Plot team categorized young non-Muslims as part of Cage plan

The plot, titled the Cage Operation Action Plan, includes a subversive military plan to kill prominent non-Muslim residents of Turkey and put the blame for the killings on the AK Party. The hoped-for result from the murders would be an increase in internal and external pressure on the ruling party, leading to its demise, according to the plan.

The additional folders of evidence related to the Cage plan suggest that the junta at the Naval Forces Command categorized the young children of Turkey's non-Muslim figures as well as their parents. The folders were distributed to defense lawyers in the case earlier this week. According to the folders, Cage documents showed that a young non-Muslim girl likes watching Pokemon and playing with dolls. Another document suggested that a 14-year-old non-Muslim boy likes cars, and a 14-year-old non-Muslim girl likes eating chocolate.

The full names, addresses and birthdays of the children are openly mentioned in the documents.

The Cage indictment says the plot team was coordinated and led by retired Adm. Ahmet Feyyaz Öğütçü. Adm. Öğütçü’s name appears in Cage plan documents as “the president.” Öğütçü was implicated in the placement of blocks of TNT and other explosives at the bottom of a submarine exhibited at the Rahmi M. Koç Museum. The explosives were to be detonated while a group of students was visiting the museum.

The indictment points to Vice Adm. Kadir Sağdıç and Rear Adm. Mehmet Fatih İlğar as “number two and three men” behind the plot. The folders also contain detailed Cage documents on adult members of Turkey’s non-Muslim community, including a 43-year-old woman who likes eating pistachios, a 33-year-old man who likes listening to classical music and a 44-year-old man who likes eating rice.

Categorizing Turkey’s non-Muslim citizens makes up a large part of the Cage plan. The plan was divided into four phases: “Preparation,” “Raising Fear,” “Shaping Public Opinion” and “Action.”

As part of the “Preparation” phase, the names and addresses of the country’s prominent non-Muslims would be determined. Then it would be ascertained which newspapers and magazines they subscribe to, which schools non-Muslims work for or send their children to, which associations or foundations they are members of, which places of worship they frequent and where they hold their religious celebrations and rituals.

Then the action plan would jump to the second phase, which consisted of posting information on the subscribers of a Turkish Armenian weekly, Agos, on a number of Web sites, especially “reactionary” ones. The editor-in-chief of Agos, Hrant Dink, was shot dead in 2007 by a young ultranationalist Turk. Letters that included threatening messages would be sent to Agos subscribers, and they would also receive threatening phone calls. Similar messages would be written on a number of walls of buildings in İstanbul’s Adalar district, which is home to hundreds of non-Muslim families.

On Thursday, the Cage plan was added to the case file on the 2007 Malatya murders, in which three missionaries were brutally killed at a Christian publishing house.

The Taraf daily reported on Friday that civilian prosecutors questioned Vice Adm. Sağdıç and retired Adm. Öğütçü earlier this year about the four missing copies of the Cage plan.

According to the prosecutors, there were five copies of the Cage plan. One of the copies was retrieved from a CD seized in the office of retired Maj. Levent Bektaş, a suspect in the Ergenekon case, in April 2008. The whereabouts of the remaining four copies, however, are unknown.

Sağdıç and Öğütçü reportedly told the prosecutors that they had no knowledge about the plan or its copies.

A report drafted by the İstanbul Police Crime Laboratory suggests that the signatures found on the Cage document actually belong to Lt. Col. Ercan Kireçtepe and Maj. Eren Günay. The lab, however, failed to ascertain whether a third signature on the document belongs to retired Maj. Bektaş.

Doc brings together Cage, Poyrazköy, Sledgehammer suspects

The additional Cage folders also include a three-page document that brings together 54 high-ranking military officers who have suspected ties with the Cage plan, munitions unearthed in İstanbul’s Poyrazköy area and a coup plan called the Sledgehammer Security Operation Plan.

The document bears short notes about how to “make use of” the officers and on what issues the officers would cooperate with the plot team. Among the officers are 12 rear admirals and six vice admirals.

The document mentions a division of labor among the officers. Retired Adm. Öğütçü, for example, was supposed to help “purify” the registers of suspected members of the Naval Forces Command. Vice Adm. Ali Deniz Kutluk was supposed to enable the sharing of intelligence at the command, according to the document.

The document also suggests which military officers would establish dialogue between the junta and illegal organizations, such as the left-wing Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C).