Details of the Sledgehammer Operation Plan, created by retired Gen. Doğan, who was in charge of the 1st Army at the time, were exposed by the Taraf daily on Jan. 20. The documents show that Sledgehammer’s creators were going to bomb mosques to cause chaos. Taraf also reported that the top-secret military documents it published were discussed widely in a two-day seminar in March 2003 at the Selimiye barracks. The voice recording, which Taraf says is of the closing speech delivered by Doğan, suggests clearly that Sledgehammer was indeed a plan to stage a coup against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.
The General Staff has so far denied that the documents and PowerPoint presentations from the March 5-7, 2003 seminar that Taraf published were documents from a scheme that sought to develop strategies at the time of a potential conflict with Greece. However, Doğan’s alleged voice recording tells a different story. The voice in the recording says the real threat Turkey faces is not outside, but at home and comes from religious reactionaries.
The voice that allegedly belongs to Doğan says: “Dear friends, you have by now probably all understood that I am holding this plan seminar to show you where we should be focusing our concentration on recent conjectural developments. I mean the Greece part here is a side issue. … No threat that might emerge beyond our borders, be it in northern Iraq or in Greece, can be bigger than the threat of religious reactionaryism we face inside, than the danger that might result from a religious fundamentalist uprising.”
The speaker also states that eliminating this threat can only be possible by the military and the nation embracing a strong and Atatürkist structure.
