[Event of the week]
Questions remain on Arınç assassination plot after army’s statement

Despite increasing questions about the plot in the media, the General Staff remained silent for four days and released a statement on its Web site regarding the plot only on Wednesday. In its statement, the General Staff accused the press of reporting on the plan instead of responding to people’s questions. “Protecting the confidentiality of an ongoing judicial process is a principle of law. However, recent incidents have shown that this principle has lost its validity to a considerable extent in our country. Details of this incident concerning two officers started to appear in the media on Dec. 21. There is a difference between reporting on the incident and reporting on it with details and commentary,” read the statement. The statement claimed that the two officers who were caught around Arınç’s house on Saturday had been assigned by the General Staff to gather information about a member of the military who was accused of leaking military information to third parties. The General Staff’s statement failed to clear up questions regarding the plot and was found “unconvincing” by many analysts.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Arınç said the General Staff’s statement was an implicit admission of the assassination plot in criminal law. “I acknowledge that the officers of the General Staff were there [in the neighborhood] for intelligence. But they had another purpose [other than following a military officer who had leaked information]. This statement is an implicit admission of the plot. I am a lawyer specializing in criminal law. Lawyers know what an implicit admission is,” Arınç noted. Arınç also said an ongoing investigation would shed light on the incident.

Two military officers were detained during a police operation in a neighborhood of Ankara predominantly inhabited by parliamentary deputies on charges of plotting to assassinate State Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç. Both gendarmerie and police teams were involved in the operation in Ankara’s Çukurambar neighborhood, where most of the residents are members of Parliament. Two members of the Special Forces Command were detained on suspicion of planning to kill Arınç. They were released after interrogation.

 Dec. 20 Sunday

The Viva Palestina convoy entered Syria after concluding its journey through Turkey. The 200-vehicle convoy passed through İstanbul, Ankara, Konya, Adana and Gaziantep and received a heartfelt welcome by the Turkish people who gathered in each city to greet the members of the multinational convoy and show their solidarity with the Gazans, impoverished by the years-long Israeli embargo.

Lt. Col. Ali Tatar was found dead in his house in İstanbul’s Beykoz district. Turkish broadcasters said Tatar had shot himself in the head with his handgun. The lieutenant colonel had been arrested due to suspected links to an apparent plot to assassinate admirals at the Naval Forces Command. He was released last Wednesday upon an appeal by his lawyer.

Remarks by Fener Greek Patriarch Bartholomew, in which he likened his treatment by the government in Turkey to crucifixion, led to disappointment and anger in Ankara, with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu saying he wished those remarks had been a “slip of the tongue.” Speaking in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” for a story that was broadcast on Sunday, Patriarch Bartholomew said Turkey’s Greek Orthodox community does not feel they enjoy full freedom as Turkish citizens and feel they are treated as “second-class citizens.” “[The Turkish government] would be happy to see the patriarchate extinguished or moving abroad, but our belief is that it will never happen,” Bartholomew said. “I have visited the prime minister, many ministers, submitting our problems … asking [them] to help us,” he told the program.

Interior Minister Beşir Atalay expressed satisfaction over the outcome of a trilateral meeting with Iraqi and United States officials during which they coordinated counterterrorism efforts against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which also has bases in northern Iraq. Speaking to reporters following a meeting with Iraqi and US officials in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Atalay, also the coordinator of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government’s democratization initiative, said considerable progress has been made within the trilateral committee -- which was formed in Baghdad in November 2008 by senior Iraqi, Turkish and US officials to combat the PKK -- in the past year.

 Dec. 21 Monday

Turkish President Abdullah Gül left Ankara to pay a visit to oil-rich Kuwait, the first Turkish presidential visit to the country in 12 years, at the invitation of the Kuwaiti head of state, Sheikh Sabah IV Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, who currently heads the rotating presidency of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

 Dec. 22 Tuesday

A moderately strong earthquake rattled the Mediterranean region and the island of Cyprus. No damage or injuries were reported. İstanbul’s Boğaziçi University’s Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute announced that the earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4, occurred on the northern part of the island at 8:06 a.m.

A spokesman from the İstanbul-based Greek Orthodox Patriarchate said the debate surrounding Patriarch Bartholomew’s words on CBS television in the United States about feeling “crucified” living in Turkey showed that there is a great need for dialogue between different religions. The İstanbul-based patriarchate’s spokesman, Dositeos Anagnostopulos, said there was a communication problem regarding the patriarch’s words and it was because of the translation of the words of a person who thinks in Greek but speaks in Turkish.

The Ankara Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into the former leader of the now-defunct Democratic Society Party (DTP) on his remarks about jailed terrorist leader Abdullah Öcalan during a press conference last week. Türk said one of the reasons behind the DTP deputies’ decision to stay in Parliament was an appeal from the jailed leader of PKK, Öcalan, urging the deputies to continue their political struggle in Parliament. The terrorist leader is serving a life sentence in prison on the island of İmralı.

Former members of the now-defunct DTP arrived at the Makhmour refugee camp in northern Iraq for a two-day visit. Among the delegation were deputies Sevahir Bayındır, İbrahim Binici, Özdal Üçer, former DTP Central Executive Board (MYK) member Hatice Çoban, Şırnak Mayor Ramadan Uysal and Uludere Mayor Şükran Sincar. The delegation was set to discuss the problems of the Makhmour residents and seek solutions to them during their visit.

The Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) released its first-ever analysis of employment on a provincial level, revealing that unemployment was highest, at 22.1 percent, in the southeastern province of Şırnak, while in Turkey’s economic powerhouse of İstanbul, with 1.4 million people unemployed, 11.2 percent of the provincial population was out of work.

 Dec. 23 Wednesday

Turkish Aviation Board (THK) chairman retired Gen. Osman Yıldırım was released after being detained over corrupt practices in accepting donations during the Feast of the Sacrifice, or Eid al-Adha, while the administrators of other charitable foundations remained in custody.

Mehmetçik Vakfı (Turkish Soldiers Foundation) General Manager Salih Güroğlu, Foundation for Children with Leukemia (LÖSEV) head Üstün Ezer, Deniz Feneri (Lighthouse) Chairman Mehmet Cengiz and Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB) Vice President Faik Yavuz were sent to court together with 31 others after they were questioned.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Turkey will not give up on its determination to improve ties with neighboring countries such as Syria just because this move is considered by some as a shift from the West to the East. Erdoğan’s remarks came in Damascus as he delivered a speech at a meeting of the Syria-Turkey Business Forum during his official visit to the city to co-chair a high-level meeting between Syria and Turkey.

In a statement posted on its Web site, the General Staff chose to defend the armed forces and its members against harsh criticism over an apparent planned assassination against Deputy Prime Minister Arınç and accused the press of reporting on the plan instead of responding to the people’s questions. “Protecting the confidentiality of an ongoing judicial process is a principle of law. However, recent incidents have shown that this principle has lost its validity to a considerable extent in our country. Details of this incident concerning two officers started to appear in the media on Dec. 21. There is a difference between reporting the incident and reporting it with details and commentary,” read the statement.

 Dec. 24 Thursday

More than 30 people, eight of them mayors, were detained as a result of simultaneous operations in several provinces of Turkey against the Kurdish Communities Union, Turkey Council (KCK/TM), an organization that allegedly functions as the urban arm of the outlawed PKK.

Taraf reporter Mehmet Baransu, who exposed a suspected military plot to assassinate non-Muslim community leaders, testified to prosecutors at the Kadıköy courthouse on charges of violating the principle of confidentiality of an ongoing judicial process and was transferred to the İstanbul 5th Criminal Court of Peace for arrest. However, the reporter was released by the court.

The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), established to replace the DTP, which was shut down by the Constitutional Court two weeks ago, formed a parliamentary group. The 19 ex-DTP deputies in Parliament joined the BDP along with independent deputy Ufuk Uras, who served as the new party’s 20th deputy, bringing the number of BDP seats to the minimum required to form a parliamentary group.

The state-owned Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) broadcast the Alevi Muharram Cem ritual for the first time in its history. TRT 1 broadcast the event, in which Alevis mourn the killings of Husain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and his family, live from the Hacı Bektaş-ı Veli Anatolia Cultural Foundation in the eastern province of Erzincan.

 Dec. 25 Friday

Thirty-five people who were detained on Thursday as a result of simultaneous operations in several provinces of Turkey against the KCK/TM were transferred to the Diyarbakır Public Prosecutor’s Office for questioning. The KCK/TM allegedly functions as the urban arm of the outlawed PKK.

 Underlining the presence of constant contact between Azerbaijani and Turkish officials, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu said the two neighboring countries would not allow any provocation to have an impact on their bilateral relations, describing Azerbaijani and Turkish people as being from the same family. The remarks by Davutoğlu came at a joint press conference following talks with Azerbaijan’s visiting Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.