The Ergenekon case and The New York Times story
by
AYDOĞAN VATANDAŞ*

 As an investigative journalist from Turkey, specializing in religion, military affairs and media studies, I unfortunately consider Bilefsky’s last story, which appeared in The New York Times Europe edition on Sunday, to be a biased one.

 Bilefsky, 35, was previously the paper’s Brussels bureau chief. A graduate of Oxford University and the University of Pennsylvania, Bilefsky has worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, as well as a correspondent based in New York, London, Paris and Prague.

 I have to admit that Bilefsky’s story has an aggressive, analytical and opinionated tone. I think this exemplifies a very European style of journalism. European reporters do not hesitate to express their opinions while presenting their stories. However, The New York Times has always been marked by its objectivity; it is obvious that objective journalists seemingly have more credibility.

One-sided information

In Bilefsky’s story about the Ergenekon case in Turkey, too much information from one side is presented, and that is why it appears he is advancing that side.

Bilefsky points out: “Since 2007, 300 people have been detained during the investigation of an underground group known as Ergenekon, including a writer of erotic novels, four-star generals and other military officers, professors, editors and underworld figures -- some of whom appear to have committed no offense greater than speaking in favor of Turkey as a secular state.”

I do not know who the writer of those erotic novels he mentions in his story is, but I easily understand why he juxtaposed this writer and the “four-star generals.” By doing so, he probably thinks that he is creating a contrast that can undermine the severity of the case. However, there is no universal truth that writers of erotic novels cannot commit these kinds of crimes.

Anyway, one can easily question the objectivity of a reporter who writes such a statement about an ongoing trial.

“Some of whom appear to have committed no offense greater than speaking in favor of Turkey as a secular state.” What does this statement represent? A biased opinion, or a report? How can it be possible for a reporter to judge that the detainees who are accused of some criminal activities by the law have committed no offense greater than speaking in favor of Turkey as a secular state?

Reporters should not have a barometer in their hands. A responsible journalist is less partisan, less attached and more accurate. The reporters should value the difference between opinion and truth.

A duty to reflect the truth

Winston Churchill once said democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms. I can say the same thing for objective journalism. As long as journalists are willing to work hard and be honest about its limitations, it will remain our least bad source of information. A journalist must decide if he or she is a journalist because they want the world to know the truth or whether they want to twist the truth so it will sound better.

It is explicitly noticed that the informants of The New York Times reporter are entirely biased about the trial; a British writer, Gareth Jenkins, who doesn’t hide his close relations with Ergenekon proponents; Aysel Çelikel, the president of a controversial charity; and a Turkish journalist, Nedim Şener, who has been known for his extreme ideas about the Ergenekon case from the beginning. Şener is also part of Uğur Dündar’s senior team at the Star TV newsroom and Dündar is also well known for his opposition to the case.

 Bilefsky uses the very sensitive phrase “political pogrom” in his story, quoting from Çelikel’s description of the Ergenekon case. I would like to remind the reader that the word “pogrom” refers to the “organized killing of minority, a planned campaign of persecution or extermination sanctioned by a government and directed against an ethnic group, especially against the Jews in tsarist Russia.”

 There is no proof that such a thing has ever existed or happened in Turkey in relation to the Ergenekon case.

 But it is obvious that the Ergenekon prosecutors are backed by the incumbent government because in Turkey coups have always been staged by those juntas, and no prosecutor would have dared bring any action against them without support. In Turkey, murders and bloody massacres have been committed in which the perpetrators remained largely unknown. In Turkey, bloody attacks have always been staged to shock the public and foster fear in society. No prosecutor could have dared to take a position against them because the judicial system has always been under the control of the same hegemonic powers in Turkey. No other governments in Turkey have had the courage to face this reality. However, it is time to stop this “state-backed machine” and remind its proponents, and the world, that social conditions have markedly changed and the Turkish people no longer want to live in such a prison.

 It was interesting to note that while the Hürriyet newspaper quoted from The New York Times story, it only highlighted the opinions of the British journalist, Gareth Jenkins, as if to convince its readers about the credibility and objectivity of The New York Times’ version. Every single person in Turkey knows quite well where the other informants of The New York Times stand.

 I know that no journalistic approach can be completely perfect. Reporters have always had a difficult and demanding job that sometimes has unrealistic expectations. It is a critical job in which the obligation to research and inform people is quite complicated. Ideally, writers should feel free to say what they want as they see things unfold. But I do not think that reporters should reflect their biased opinions in their stories.  Bilefsky quotes from Jenkins, who has analyzed the first two of three Ergenekon indictments and who argues that some of the allegations are absurd.

“He said the first indictment said the group’s members had met with Dick Cheney when he was vice president to discuss toppling and replacing the government. He said it also maintained that investigators had evidence that the group planned to ‘manufacture chemical and biological weapons and then, with the high revenue it earned from selling them, to finance and control every terrorist organization not just in Turkey but in the entire world’.”

The case of Sibel Edmonds

 If Bilefsky would like to know more about Ergenekon and its ties to the US, he should check the claims of Sibel Edmonds, who was kicked out of the FBI after she uncovered deep connections between some high American officials and Ergenekon.

 As stated in the American Conservative magazine on Nov. 1, 2009: “She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. She appealed her termination, but was more alarmed that no effort was being made to address the corruption that she had been monitoring.”

American Conservative covered this just a couple of weeks ago and published an exclusive interview with Edmonds which is a “must read” story exposing treason in high places.

 I think this interview can help people understand how a meeting between Cheney and some Ergenekon proponents is plausible and not absurd at all.