11 August 2009 / EMRULLAH BAYRAK, ANKARA
The Ergenekon gang had plotted to kill Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir, but the assassination attempt was foiled at the last minute when police captured the assassin, according to prosecutors in the Ergenekon case. In the third indictment they have prepared against Ergenekon, prosecutors state that Selim Akkurt, who was a suspect at large in two separate murder investigations before he was captured as an Ergenekon suspect, was going to assassinate Baydemir if he had not been apprehended.
The prosecution argues that Ergenekon had already carried out many bloody attacks to create a favorable environment for staging a coup d'état and was in the process of planning many others.
The group planned to shoot Baydemir, Democratic Society Party (DTP) leader Ahmet Türk and DTP deputy Sebahat Tuncel, according to the prosecution. The indictment says Ergenekon suspect Mehmet Fikri Karadağ and others were arrested in an operation as phone conversations between retired Gen. Veli Küçük, also currently an Ergenekon suspect, and Karadağ indicated that the group's assassination plans were to be carried out much sooner than the police had initially thought. The police, who had begun tailing the suspects, apprehended Akkurt, the would-be hit man, shortly before a secret meeting he had planned to have with Karadağ.
