Civilian prosecutors conduct search at military command

Last week two officers of the Tactical Mobilization Group of the Special Forces Command were captured as they stood watch near the house of Arınç in Ankara's Çukurambar neighborhood. On Saturday, eight more Turkish soldiers were detained in the same investigation. The General Staff said in a statement that the soldiers were taken to Ankara central command headquarters in the morning after state prosecutors searched a military base in the capital. The names of those under detention have not yet been released, but reports said head of the Tactical Mobilization Group Col. Y.A. was among them.

The military released a statement earlier this week saying two officers in the car near Arınç's house had been running security checks on a military official living in the neighborhood who was suspected of leaking information. However, more detentions came on Friday, and civilian prosecutors suspecting that there could be attempts at obscuring evidence at the Special Forces Command had a search warrant issued on Friday night. According to reports, Special Forces Command personnel strongly resisted the prosecutors during the first search on Friday night. Newspapers on Sunday wrote that the Ankara 11th Higher Criminal Court issued a search warrant on Friday night after the two men who were captured near Arınç's house were released.

A group of five prosecutors led by Public Prosecutor Şemsettin Öcan and police squads from the counterterrorism department arrived at the Special Forces Command’s Ankara Tactical Mobilization Group facilities. However, the squads were not allowed to enter the Special Forces Command property despite a warrant and were stopped at the gate. A military prosecutor arrived at the site when the civilian prosecutors were allowed into the premises. The military prosecutor accompanied the civilians during the search. Only two police chiefs were allowed in from the police squads. The General Staff only allowed a search in the rooms of Col. Yılmaz B. and Maj. İbrahim G., the two officers captured while waiting outside Arınç’s house. The prosecutors demanded a general search relying on the warrant in their hands, but they were physically prevented. At 2:30 a.m., judge Kadir Kayan, who had issued the warrant, came to the Special Forces Command himself, demanding that his decision be obeyed. However, the military personnel also resisted judge Kayan. After this point, Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Aslan Güner got involved, requesting that the judge stop being persistent. Still unable to do a general search of the premises, the judge sealed off the doors and windows of those rooms in the building prosecutors believed might hold important evidence and left the building. On Saturday, the prosecutors came back, and this time entered the sealed rooms.

Civilian prosecutors searched General Staff offices on Saturday and Sunday in what was a first in Turkey, where the military has toppled four governments to date.

In other developments, Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ and Land Forces Commander Gen. Işık Koşaner met Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday after the detention of the eight soldiers. Erdoğan had a meeting scheduled with those ministers who serve on the National Security Council (MGK), which has a meeting today, but Başbuğ and Koşaner joined the meeting at the Prime Ministry on Saturday at 11 a.m. The prime minister’s office said Erdoğan was briefed on some domestic and international security issues without providing details. The meeting lasted three hours with sources close to the prime ministry noting that the detentions of the eight officers were also discussed during the surprise meeting, although official statements did not confirm this.

According to some reports, the prosecutors insisted on a search after a phone conversation between a private identified as S.T -- assigned under one of the two officers released after being detained on suspicion of plotting to kill Arınç -- and his father. According to reports, the private, whose phone had been wiretapped as part of the investigation, told his father that he and his colleagues had burnt a large number of documents so as to destroy potentially incriminating evidence in the Tactical Mobilization Group building.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Erdoğan yesterday made a statement on the weekend raids. He said: “All allegations are being investigated. Individual mistakes cannot be attributed to entire institutions. It won’t help anyone to make it appear as if there is a conflict going on between different state agencies.”

He also asked: “Will that status quo will be changed, or will it remain the same? Will we just put up with this pain or overcome it? We as the government have decided to back the investigation until the end.”