into their alleged owner.

“There is a semi-militarist democracy in Turkey. We can’t seem to get the alleged coup attempts mentioned in the two diaries. We are trying a coup attempt, albeit in an indirect way,” Güzel said, recalling that Eruygur and Tolon were frequently mentioned in the diaries “because the prosecution accuses the two former generals of destroying the government and stopping Parliament from functioning. This is not something you can possibly do without a military overthrow of the government.” He added that he saw the Ergenekon trial as the most important case in the history of the Republic of Turkey. He thinks, however, that not all elements of the Ergenekon structure inside the TSK have been cleaned up. “Ergenekon is TSK centered, and its elements in the TSK have not yet been cleaned up. The prosecutors conducting the Ergenekon investigation have hit against the immunity shield of the TSK. We either need a change of the Constitution, or we need the TSK to take a democratic stance and do its cleaning-up on its own. Although recent developments give hope that this may be taking place, I think it would be too optimistic to believe that the current commanders would allow the investigation to get deeper,” Güzel said, predicting that the military will not make things easy during the future course of the investigation.

Gladio-like organizations

Fikri Sağlar, a former culture minister who was also an active member of the parliamentary commission into the Susurluk Affair of 1996, said the Ergenekon structure is part of Operation Gladio, a NATO stay-behind paramilitary force left over from the Cold War in European countries, whose existence was not discovered even by politicians in Europe until the ‘90s. According to Sağlar, the Feb. 28 process itself was carried out by the same group; however, since the investigation yielded no results, the Ergenekon organization had emerged from the Susurluk affair.

Sağlar warned that one of the major obstacles faced by the Ergenekon investigation is a mistake of methodology. He believes that the prosecution should convince the public that there is strong evidence to match the serious allegations directed at each person who is detained in the investigation. “It is impossible to solve this without including the coup diaries in the indictment,” Sağlar added, noting that there was an international dimension to the Ergenekon structure, which he said has both military and civilian appendages.

Opposition is not helping either

The military is not the only concern for the healthy continuation of the probe. After the detentions, Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal immediately called a news conference, claiming that the detentions were politically motivated and that they were an attempt on the part of the government to “change the regime.”

Many believe such a reaction to the detentions is dangerous and might harm the investigation. “Although there is a political will to do so, there is obviously uneasiness from the side of the judiciary, the military bureaucracy and other groups, which might stall the Ergenekon investigation eventually,” warned Yusuf Alataş, former head of the Human Rights Association (İHD). “Political will alone may not be enough. Baykal defending the suspects might make solving this network of shady relationships very difficult.”

Mehmet Elkatmış, head of the parliamentary Human Rights Commission at the time of the Şemdinli affair, said statements such as Baykal’s and the acts of judicial institutions, such as an ad hoc and urgent meeting of the chairmen of the Supreme Court of Appeals, were causing chaos and that they were an attempt to politicize the case as well as make sure that it doesn’t lead anywhere. “This is exactly what happened in Şemdinli, and nothing came out of that,” Elkatmış said. “If Turkey doesn’t clean out these structures, it will continue to be a country of shady and filthy relationships.”

Elkatmış also agrees that illegal structures inside the state have military and civilian branches, but these are shaped through the military bureaucracy. “The arrests of retired generals and active officers in itself are enough to show that the Turkish military is closely related to Ergenekon,” he said. Elkatmış also highlighted that it would not be realistic to expect that the arrests were made without prior approval of the military. Referring to the earlier visit to Ergenekon generals in jail and the supposed approval of the military, Elkatmış said: “These attitudes that contradict each other really make the position of the military on Ergenekon ambiguous. It is like the question: Is it the chicken or the egg?”

Journalist and author Nazlı Ilıcak does not agree that the military will be a problem. “The military is not making too much of an intervention. I think the military is not against the investigation getting deeper. The retired generals and active officers that were detained have been detained with permission from the General Staff. I do not think this can be done without permission,” she said.

She also said it was not right to see the recent wave of detentions as revenge for the Feb. 28 process.

Another person who thinks the international branches of the Ergenekon organization deserve more focus is Ömer Vehbi Hatipoğlu, deputy chairman of the Felicity Party (SP). “This is only the tip of the iceberg,” Hatipoğlu told Sunday’s Zaman. “We haven’t really gotten too deep yet. If I was to speak of the things I know, Ergenekon would disappear under shadows. Such structures have been poisoning politics in Turkey since 1960.”

Hatipoğlu said the deepening of the investigation would show that every attempt against the parliamentary system is organized by the same circle of groups and individuals. He also stated that even if the domestic structure of Ergenekon were resolved, the foreign parts of it would never be completely revealed.