Coup generals bought their own wiretapping system

The new indictment introduces new evidence, a large number of documents regarding weapons found in his possession and other organizational documents about Ergenekon, seized in the office of Şanlı during the investigation. The indictment says that a document titled "Nice Track" found on a CD numbered 23 by the prosecution is a presentation prepared for the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) introducing a wiretapping system for intelligence purposes. There are also documents in which Şanlı and his counterparts in the armed forces corresponded about the new system based on a device patented in Israel. However, the project was never completed. Şanlı also made a presentation about a similar device to the Ankara Police Department, the intelligence department of the gendarmerie and the TSK, but none of the agencies bought the device.

However, MASAK established in a report from October 2008 on an audit of Şanlı's 2002 transactions that Şanlı did sell the device to the gendarmerie without an invoice. Şanlı said he couldn't issue an invoice because the sale was made under the discretionary budget of the gendarmerie. MASAK established that Şanlı reported as of 2002 net income of TL 154 billion (TL 154,000 in today's money) and TL 113 billion (TL 113,000 in today's money) in expenditures. The MASAK report confirmed that in the same year $234,850 was transferred to the US Cambridge Lake and EMTA companies. An incoming money transfer of TL 600,000 from GSM company Turkcell was also identified by the MASAK report. Şanlı reported that to the authorities as a payment for a project named GSM Protocol Analyzer. In his testimony, he also admitted he had imported a phone line monitoring device called Signet, but said he had failed to sell this in Turkey. However, the $1,500,000 he received from the two generals, greatly above the suspect's reported financial capabilities, went unexplained, the prosecution noted. The prosecution said it believed this was for the sale of Signet to the Republican Work Group, the name the group of coup-plotting generals gave themselves.

Experts say discretionary fund spending is usually limited only to cash transfers. Even if such an expense for a wiretapping mechanism was made as part of a discretionary fund, this would have been shown in the gendarmerie's expenditures under the heading "duty spending."

Indictment reveals shocking fact of Turkey's recent history

Documents saved on CDs reportedly seized from Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO) Chairman Sinan Aygün have also made their way to the indictment. These CDs, whose alleged content is listed in the indictment, include detailed information on various prime ministers and presidents Turkey has had and on deputies and political party leaders, such as these individuals' ethnic backgrounds and religious and political views.

The indictment also claims that the economic crisis Turkey faced in 1996, when Tansu Çiller was prime minister, was averted thanks to financing from "drug trafficking." According to these documents, an individual named Mehmet whose last name was not shown in the Aygün documents, suggested to Çiller that allowing passage of Afghan heroin through Turkey would bring in an at least $20 billion to the country. The document explains that the crisis of April 1996 was deflected without borrowing a single cent from foreign agencies only by pumping money into the economy from drug trade. The CD documents also state that mafia boss Ömer Lütfi Topal -- who would be assassinated in that year -- was used as a pawn to facilitate the profitable drug trade. Topal made these connections through partner and drug lord Sami Hoştan, currently in jail as an Ergenekon suspect, who was, Aygün's documents stated, "the man of the whimsical Kocaeli Regiment Commander Veli Küçük, the one who set up JİTEM in the gendarmerie and who's a Nationalist Movement Party [MHP] sympathizer."

Retired Gen. Küçük is currently one of the most important suspects. JİTEM is an illegal organization, believed to be the core military instrument of Ergenekon, founded in the '90s within the gendarmerie, although the military has consistently denied its existence. However, discoveries of human remains in the Southeast as described by witnesses to JİTEM's atrocities and a great deal of other evidence have left no doubt of the existence of JİTEM, which used its extraordinary powers, unrestrained by the law, to terrorize the mainly Kurdish population of the Southeast in the name of fighting separatist terrorism.