Coup diary generals called to testify

Former Land Forces Commander Gen. Aytaç Yalman, former Air Forces Commander Gen. İbrahim Fırtına and former Naval Forces Commander Adm. Özden Örnek, all of whom retired in 2004, will be testifying to the Ergenekon prosecutors. The three men will testify regarding coup plans named Moonlight, Blonde Girl and the Glove, all mentioned in the journal entries.

In April 2007, weekly newsmagazine Nokta published excerpts from a journal it said belonged to Örnek, which contained details of coup attempts dating back to 2004. An investigation was launched following the allegation -- not into Örnek and his coup plans, but into Nokta Editor-in-Chief Alper Görmüş. The newsweekly was shut down several weeks after a police raid on their office. However, the journal was included in 2009 in the second indictment in the Ergenekon trial after a technical examination of the excerpts published by Nokta confirmed that they were authentic. Örnek has consistently denied that the journal was kept by him.

According to the Nokta report and to the second Ergenekon indictment, Örnek, a disciplined journal writer since 1957, recorded every detail about the plan by Land Forces Commander Gen. Yalman, Air Forces Commander Gen. Fırtına and Gendarmerie Commander Gen. Şener Eruygur -- who today heads the Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD) -- to stage a coup they termed Blonde Girl in 2004 when they were still in the military, but gave up due to the unwillingness of some higher-ranking officers, the US attitude at the time and the democratic stance of Hilmi Özkök, the then-chief of general staff. Örnek’s journal suggested that Eruygur then planned a coup by himself that he called Moonlight.

Earlier, former Chief of General Staff Gen. Özkök testified as a witness in the investigation. Çevik Bir, a former deputy chief of general staff, has also testified to the prosecutors.

It is now generally believed that between the years 2001 and 2004, there were active and intense attempts to overthrow the AK Party. The second indictment actually claims that some generals made presentations on coup plots. According to dossiers of evidence accepted along with a second indictment in March of this year by an İstanbul court hearing the case into Ergenekon, says that Ergenekon suspect retired Gen. Levent Ersöz, the former deputy head of the gendarmerie’s intelligence services, made a PowerPoint presentation to the generals serving in 2003 at General Staff headquarters.

The claim is based on documents seized during operations in the homes of suspects and retired generals Şener Eruygur and Ersöz. According to the indictment, in 2003, Ersöz made a coup presentation on behalf of the Republican Work Group, an illegal group within the military that acted as the brains behind the alleged plot, emphasizing the group’s plan to engineer manufactured tension in the country to facilitate the dissolution of the ruling AK Party. According to this claim, all the generals agreed, but Chief of General Staff Gen. Hilmi Özkök, who has since retired, adjourned the meeting, saying that although he agreed with most of the problems the generals pointed out regarding the government, he would not even issue a memorandum against it. This information also coincides with what Örnek wrote in his diary about the coup plans of the former generals.