Generals to reply to evidence other than coup diary

On Tuesday, 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, were called to testify to Ergenekon prosecutors. The three men will testify on coup plans nicknamed Moonlight, Blonde Girl and the Glove, all mentioned in a journal detailing plans against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) allegedly kept by Örnek.

The three former force commanders are being accused of having plotted to force Gen. Özkök to resign based on a document titled “Opera-Son” -- a word play that might mean “end of the opera” in Turkish and sounds like the word for “operation” -- found among digital documents seized from Ergenekon defendant retired Gen. Hurşit Tolon, who was formerly in command of the 1st Army Corps, during a search of his house. In the document, a large number of generals at the time including Fırtına, Tolon, Gen. Fevzi Türkeri, Gen. Oktar Ataman, Gen. Çetin Doğan and several others are depicted as making an effort to force Özkök to resign and to devise a strategy to overthrow the AK Party government.

It is also mentioned in the Tolon document that the generals would ensure that Gen. Yalman was appointed at the August Supreme Military Council (YAŞ) meeting that year. It wasn’t clear what year the document was from, but the three former force commanders were called to testify concerning their alleged activities between 2001 and 2004. The document also noted that it would be impossible to go on with the coup plan if they failed to force Özkök to resign, asking all generals to exhort the utmost effort to make that resignation possible.

Sources say that the prosecutors will not only question the generals on the alleged diaries or the Tolon document, but also similarly incriminating entries from a journal kept by Cumhuriyet daily writer Mustafa Balbay, who is also a jailed defendant in the Ergenekon trial. Yalman’s name also frequently appears in these entries. The prosecution also has reason to suspect that Yalman was the general who pushed for a story published in Cumhuriyet on May 23, 2003, reporting that younger officers in the military would like to see an overthrow of the government.

Navy Commander Admiral Özden Örnek (L), Former Land Forces Commander Gen. Aytaç Yalman (M), Air Forces Commander Gen. İbrahim Fırtına (R)

Earlier, Özkök testified as a witness in the investigation. In the third indictment, Özkök’s response to a question on the May Cumhuriyet story -- which claimed that younger officers who were uneasy about the government complained to Özkök in a collective letter about the government’s tendencies they deemed to be unsecular -- was that although he knew that some in the military were unhappy about the government, he did not have the impression that they were planning to resort to such methods.

Indictments on Cage and Poyrazköy

Meanwhile, reports say that the prosecution will be submitting two new indictments to the court hearing the Ergenekon trial. So far, three indictments covering various operations conducted in the course of the investigation have been accepted by the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court. Charges arising from more recent operations, including the discovery of a weapons cache in İstanbul’s Poyrazköy district in April and a document named the Cage Operation which laid out the generals’ plans to assassinate various non-Muslim community leaders to foment chaos, will be included in the new indictments. The prosecutors will submit two separate documents for each incident.

According to the Cage operation, which was retrieved from a CD seized from the office of retired Maj. Levent Bektaş, who is currently under arrest over suspected links to the Poyrazköy arms excavation, Ergenekon was planning to assassinate non-Muslim community leaders.

The CD was found along with many others in Bektaş’s office during a police raid in April, which came after the discovery of munitions on land owned by the İstek Foundation in Poyrazköy the same month. The CD exposed the group’s plans to assassinate Turkey’s prominent non-Muslim figures and place the blame for the killings on the AK Party as part of the Cage Plan. The desired result of the killings was an increase in internal and external pressure on the party, leading to diminishing public support for the AK Party.

Various supplies of munitions have been found hidden in shanty houses or buried underground since the start of the investigation into Ergenekon, apparently taken out of the arms depots of the TSK.

The Ergenekon investigation itself started in June 2007 with the discovery of weapons in a shanty house in a district of İstanbul. Since the start of the investigation, hand grenades, explosives, light anti-tank weapons, rocket launchers, Kalashnikov rifles, assault rifles, thousands of bullets and various other munitions have been discovered in secret depots or buried underground in various cities including Eskişehir, Ankara and Sapanca.

In April of this year, a large cache of munitions including 10 light anti-tank weapons, 20 percussion bombs and bullets was unearthed on land owned by Ergenekon suspect-at-large Bedrettin Dalan in Poyrazköy. Dalan was in the US during the wave of detentions and discoveries, which started on Jan. 7, 2009. He still has not been captured and is believed to be abroad.