What ‘Ergenekon’ is and is not

 I would not argue that he is the best example of his kind, but Jenkins appears to me as belonging to the category of “Western Kemalists” who share Orientalist and Islamophobic views and are convinced that Turkey has to remain under bureaucratic-military guidance if it is to remain secular and a part of the West. It is not accidental that his latest paper, titled “Between Fact and Fantasy: Turkey's Ergenekon Investigation” (August 2009), is published by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program based in Stockholm, which shares what I call a “Western Kemalist” perspective on Turkey.

 What I have noted above does not, of course, mean that Jenkins' analysis of the judicial investigation into the “Ergenekon terror organization,” a clandestine network of groups and individuals charged with plotting a military coup against the elected government, is not to be taken seriously. I simply want to warn the readers that like all others Jenkins too has political views and values, consideration of which are indispensable in assessing the value of his paper.

 Based on an analysis of the first two indictments, news and commentary in the media and interviews with (unidentified) “AKP officials, police officials and other security forces officials, former leftists, sources close to Ergenekon investigation, defendants in the Ergenekon case” and others, Jenkins largely arrives at the following two conclusions:

(1) “The Ergenekon organization as portrayed in the investigation is the product of a conspiracy theorist's imagination.” The prosecutors have not been able to provide any proof of its existence. Even if there is “evidence to suggest that some of the detained were involved in some form of criminal activity, they have been lumped together with the majority of accused who appear to be guilty of nothing more than holding strong secularist and ultranationalist views.” The effort to prove the organization's existence has led to disregard of due process, arbitrary police raids, lengthy detentions without formal charges and leaks to the media, all of which violate the rule of law.

 (2) The Ergenekon investigation not only wastes “an opportunity for the establishment of an independent truth commission which could perhaps have enabled Turks to come to terms with the realities of recent Turkish history,” it also “raises disturbing questions about the prospects for democracy and rule of law in the country.”

 Jenkins is justified in pointing to breaches of the rule of law in the conduct of the investigation and to the inconsistencies and diffuse nature of the indictments. The rather hurried conclusions Jenkins arrives at, however, raise the suspicion that he may himself be influenced by the conspiracy theory produced by the defendants and their sympathizers who claim that the case is simply a plot by the government to scare and silence the opposition.

 My own and, more importantly, the court's reading of the evidence produced so far leaves no doubt about efforts to pave the way for a military overthrow of the elected government. The third indictment, accepted by the court on Aug. 5, after the publication of Jenkins' paper, also provides detailed evidence on plots to assassinate dozens of people including bureaucrats, judges, journalists, politicians and writers in order to create chaos in the country. Other indictments may be forthcoming as the investigation deepens. But whether the “Ergenekon terror organization” existed or not, if it did who were its leading figures, who to what extent participated in it and (in sum) what Ergenekon is and is not are questions which will be clarified at the end of the judicial process.

Turkey is certainly a politically polarized society, and the controversy over the Ergenekon case is a major reflection of it. The assumption that permeates Jenkins' paper that the polarization is one between “Islamists and secularists,” supporters and opponents of the AKP, those who are for and against the military is, however, seriously misleading. There may be legitimate worries shared by an important part of the population about anti-secular and authoritarian tendencies in the AKP government. But the basic polarization is between those who support a regime dominated by the military and bureaucracy committed to an authoritarian reading of Kemalism and those who are for the consolidation of a liberal democracy. It is between those who support the political role of the military and those who want to put the military under civilian democratic control. And this main divide cuts across all segments of society, both civilians and the military, and even Kemalists themselves.