Malatya massacre victim's widow wants case merged with Cage plan

Cage is a suspected Naval Forces Command plan that was exposed in 2009 in which prominent non-Muslim figures in Turkey were to be assassinated with the aim of fomenting chaos in society and leading to a coup d'état against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government. “I want the Zirve Publishing House killings to be merged with the case into the Cage Operation Action Plan. I do not believe that those young men could have carried out the murders on their own. Some de facto links [between the killings and Cage plan] are evident. There are other influences behind these murders,” Suzanna Geske told Today's Zaman.

On April 18, 2007, Christian Turks Necati Aydın and Uğur Yüksel and Christian German national Tilman Geske were tied to their chairs, stabbed and tortured at the Zirve Publishing House before their throats were slit. The publishing house they worked for printed bibles and Christian literature. The killings drew international condemnation and added to Western concerns about whether Turkey can protect its religious minorities.

Nine men have been charged with the murders and seven of them are currently in jail. Most of the suspects were under the age of 20 when the incident occurred. 

There have long been concerns that the murders were part of a bigger plan, most probably devised by Ergenekon, to foment chaos in Turkey. Ergenekon is a clandestine criminal organization accused of plotting to overthrow the government.

“I want the two cases to be merged so that justice will be done. I want the real perpetrators of the [Malatya] murders to be punished. If the real perpetrators go unpunished, they will make other young men commit similar crimes in the future,” Geske stated. She does not believe that the murder of the three Christians was merely a hate crime.

In mid-April, an indictment regarding the Cage Operation Action Plan was added to the case file on the Malatya murders; however, this did not mean the merger of the two cases. For a merger, a higher criminal court must examine a demand to that effect from the plaintiffs or their lawyers.

The Cage plan was retrieved from a CD seized from the office of retired Maj. Levent Bektaş, a suspect in the Ergenekon case. The CD exposed plans to assassinate prominent non-Muslim figures in Turkey and direct the blame to the ruling AK Party. The intention was to increase internal and external pressure on the party, leading to diminishing public support for the government.

The plan also referred to the killings of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, Catholic priest Father Andrea Santoro and three Christians in Malatya as an “operation.”

“I believe that there is an ulterior motive behind the killings. This may be linked to Ergenekon or another criminal group. I believe that the young men who carried out the murders were directed by criminal elements. I want those criminal elements to be exposed. Otherwise, the lives of those young men will be wasted while the real criminals will go unpunished,” Suzanna Geske added.

She did, however, say she was pleased that the case into the Malatya murders has not been covered up.

The first indictment on Ergenekon was also added to the Malatya case in 2008. Evidence collected in the Ergenekon investigation suggested that the brutal killings might have been organized by Ergenekon, which is suspected of a large number of murders and bombings aimed at creating chaos in the country to serve the organization's ultimate purpose of overthrowing the government.

The Ergenekon investigation, a behind-the-scenes network attempting to use social and psychological engineering to shape the country in accordance with its own ultra-nationalist ideology, began in 2007, when a house in İstanbul's Ümraniye district that was being used as an arms depot was discovered by police.

‘Never thought about leaving Turkey'

Suzanna Geske currently lives in Malatya with her three children, aged 15, 13 and 10. She recently applied to become a Turkish citizen, but her application was rejected. She said she plans to file a new citizenship application shortly.

“I never thought about leaving Turkey when my husband was killed. Life became harder for us, and my children were very sad [at the loss of their father]. But we never considered leaving Turkey. I applied to become a Turkish citizen but they rejected my application. I plan to submit a new application. I trust God against any attack that may target me,” she said.

Geske also said her family in Germany asked her to leave Turkey and move back to Germany after the brutal Malatya murders. “My mother and father wanted me to return to Germany. They were worried about us. They came to visit us in Malatya; but they changed their mind when they saw our life here. Despite what we experienced, we are happy in Malatya. We cannot put it all aside and move to a different place all of a sudden,” she said.

Geske has denied claims that she is working to convert her neighbors in Malatya to Christianity.