[Event of the week]
Civilian court accepts Poyrazköy indictment

The court ruled to accept the Poyrazköy indictment, contrary to expectations that it would forward the file to a military court. The ruling was applauded by most jurists and observers for being the first decision of its kind since the annulment. The Ankara Military Prosecutor’s Office asked the İstanbul court on Thursday to forward a copy of the indictment for examination.

The 297-page indictment concerns a cache of munitions discovered in Poyrazköy last year on land owned by the İstek Foundation. It demands life sentences for five naval officers -- Lt. Col. Ercan Kireçtepe, Lt. Col. Mustafa Turhan Ecevit, Maj. Eren Günay, Maj. Emre Onat and retired Maj. Levent Bektaş -- on charges of “attempting to destroy the Turkish Parliament and government.” The indictment also demands lengthy prison terms for 11 other naval officers for “membership in a terrorist organization” and “possessing unlicensed weapons.” Up to 15 years in prison is demanded for Adm. Levent Görgeç, navy colonels Tayfun Duman, Şafak Yürekli, Mert Yanık, İbrahim Koray Özyurt, Dora Sungunay, Muharrem Naci Alacalı and Ali Türkşen and navy sergeant majors Halil Cura, Sadettin Doğan and Feridun Arslan.

The Poyrazköy indictment refers to the illegal group within the Naval Forces Command as the “naval branch of Ergenekon.” According to the indictment, the heads of the branch are retired Maj. Bektaş and retired Col. Levent Göktaş. The document points to evidence for each of the accusations included in the file. The hearings will start in April.

Despite cold and snowy weather that paralyzed life in many parts of the country, thousands of people throughout Turkey took to the streets to condemn recently uncovered military action plans. In addition to İstanbul, which hosted the largest demonstration, protests were held in the provinces of Kahramanmaraş, Sakarya, Batman and Kütahya. An anti-coup group named 70 Million Steps Against Coups organized the İstanbul demonstration, which was held in the city’s Taksim Square. A group of some 5,000 people walked from Tünel to Galatasaray Square along İstiklal Street.

Jan. 24 Sunday

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that civilian fascism in Turkey came to an end during his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government’s term in office, responding to accusations of civilian fascism during his party’s rule.

Journalist Uğur Mumcu, who was killed by a bomb planted in his automobile on Jan. 24, 1993, was commemorated in various ceremonies throughout the country on the 17th anniversary of his death. The murder is still unsolved. A memorial ceremony was held in the Uğur Mumcu Park in Ankara’s Gaziosmanpaşa district, where Mumcu’s house is located.

Tourism Investors Association (TYD) President Turgut Gür said Turkey is seventh in the world in terms of the annual number of tourists and second in terms of bed capacity. Gür said there are 610,000 beds documented by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and an additional 400,000 documented by provincial municipalities. Turkey thus has a bed capacity of more than 1 million -- second only to Spain, according to Gür.

 Union of Tobacco, Alcoholic Beverage, Food and Related Industry Workers (TekGıda-İş) President Mustafa Türkel defended the protests by workers laid off after the privatization of state-owned tobacco and alcohol monopoly Tekel’s factories, stating that no one can call the protests illegal.

Jan. 25 Monday

High-level representatives from Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan came together for a comprehensive tripartite summit in İstanbul.

Prime Minister Erdoğan indirectly criticized alleged attempts to stage a coup d’état against his government while speaking at the International Democracy Congress organized by the Civil Servants’ Trade Union (Memur-Sen). “We are behind the wheel, we step on the gas pedal, but someone comes and puts on the brake. Another one attempts to interfere with the steering,” Erdoğan said, implicitly referring to the recently exposed Sledgehammer Security Operation Plan.

State Minister Faruk Çelik briefed the two main opposition parties on a series of workshops sponsored by the government seeking to examine the role of Alevis in Turkish society and find ways to better enfranchise this group. He also informed them about the details of a bill on religious affairs.

In the face of growing criticism of the General Staff over a military plan to violently overthrow the AK Party government, Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ addressed the media with “threatening” language and warned them not to try the military’s patience. “How on earth could the TSK [Turkish Armed Forces] plan to bomb mosques? This is unjust. The TSK has limits to its patience. I denounce these claims,” the military chief stated during a speech in Ankara.

Jan. 26 Tuesday

A statement by Chief of General Staff Gen. Başbuğ denying that a military operation plan called Sledgehammer was a scheme devised to stage a coup d’état failed to satisfy Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Speaking at his party’s parliamentary group meeting, Bahçeli said Başbuğ’s statements about the Sledgehammer operation were weak in defending the military’s innocence.

Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal said if allegations about the Sledgehammer plan prove to be true, then the government should immediately dismiss the chief of general staff. Speaking at his party’s parliamentary group meeting, Baykal said: “If there indeed is such a plan, it must have occurred with the knowledge of the chief of general staff. If the plan is real, there is no way he can say he doesn’t know about it. If there is such a plan, how can you tolerate this? You should dismiss him immediately.”

At the İstanbul Summit on Friendship and Cooperation in the Heart of Asia hosted by President Abdullah Gül, the Afghan and Pakistani presidents came together with senior diplomats and ministers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Iran, Tajikistan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and several representatives from international agencies, under Turkey’s motto, “Regional cooperation starts from the region.”

While addressing members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou publicly invited his Turkish counterpart, Erdoğan, to pay an official visit to Athens.

Following a meeting late on Tuesday at the Confederation of Turkish Labor Unions (Türk-İş) headquarters in Ankara, labor unions decided to go on strike on Feb. 3 unless the current debate over Tekel, Turkey’s alcohol and tobacco monopoly, is resolved. After losing their jobs in the wake of the monopoly’s privatization, Tekel workers from across the country began a protest in Ankara on Dec. 15. The workers are demanding that the government transfer them to other public institutions. In response, the government has offered workers the option of temporary employment program under Article 4/C, which provides jobs for workers dismissed from privatized public institutions for 11 months.

Jan. 27 Wednesday

The İstanbul 12th High Criminal Court ruled to accept an indictment against military officers detained as part of an investigation into a weapons cache found buried in İstanbul’s Poyrazköy district in April of last year during the probe of an illegal organization known as Ergenekon.

Prime Minister Erdoğan spoke about an alleged military plot to stage a coup d’état and overthrow the AK Party government, calling such plans “undemocratic,” “inhumane” and “outdated.” The prime minister was speaking at a meeting that brought together the governors of Turkey’s 81 provinces at Ankara’s Rixos Hotel.

A top European human rights watchdog started debating a report on the problems encountered by non-Muslim minorities in Turkey as well as by the Muslim Turkish minority in Greece. The draft report, finalized after being debated at PACE late on Wednesday, slammed both Turkey and Greece for not fulfilling the demands of religious minorities in their respective countries.

Reiterating his strong support for the democratization initiative launched by the AK Party government last summer, Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani encouraged the Kurdish people of Turkey to support the initiative, which seeks to settle Turkey’s decades-long Kurdish problem by expanding the democratic rights of its Kurdish citizens.

Jan. 28 Thursday

In an annual report released on Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights, the top judicial body ruling on human rights violations in Europe, found that Turkey is by far the worst violator of human rights among the 47 signatory states of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The new president of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, Gianni Buquicchio, called on Turkey to adopt a new constitution to solve its problems, while reaffirming the commission’s commitment to share its expertise with Turkish authorities on constitutional revisions.

Many of the journalists whose names are on a “to be arrested” list allegedly prepared in 2003 by military coup planners filed a criminal complaint in İstanbul against all people involved in the creation of the Sledgehammer Security Operation Plan. Speaking on behalf of 28 out of the 35 journalists who were on the list, Sabah columnist Nazlı Ilıcak said they denounce the Sledgehammer plan.

Think tanks from many Islamic countries came together at the Think Tank Forum of the Islamic Countries under the theme “Civilization of Peace and Cooperation,” organized by the Turkish-Asian Center for Strategic Studies (TASAM) at the Cevahir Congress Hall.

A meeting between Prime Minister Erdoğan and Confederation of Turkish Labor Türk-İş head Mustafa Kumlu, held on the 45th day of protests by workers dismissed from Tekel, increased hopes that the parties would finally find a solution to the impasse.

Jan. 29 Friday

The ongoing normalization process between Armenia and Turkey has overcome some very difficult obstacles, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu said, warning, however, that there is a need to declare “mutual bona fide and political will” to enable this process of normalization to function properly.

Turkey’s exports fell by 22.6 percent to $102.17 billion in 2009 over the previous year, while imports decreased by 30.3 percent to $140.78 billion in the same period, resulting in a deficit of $38.61 billion in foreign trade, which is nearly half of the 2008 figure, a recent report showed. According to the latest foreign trade statistics report released yesterday and prepared by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) with the cooperation of the Undersecretariat of Customs, exports amounted to $132.03 billion in 2008, while imports were $201.96 billion, meaning a foreign trade deficit of $69.94 billion, a figure 44.8 percent more than the previous year’s foreign trade deficit.