‘Balyoz’ suspect confirms authencity of Gölcük documents

The Sledgehammer plan was initially discovered in 2009, with the defendants saying it was not a coup d'état plot but an intellectual strategy game for military commanders. Later, a large number of documents were found at Gölcük Naval Base, hidden under the floor tiles in a room. In the latest development in the case, Col. Yüsel Gürcan, currently under arrest as a Sledgehammer suspect, said he had created some of the documents himself  but denied that the documents had any relation to a coup plan.

Gürcan's testimony concerned a number of documents contained on CD number 11, included in the prosecution's evidence folders. Gürcan said in his testimony: “I have served as the director of the intelligence unit of the Bursa Provincial Gendarmerie Command. The commander at the time, Arif Çekin, had requested that I prepare informational notes on various public servants. This document was later found at Gölcük.”

Gürcan was referring to lists of public servants categorized according to their ideology and religious creed for future reference, possibly after the coup d'état. Keeping tabs on civil employees, particularly higher-level bureaucrats, is illegal, but a practice frequently employed by the military as recent investigations into various coup plots have shown. These lists, called “fişleme” in Turkish, which can be translated as “tagging,” would mostly serve as “black lists” once the coup plotters achieved their end.

The colonel said he had been ordered to create this particular document under orders from Bursa Gendarmerie Commander Çekin. The document involves information on the “political views” and “general leanings” of 55 mayors and 17 kaymakams, or district governors. “I prepared these under orders from my commander. These don't have anything to do with a coup d'état,” Çekin told Judge Ali Efendi Peksak during his cross-examination in Thursday's session of the trial.

“A provincial gendarmerie command always needs to know the people they will work with when they are newly assigned to the post. That's why he asked for this information,” the colonel explained to the court.

There was another hearing in the Sledgehammer trial on Friday. Among the suspects are War Academy Commander Gen. Bilgin Balanlı, former Air Forces Commander retired Gen. Halil İbrahim Fırtına, Naval Forces Commander retired Adm. Özden Örnek and former 1st Army Commander Gen. Çetin Doğan. There are 224 defendants, 184 of whom are being kept in custody; 149 of the suspects are currently in jail and 29 of the suspects who were released pending trial appeared at Friday's hearing -- the 45th in the trial. In addition to Fırtına and Örnek, retired Gen. Doğan, who is accused of creating Sledgehammer, and retired Gen. Engin Alan, who was recently elected to Parliament from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and Gen. İsmail Taş attended the hearing. Thirty-five of the suspects were absent from the hearing, including Balanlı.

Ali Fahir Kayacan, a defense lawyer, argued during Friday's session that Turkey's National Military Strategy Document (TÜMAS) and the National Security Policy Document – two bylaws that were in force during the alleged time of writing of the Sledgehammer plan in 2002-2003 – clearly gave directives to the military to fight religious reactionaryism. The suspects continued to present their defense statements during Friday's hearing.

There are several ongoing trials in Turkey where generals, military officers and in some cases civilians are on trial for attempting to overthrow the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government. The main trial is Ergenekon, not the name of a coup plot but the self-given name of its members to a secret gang that devised an elaborate network and numerous plots -- often violent -- to realize their final goal. Some of the plans of Ergenekon have already played out, prosecutors argue. There is evidence suggesting that the killings of three Christian Bible publishers in Malatya in 2007 and possibly the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in the same year could be linked to Ergenekon.

The investigation into the Sledgehammer plan, launched shortly after its details were leaked to the press in 2009, found that a group in the military had met in 2003 at the Selimiye barracks to discuss the plot in detail. The defendants in the case say that the Selimiye gathering was a symposium during which war plans and intellectual exercises were discussed. However, the prosecution claims, on the basis of some solid evidence, that the content of the symposium was more than simple brainstorming. Documents later found at Gölcük confirm the coup allegations, as the myriad documents found here, written in the style of the professional military, detail every move the junta would make after staging a military intervention. The prosecution now says that these documents were moved to Gölcük after the Sledgehammer plot was exposed, initially to be destroyed. The plotters later changed their minds and hid the documents, to be updated according to changing conditions and ultimately used when the opportunity to stage a coup d'état arose.