Last week, 33 members of a gang with links to the deep-state were arrested in simultaneous police raids in various cities as part of an investigation into an arms depot found in İstanbul in June of last year. The investigation of the Ergenekon gang has resulted in evidence that the gang was planning a coup d'état for 2009. With the purpose of creating chaos in the country and thus an atmosphere suitable for a military takeover, the group staged a number of attacks and murders whose perpetrators remain unknown as well as others in which the assailants have been found.
Evidence in the investigation suggests Ergenekon organized an attack on the Council of State in 2006; the murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in January; and the murder of three Christians in the city of Malatya in April of last year . Gang administrators are also key figures in the Susurluk accident, a 1996 car crash that revealed links between a police chief, a convicted ultranationalist fugitive and a member of Parliament.
Yeni Şafak wrote that when İstanbul Police Department counterrorism squads were banging on the door of the Harbiye apartment of retired Gen. Veli Küçük in the early morning hours of Jan. 22 to take him into police custody, he placed calls on his cell phone before leaving his home with the police officers. The police, who were monitoring Küçük's phone conversations, say Küçük made eight phone calls to “influential friends,” telling them that the police were waiting at the door to take him into custody, and asked for help -- but his pleas for help were rejected. Police sources did not give further details on the content of the phone calls.
Phone conversations between gang members
A plot to kill Turkey's only Nobel Prize-winning author, Orhan Pamuk, was also among Ergenekon's plans. Newspapers printed transcripts of recorded phone conversations between Spc. Sgt. Muhammed Yüce, Ret. Col. Fikri Karadağ and Selim Akkurt, the trigger-man hired to do the job, whose phones were tapped with a court order. Officials say that Yüce, who was also arrested for being part of the Ergenekon organization, said in a phone conversation with the hit-man that he had spoken to Karadağ about the planned Pamuk assassination. Yüce told Akkuş that an İstanbul businessman would financially support them as would a prosecutor and a judge in İstanbul's Kadıköy district. Akkurt, who spoke in a worried tone, is quoted as saying he was concerned he might end up like Mehmet Ali Ağca, a deep-state assassin who also shot the pope in the '70s. Akkurt expressed a desire to be like O.S., the teenager who shot Dink in January of last year, saying: “He has trillions of lira in his account. Plus, those around him have become heroes.” In response to these words, Yüce was quoted as having said: “You, me and Fuci will take care of Orhan Pamuk. We will have YTL 2 million in our accounts. Are you with me on this one?” Akkurt is heard giving an affirmative response to Yüce's question in the recordings.
Shortly after his conversation with Akkurt, Yüce sent a text message to a relative in which he wrote: “We will take care of Orhan after the conference. They will put in [YTL] 5 billion into our account. They will give us a gas station and a villa. Sedat Peker will take care of us while we're in jail.” Peker is an ultranationalist mafia leader with apparent links to deep-state figures.
Meanwhile, Karadağ is quoted in the transcripts as frequently uttering the phrases “We are losing the country” and “We need to set up a new army.” However, when Zekeriya Öz, the prosecutor on the case, asked about the meaning of the phone conversations, Yüce replied, “We were only joking around on the phone.”
The investigation so far into the Ergenekon organization -- 14 of whose members were arrested Saturday in one of the biggest operations ever against deep-state-linked groups in Turkey -- has revealed that the organization was working to create a chaotic atmosphere so that its counterparts in the military could overthrow the government. All in all, 28 Ergenekon members are currently under arrest.
An İstanbul court has accused the members of the Ergenekon gang of certain bombing incidents and attacks in the past two years, of inciting people to revolt, establishing a terrorist organization, of leading that terrorist organization and of membership in the terrorist organization.
Documents seized during the investigation into the gang, whose members include former military officers, some of them high-ranking, revealed that they were planning to create complete chaos in the country to prepare fertile ground for a military coup d'état in 2009.
Some of the gang members against whom charges have been brought include Küçük, who is also the alleged founder of a clandestine and unofficial intelligence unit in the gendarmerie, the existence of which is denied by officials; controversial ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, who filed countless suits against Turkish writers and intellectuals who were at odds with Turkey's official policies; Karadağ, a retired army colonel; and Sevgi Erenerol, the press spokesperson for a group called the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate.
Latest in the investigation
On Monday, the case's public prosecutor objected to the release of nine individuals taken into custody earlier on in the Ergenekon investigation but later freed by the court. Late in the evening on Monday, the prosecution appealed the release of lawyer Fuat Turgut, who is currently the legal counsel of a suspect in the Dink murder, daily Akşam columnist Güler Kömürcü, Asım Demir, Raif Görüm, Emir Caner Yiğit, Tanju Okan, Yaşar Aslanköylü, Anatoli Medjan and Atilla Aksu. Representatives of Kerinçsiz also appealed his arrest. The İstanbul 13th Higher Criminal Court will review the appeals from both sides.
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