The silence of Ergenekon leaders and their lawyers over hitman’s comments

 While prosecutors and judges tried to shed light on the Council of State attack and the hand grenade attack on the Cumhuriyet daily, the silence of the lawyers representing Cumhuriyet and the suspects who allegedly ordered the events was eye-catching.

While prosecutors and judges asked Aslan several pressing questions that were not asked during the trial in Ankara, Veli Küçük, who has been accused of giving Arslan the grenades used in the attack against Cumhuriyet, and Muzaffer Tekin and Oktay Yıldırım, two other suspects who have been the subject of serious accusations, did not ask any questions.

More than 80 suspects have been questioned since Oct. 20, 2008. Each time the accused would question the other suspect who was making the accusations and accuse them of lying. But Küçük interpreted Arslan's conflicting responses during the interrogation and his reiteration of the claim that the previously denied hand grenade belonged to Süleyman Esen, another Council of State suspect, as “confirmation” that he did not have ties with the incident.

Most of Arslan's responses to questions involved religious explanations such as “propriety, circumstances and God.” After three days of questioning, the presiding judge, Köksal Şengün, asked Arslan why he gathered men from bars to carry out an action for the sake of religion. The question caused Arslan to make an insane outburst, which explained the gist of the matter.

Arslan's examination was a critical stage of the Ergenekon case. His attempt to act insane and refuse to sit in court failed to convince the authorities. With the Bakırköy Psychiatric Hospital issuing a report indicating that his mental condition is fine, there is nothing preventing Arslan from standing trial.

He had previously indicated that he would not make a defense in front of the court, but during the three-day session he answered the majority of questions although he did get tired at times and tried to avoid answering some.

The court tried to determine where Arslan orchestrated the attack in collaboration with other suspects such as Osman Yıldırım, Erhan Timuroğlu, İsmail Sağır and Tekin Irşi.

In previous sessions Arslan said he carried out the attack by himself, but after the lengthy cross-examination the hit man admitted that he went to Ankara to kill the Council of State judge with the four suspects mentioned above. In this way, the court sought to prove an organizational network between the suspects. The court also asked Arslan about the allegation that the hand grenades used in the attack against Cumhuriyet were given to Osman Yıldırım in a villa in İstanbul's Ataşehir neighborhood by Küçük, Tekin and Oktay Yıldırım. Arslan did not provide a name.

He claimed that he received the hand grenades from Esen. However, court president Şengün asked why Arslan, who was keeping the grenades in Üsküdar, arranged to meet Osman Yıldırım in Ataşahir in order to give them to him. Arslan replied that it was a place with open sky. "You should meet with him in Çamlıca, then," Şengün said, implying that he did not believe his explanation.

 Another point the court queried was who ordered Arslan to attack the members of the 2nd Department of the Council of State. Then, it became clear that Arslan did not know what the headscarf decision was about and had learned about it six months after the decision was made. Thus, it became evident that Arslan, who noticed the Vakit newspaper's story in February, i.e., two months after it was published, was not provoked to action out of the blue. Another interesting point uncovered was when Arslan was asked why he chose to attack the Cumhuriyet newspaper, although a caricature had been published in the daily, insulting Islamic values by showing a pig with a headscarf several months after the Council of State's headscarf decision. Arslan did not have a clear answer to this question.