Plot and déjà vu

When the court in question -- the composition of which had been determined by the controversial Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) -- dispensed with the established practice of releasing Col. Çiçek pending trial with a ban on traveling abroad, and instead, acquitted him, citing lack of evidence, it clearly aimed to make the retrial of Çiçek with the existing concrete evidence impossible. But their guns have been spiked again, and a new set of evidence that will be needed was sent to the prosecutors with the third whistleblower’s letter. As the pro-Ergenekon wing of the General Staff and the judiciary continues to resist, it seems such documents and information will continue to flow in and in every case of resistance, the General Staff, acting under the influence of pro-Ergenekon generals, will be much more disgraced than today. At the end of this process, the General Staff, which insistently tries to afford protection to its personnel who were involved in crimes, coup attempts and other illegal activities, will gain nothing but the further discrediting of its image, a greater loss of trust in the army and that sickening feeling of déjà vu they are giving us.

No doubt this sense of déjà vu that we feel about the General Staff and the military is unfortunately not restricted to their repeated attempts to violate the law in the eyes of the general public in order to protect their pro-coup, criminal military officers. Abundant information and documents were sent attached to the last whistleblower’s letter that give us a real sense of déjà vu. Some newspapers and TV stations, especially the Doğan Group -- which has been raising hell about the huge tax penalty imposed for its substantiated tax evasion by making loud allusions to freedom of the press -- it seems, have found an easy way to get going. It turns out that while we are having trouble finding a decent headline story, this disgraceful media organization did not hesitate to use fabricated news stories or headlines prepared by a psychological warfare department of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK).

As we read through these documents about such news stories and headlines, what came to mind first were certain media organizations, including Hürriyet, Milliyet, Vatan, Radikal and Cumhuriyet, and we were once more gripped by that overwhelming feeling of déjà vu. Today, thanks to these documents, we can understand better why the TV stations and newspapers in question, particularly Hürriyet, had opted to incessantly run news stories such as the “Iranization of Turkey” or “Malaysiazation of Turkey” or “Neighborhood pressure on the rise” for several weeks and unnecessarily and without any foundation. Of course, we can see clearly now that some newspapers, mainly Hürriyet, which yesterday failed to publish details of the latest whistleblower’s letter or its attached documents, are only newspapers in name, but their primary duty is to conduct psychological warfare at the behest of the junta.

As we read the documents, we re-lived how these newspapers and TV stations enthusiastically published or aired the defamatory stories which certain traitors within the TSK had prepared and sent to the pro-junta media to fight against the government and the nation. According to these documents, every news story which was planned in the 2007 Information Support Plan to be provided to the media appeared exactly in the headlines of these newspapers shortly after the plan was prepared. Surveys with distorted results were published on the first pages of these papers at regular intervals. A PowerPoint presentation titled “Kamuoyu yaratmak” (Creating public opinion) demands that the general public be manipulated by preparing false surveys with intended results and ensuring that these surveys were published as headline stories or reader or author comments. And all these demands were fulfilled to the letter by the rotten part of the Turkish media. It is really thought provoking that such fabricated news stories as those mentioned in this document are still published or aired by some newspapers or TV stations.

In Today’s Zaman’s news pages today, you will be able to read in detail how and where these black propaganda stories were prepared and which newspapers enthusiastically published them. Still, I would like to mention them briefly. In a document dated Oct. 24, 2007, which gives the Operations Department, the Intelligence Department and the General Secretariat of the General Staff as the authorities responsible for implementing it, it is planned that a letter relating to the headscarf be sent to a column titled Güzin Abla (Sister Güzin), in which “sexuality-related questions” posed by young people are answered.

The document further gives instructions on false news stories about “the ordinary people who were deceived by the reactionary capital and the sad account of the deceived people.” This instruction was fulfilled to the letter by the well-known media group which makes much noise about the advocacy of freedom of the press. As per this document, the TSK fabricates a news story about “a father who is a member of a religious order and who imprisons his daughter so that she does not go to school,” and this story is published immediately by the media. We further find out that the story about “a reactionary family that tries to arrange the marriage of their little daughter to an older man in return for some money” as well as the one about “a leader of a religious order who lives a life of luxury and has incredible wealth” were fabricated by the General Staff. “A young girl who is forced to wear a headscarf and who then tells her story to Sister Güzin of Hürriyet, asking for help; the letters sent by a young woman who does not want to wear a headscarf about how she is under pressure from her social surroundings...” I was really angry about these, but still, they are the most cleverly devised scenarios.

The plan for creating a “public opinion” also demands that surveys with skewed results appear in the media. These distorted results are listed as follows: “The TSK is still the institution trusted most by Turkish society with 93 percent...”; “Confidence in the government is 45 percent...”; “The number of women wearing the headscarf has increased by 10 percent in the last five years in Turkey...”; “According to expats in Turkey, Turkey is rapidly becoming a religious society. Turkey is looking like an Arab country...”; “Sixty-five percent of the women wearing the headscarf do so due to pressure from their social surroundings, families or husbands...”; and “According to a survey conducted among teachers, education is rapidly becoming religious...”