Türkdoğan said the İHD had sent a copy of the complaint to the prosecutor heading the Ergenekon case in İstanbul so the complaint could also be considered within the scope of the Ergenekon case. On April 26, 1998, the headlines of the Sabah and Hürriyet dailies featured a statement allegedly belonging to Şemdin Sakık, second in command of the outlawed PKK.
Lead Hürriyet columnist Oktay Ekşi wrote an article titled “Let's get to know the traitor among us,” in which he claimed Sakık said journalists Mehmet Ali Birand and Cengiz Çandar had links to the terrorist PKK.
Shortly after the news broke, Birand was fired from his job and Çandar's articles were not published for some time. Sakık also accused DTP deputy Birdal of treason. Fifteen days after the accusation was published, Birdal survived an assassination attempt. A memorandum exposed two years later revealed that Sakık's statements had been distorted and that the reports in the media on certain journalists and Birdal were actually based on the statements of two generals at the General Staff headquarters. The memorandum was prepared upon Bir's order and leaked to the press by retired Maj. Gen. Erol Özkasnak.
While the General Staff confirmed the existence of the memorandum, it stressed that it was a draft and not an official memorandum. Virtue Party (FP) İstanbul deputy Nazlı Ilıcak filed a criminal complaint with the Ankara Public Prosecutor's Office against the people whose signatures appeared on the memorandum, titled “Strong Action Plan.” But the Ankara Public Prosecutor's Office decided that it lacked jurisdiction to launch an investigation into the three people because they were military officers at the time of the event. The three signatures on the memorandum belonged to former Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Çevik Bir, Maj. Gen. Fevzi Türkeri from intelligence department of the General Staff and Maj. Gen. Bülent Dağsalı from the department of domestic intelligence. The prosecutor's office ruled that the case fell under the jurisdiction of military courts and referred the dossier to the General Staff, which launched an investigation into the case.
Additional criminal complaints were filed, but none were pursued. But now that military personnel can be tried in civilian courts, Türkdoğan and Birdal, two figures who were victimized by the memorandum, have filed a criminal complaint against Bir, demanding that he be punished for setting up an illegal organization, soliciting murder, slander and defamation.
