The court in İstanbul charged Doğu Perinçek with "being a senior member of a terrorist organization and obtaining and possessing classified documents." Perinçek is the leader of the Workers' Party (İP), which won a tiny fraction of the vote in general elections last summer. In 2007, a Swiss court convicted Perinçek of racism for denying that the mass killing of Armenians in the early 20th century was genocide.
Perinçek was among several alleged suspects detained Friday by police for interrogation. The court also ordered a former university president, Kemal Alemdaroğlu, not to leave the country and to check in with his local police station every 15 days. İlhan Selçuk of the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper, a fierce critic of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government, was also taken into custody on Friday. The arrests of Alemdaroğlu and Perinçek came only a day after the 83-year-old journalist was released.
The suspects are thought to be linked to a criminal gang called Ergenekon with alleged links to power centers in the bureaucracy and the military. The ongoing investigation previously uncovered evidence showing that the gang was attempting to prepare the way for a coup d'état in Turkey in 2009. Ergenekon is suspected of links to groups hidden within the state. These groups are commonly referred to as Turkey's deep state, a phenomenon in which individuals and groups occupying various state positions take justice into their own hands to shape Turkey in accordance with their political convictions.
On Monday, Perinçek was sent to Bayrampaşa Prison after an arrest warrant was issued by the İstanbul court. A group of İP supporters gathered in front of the courthouse to protest the decision.
Alemdaroğlu spoke to press members after he left the courthouse, suggesting that the accusation of membership in the neo-nationalist Ergenekon was brought against him and other secularist opponents of the AK Party because of pressure from the government on the judiciary.
Plans for attack on Supreme Court of Appeals
A CD found in the headquarters of the İP during the Ergenekon investigation revealed the gang’s plans to stage an attack on the Supreme Court of Appeals, the Taraf daily reported in its headline story on Monday. A detailed map of the high court is shown on the CD, clearly noting all the points that provide fast and easy access to the outside of the building. The most detailed mapping in the plan was done for building A, which is where Supreme Court of Appeals’ Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya’s chambers are located. A copy of an indictment file against the AK Party for its closure, prepared by none other than Yalçınkaya, was also found on a computer inside the İP, supporting claims in the media that the closure case against the AK Party was in retaliation to the crackdown on Ergenekon. The indictment had been saved on the computer two days before the case was filed.
Parliament Speaker Köksal Toptan, in response to a question on the investigation, denied claims that the prosecutor on the Ergenekon case was being pressured by the government to harass secularists. “I call on everyone to act with common sense and calmness. Everything has a rule of conduct in Turkey; Turkey is a state of law. I hope that the recent events will actually contribute to our process of democratic improvement.”
Meanwhile, in a written statement released yesterday, İstanbul Chief Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin said, “The operations and procedures being carried out under the investigation named Ergenekon have no ties to any other cases that are currently in the public spotlight.”
He said “a significant majority” of the news stories, commentaries and evaluations that appeared in the press regarding the Friday raids in which 14 people were detained did not reflect the truth.
Engin noted that the investigation was confidential, saying that currently there is a ban on publishing news about the judicial process on Ergenekon. He stated that there were currently three prosecutors working on the case.
“The Ergenekon investigation started in June of 2007 and none of the operations carried out under the scope of this investigation, including the arrests made on March 21, 2008, have anything to do with any of the other cases that are currently in the public spotlight,” stated Engin.
“Independent organs of the judiciary are carrying out their duties only using their authority based on law and it is impossible that they are acting with ulterior motives or are being influenced by an individual, group or agency,” Engin said.
“However, certain news stories and commentaries in the press that do not reflect the reality of the situation are making it more difficult to conduct the investigation in the best manner,” he noted.
Engin also said the Ergenekon investigation was nearing its end. He noted that the judiciary process for those currently under arrest would be completed within a month.
Head of the staunchly secularist Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) parliamentary group Kemal Anadol, during a Friday press conference he held at Parliament, demanded from the prime minister that the sources of some members of the media who apparently know the details of the Ergenekon interrogation should be revealed. Without directly citing names, he recalled that Yeni Şafak writer Fehmi Koru had suggested that Cumhuriyet’s Selçuk would be taken into custody for being part of the criminal organization before that actually happened. He said he suspected that some of the press had access to the documents of the investigation -- which have been classified as strictly confidential from day one -- at the police department.
In January 39 people were arrested as part of an investigation following up on a police raid in June 2007 on a house being used as an arms depot in İstanbul. Those arrested included retired Gen. Veli Küçük -- also the alleged founder of an illegal 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, retired Col. Fikret Karadağ, Sevgi Erenerol, the press spokesperson for the so-called “Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate,” and Sami Hoştan, a key figure in an investigation launched after a car accident in 1996 near the small town of Susurluk uncovered links between a police chief, a convicted ultranationalist fugitive and a member of Parliament. Ali Yasak, a well-known gangster linked to figures in the Susurluk incident, was also detained in the operation.
The group is also suspected of involvement in the murder of journalist Hrant Dink in January of last year, a shooting at the Council of State in 2006 that left a senior judge dead, a hand grenade attack on the Cumhuriyet daily’s İstanbul office and recent non-fatal attacks on two priests. The number of people in custody on suspicion of having links to the gang is said to have surpassed 50 with the recent detentions, sources say.
Benzer Haberler 
National
