Kayan is well known for his days-long search at the Special Forces Command headquarters, where confidential military documents are archived, as part of a probe into a suspected plot to assassinate the deputy prime minister.
Two vehicles were stopped by police on Thursday afternoon on Ankara's Uğur Mumcu Street. The occupants of the cars were military officers assigned to the 4th Army Corps and the Naval Forces Command. Police said the vehicles were stopped after Kayan informed them that he had been tailed for some time.
The officers, however, did not allow police to search their vehicles. There were claims that wiretapping equipment had been installed in one of the cars.
The officers were first detained by police, but were later transferred to the Central Command. They were soon released on the grounds that “they had been misunderstood.”
The apprehension of the officers has added to suspicions that the military had devised a plot to assassinate Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç. The General Staff released a statement on Friday detailing how the officers were captured by police. The statement, however, stopped short of addressing why the officers were tailing Kayan and has been met with suspicion by political observers.
“Two white military vehicles, both on separate administrative tasks, were stopped by police on Uğur Mumcu Street at around 12:30 p.m. on Dec. 31. Teams from the Central Command were called to the scene after it was understood that the vehicles belonged to the military. The vehicles and the military personnel inside were taken to the Ankara Central Command at around 2 p.m. at the request of a public prosecutor. The prosecutor’s interrogation revealed that the first vehicle was carrying two drivers and a sergeant, and the second vehicle was carrying two drivers, an electrical technician and a carpenter. The military staff were released at around 10 p.m.,” the statement noted.
The General Staff also took the occasion to lambaste the media over its reports on the capture of the officers.
“Recent developments are of key importance due to the situation in which it has put society,” the statement stated. The General Staff also announced that legal measures have been taken against the articles that have appeared on the issue.
Tension has escalated in the country since the arrest of two officers of the Tactical Mobilization Group -- a unit under the General Staff’s Special Forces Command -- as they stood watch near Arınç’s house in the Çukurambar neighborhood of Ankara last week. The capture sparked a large-scale investigation, with civilian prosecutors and a judge conducting a days-long search at the Special Forces headquarters, where confidential documents of the military are archived in rooms referred to as “cosmic rooms.” The search is aimed at revealing whether there is a military plot for the assassination of high-level politicians in the country.
Last week, the General Staff claimed that the two military officers were actually gathering intelligence on another army officer, who was suspected of espionage. However, it released a statement on Thursday noting that it had found no evidence to support that an army officer who was being monitored in a covert operation on suspicion of leaking sensitive information had actually disclosed any confidential information to non-military parties.
In the meantime, prosecutor Mustafa Bilgili applied to the İstanbul Police Department, complaining that he was receiving “death threats.” He reportedly told police he received a phone call from unidentified parties who told him not to investigate any assassination plot against Arınç; otherwise, his fate would be no different than that of the late prosecutor Doğan Öz.
Ankara public prosecutor Doğan Öz was assassinated on March 24, 1978. He is regarded as the first prosecutor to examine Gladio’s network in Turkey. Öz had discovered that the counter-guerrilla group was affiliated with the General Staff’s War Department, which recently returned to the agenda in connection with an ongoing search of the Tactical Mobilization Group offices.
Controversial protocol back into the limelight after Arınç plot
Former deputy chief of the police department’s intelligence unit Bülent Orakoğlu has suggested that a secret protocol on security, public order and assistance units could be behind a suspected military plot to assassinate Deputy Prime Minister Arınç.
The Protocol on Cooperation for Security and Public Order (EMASYA) allows military operations to be carried out for internal security matters under certain conditions without authorization from civilian authorities. It was implemented in 1997 and remains in effect.
“If the military announces that Arınç was being monitored in accordance with the EMASYA protocol, they have the authority to do so. The protocol gives them the authority. The implementation of the protocol is related to the perception of democracy by military commanders,” Orakoğlu told the Bugün daily.
The controversial protocol was signed by the General Staff and Interior Ministry on July 7, 1997 and empowers the military to intervene in social incidents on their own initiative. In accordance with EMASYA, the military can gather intelligence against internal threats. The protocol allows the commander of the garrison in a town to employ his military units in cases of emergency without the prior approval of the governor and envisages the dependence of police intelligence services and the gendarmerie on military intelligence.
When it was revealed in the Feb. 28, 1997 post-modern coup process that secret files were being kept on governors, provincial governors and other civilian authorities, then-Naval Forces Commander Adm. Güven Erkaya stated that EMASYA had been prepared to meet the information needs of the Western Study Group, a clandestine group formed within the army.
Though the protocol was met with harsh criticism by politicians and analysts, it has remained un-amended.
The protocol was also a target of criticism by the EU in its progress report on Turkey in 2007. The report read that the 1997 EMASYA secret protocol remains in force. “The protocol, signed by the General Staff and the Interior Ministry, allows for military operations to be carried out for internal security matters under certain conditions without a request from the civilian authorities. No change has been made to the Turkish Armed Forces Internal Service Law and the law on the National Security Council. These laws define the role and duties of the Turkish military and grant the military a wide margin of maneuver by providing a broad definition of national security. No progress has been made in enhancing civilian control over the gendarmerie when engaged in civilian activities,” reads the report.
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