Observers say military command search can shed light on Turkey’s dark past

Prosecutors might be able to find evidence regarding some past criminal acts such as thousands of unsolved murders, ‘the Cage plan’ and assassinations,” said Faik Tarımcıoğlu, a former military prosecutor and judge and an ex-Motherland Party (then-ANAP, now ANAVATAN) deputy in the ‘80s.

Tarımcıoğlu commented on the investigation into an alleged plot by active duty army officers in the Special Forces Command Ankara Tactical Mobilization Group to assassinate Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç. The search at the Special Forces Command was still continuing on Monday.

“This is a sign that Turkey is being restructured into a democratic country from a military one,” he told Today’s Zaman. “It is important for Turkey, which went through four military coups and saw an ultimatum like the one as recent as two years ago, on April 27.”

Two officers of the Tactical Mobilization Group of the Special Forces Command were recently captured as they stood watch near the house of Arınç in Ankara’s Çukurambar neighborhood. On Saturday, eight more military members were detained in the same investigation.

The military released a statement earlier last week saying two officers in the car near Arınç’s house had been running security checks on a military officer living in the neighborhood who was suspected of leaking information. “The statement from the General Staff had more questions than answers,” Tarımcıoğlu said. As more detentions came, civilian prosecutors suspected that there could be attempts at tampering with evidence at the Special Forces Command. So they had a search warrant issued on Friday night. According to reports, Special Forces Command personnel strongly resisted prosecutors during the first search on Friday night.

“In the search, if prosecutors can obtain the documents, they will find ‘secret records’ related to the interests of the state. These documents would never have been made public. But the important documents are the ones that contain criminal evidence,” Tarımcıoğlu added.

The Tactical Mobilization Group of the Special Forces Command is believed to be the equivalent of Turkey’s Gladio. Turkey’s Ergenekon, an illegal gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government, is believed by some to be the last living extension of Gladio, a code name denoting the clandestine NATO stay-behind operation in Italy after World War II, intended to counter a possible communist invasion of Western Europe. Many (including the Italian prosecutor who conducted Operation Clean Hands) liken the legal process against Ergenekon to the “Clean Hands” anti-corruption operation against Gladio in Italy during the 1990s.

An indictment into Ergenekon claims that the gang was behind a series of unsolved assassinations and was readying to perpetrate bloody attacks on several high-profile personalities.

In addition, a document known as the Cage plan, which plots to assassinate non-Muslim community leaders, was allegedly prepared by a group in the military. The Cage plan was exposed during a police raid on the office of retired Maj. Levent Bektaş as part of a probe launched after the discovery of a large arms cache in İstanbul’s Poyrazköy district in April as part of the investigation into Ergenekon.

Another observer, former Deputy Chief of the Police Department’s Intelligence Unit Bülent Orakoğlu, said civilian governments in Turkey only accidentally found out that “half-legal, half-illegal” formations existed.

“In NATO countries, such organizations have been used mostly against leftist elements. It was like NATO against the Warsaw Pact countries,” he said.

Explaining its “civilian” structure, Orakoğlu added that the civilian contacts in a country would consist of nationalist people, and that the names of their organizations would contain nationalist elements, like Ergenekon, which is about a Turkish legend.

“It is no surprise that there were obstacles erected in the way of the prosecutors who were to conduct a search at the Special Forces Command. It was not easy in the ‘Clean Hands’ operation, either,” he said and explained that the legendary Italian prosecutor, Felice Casson, who prosecuted members of Operation Gladio, stated in Turkey that the operations in the two countries have differences as well as similarities.

The difference is that secret documents in Italy were opened to the prosecutors, although with difficulty. Orakoğlu noted that the Turkish public has no information on whether or not the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) archives have been opened to prosecutors.

“No matter what, prosecutors should finish the investigation. This is about Turkey’s examination with democracy and law,” he added. “There might be illegal instructions revealed.”

With support from the United States, the Special Forces Command was established in the 1950s under the General Staff in order to resist a possible Soviet occupation. It would respond with a guerilla movement if such an occupation occurred. The Cold War ended, but the Special Forces Command did not disappear.

Many writers, journalists and witnesses claim that the Tactical Mobilization Group was behind the Sept. 6-7, 1955 pogrom against non-Muslim minorities in İstanbul. Witness accounts, past statements from the General Staff and evidence obtained during the Ergenekon investigation indicate that most of the arms and ammunition buried underground were buried by this group.

Meanwhile, Orakoğlu also said there needs to be political consensus in society in order to go to the end with such investigations. “Unfortunately, politics play a role, and some parts of society act as if the Ergenekon probe is a lie,” he said.

Umur Talu from the Habertürk daily voiced a similar criticism in his column.

“How come some can behave like those [things] have never happened in the country. … Worse is to be on the side of armed or provocative forces. You should open the curtains in your mind to see who is seeking the truth in the black box of history,” he wrote. Okay Gönensin from the Vatan daily wrote that there needs to be transparency in order to eliminate “conspiracy theories.”