Turkey Analyst,
vol. 4 no. 5
7 March 2011

WHAT THE COLUMNISTS SAY

The latest wave of arrests in connection with the Ergenekon trial has caused uproar in the Turkish media. The arrests of the journalists Nedim Şener and Ahmet Şık were met with general incomprehension and were widely condemned. Commentators who otherwise express support for the pursuit of the Ergenekon case – believing that there is indeed a conspiracy to overthrow the AKP government – have withheld their support for the latest arrests. Several pro-government commentators have notably warned the AKP government that many more will now be tempted to conclude that it seeks to silence the opposition. They also express the worry that those who have claimed all along that the Ergenekon case is a sham have now been handed a proof to be exploited.

ALTAN:  IT SEEMS AS IF THE COALITION OF THE GOVERNMENT, THE GÜLEN BROTHERHOOD AND THE POLICE IS TRYING TO SILENCE THE OPPOSITION
Ahmet Altan in Taraf makes the observation that hardly anyone believes that the arrested journalists are members of a “terrorist organization”. Writing books doesn’t make you into a terrorist. If no proofs are presented, then the allegation that the government, the [Fethullah Gülen] brotherhood and the police are using the pretext of “Ergenekon membership” in order to silence those who they see as their opponents will become extremely credible. If indeed the coalition of the “political power, the brotherhood and the police” is involved in such a gross violation of the rule of law, this does not prove – as is alleged by some – that Ergenekon’s existence is doubtful, but rather that we are in fact faced with two different versions of “Ergenekon” with which we have to engage in a struggle. At this point we don’t know all the facts. But the situation is such that it seems that there is a need not only to exonerate those who have been detained, but even more so that those who are responsible for the arrests need to exonerate themselves. In the absence of a credible explanation (of the arrests) the AKP government will face the most difficult and dark days since it came to power; they better appreciate the severity of what has happened.

GÖKTÜRK:  THE ARRESTS ARE A SEVERE BLOW TO THE ERGENEKON CASE
Gülay Göktürk in Bugün exclaims that to accuse journalists Nedim Şener and Ahmet Şık with membership in the Ergenekon terror organization defies all reason and conscience and is utterly incredible. The arrests of these two journalists, who have in fact played crucial roles in revealing the existence of Ergenekon in the first place, and who have tried to shed light on the murder of [Turkish-Armenian journalist] Hrant Dink, has not only violated the freedom of the press but has also dealt a most severe blow to the Ergenekon trial. I am extremely worried and furious.  I am furious and worried being a journalist who believes that the freedom of the press is one of the basic freedoms and a prerequisite for an open society and democracy.  But my fury has not only got to do with this. I am also furious because these arrests have dealt such a severe blow to a court case for which we have cared so much, which we have sought to shield against the attempts to subvert it, and in which we have put so much hope, believing it would clear the way for a brighter Turkey. The Ergenekon suspects, all the professional and amateur Ergenekon advocates alike, are now having a field day; the latest arrests are a gift to all those who claim that the case is “concocted”. Now they have been handed solid proof which they can and most certainly will exploit.  If the Ergenekon terror organization escapes justice as a result of such mistakes, Turkey will not again easily get a new chance to settle its accounts with coup-mongering officers. Then, Turkey will for years be condemned to live with a democracy permanently crippled by military tutelage.

CEMAL: AN  OPEN LETTER TO ERDOĞAN
In an open letter to Prime Minister Erdoğan, Hasan Cemal in Milliyet writes that the Prime Minister himself and no else is responsible for the fact that the freedom of the press is being violated in Turkey. You have all the power to change those laws that are being used to silence and imprison journalists. You do not have the luxury of being able to claim that the judiciary is independent. Indeed, until recently you did not refrain from complaining about the rulings of the judiciary; in many ways you were right to do so. If a Prime Minister who knows very well how to speak up against the judiciary remains mute when the freedom of the press and the rule of law is violated, then he resembles those who ruled Turkey during the days of the Cold War, who craved democracy only for themselves and who thought that democracy meant that theirs were the only voices that were going to be heard. Mr. Prime Minister, it is your political will that has ensured that the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases – the most important court cases in the history of our democracy – have been pursued at all. If you now fail to summon that political will in support of freedoms you will not only have let democracy down but also contributed to derailing the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases. And that would be a pity.

ÖVÜR: THE HIDDEN HAND OF MIT
Noting that the latest wave of arrest in relation to the Ergenekon case has put the focus on the media, Mahmut Övür in Sabah instead calls attention to another, mostly overlooked aspect. What makes the latest wave so significant is rather the inclusion of the name Kaşif Kozinoğlu, a secretive operative of MIT, the National Intelligence Agency. (Being abroad, he has not been arrested yet.) It is a sign that the prosecutors are now going after those within MIT who are involved with Ergenekon. We know that there is an Ergenekonist organization that has sought to subvert the government in the run-up to almost every election and referendum of the last years. This organization is still fully alive and present in the military, among NGOs; it sees the upcoming elections to parliament as an election that cannot be allowed to be lost. So it has activated its sleeper agents, just as was done before the [2007] presidential election. In a sense, the election of 2011 is viewed as the “last attack”. After the plans that were being concocted within the military to subvert the government were revealed, the tactic has been changed. New methods are being put to use within the military and in media circles. The Baykal operation in May 2010 [when the leader of the opposition CHP was brought down after a sex video was posted on Internet] was the first leg in this new operation. Now, it is alleged that secret documents about Baykal were leaked from MIT to the website OdaTv (whose owner was recently arrested, charged with membership in the Ergenekon terrorist organization). It is in this context that the name of the MIT operative Kaşif Kozinoğlu is interesting. MIT is divided between those who support and those who oppose Ergenekon; and those who now fiercely support Ergenekon were the same operatives who were once deeply involved in the events that led to Susurluk [in the mid-1990s, when the ties between the “deep state” and organized crime were revealed]. Kozinoğlu’s name was then mentioned in that context. If he is now, as is being alleged, indeed connected to Ergenekon, we should expect interesting developments in the near future.

ATEŞ: THE HERITAGE OF ERBAKAN
Toktamış Ateş in Bugün writes that it was an irony of fate that Necmettin Erbakan, the leader of the Islamist Felicity party, died on the fourteenth anniversary of the post-modern coup of 1997 that brought his government down. Those who know criticize the military memorandum of February 28, 1997, with which Prime Minister Erbakan was served, tend to overlook the run-up to the event. If a part of Turkish society, albeit a minority, today sincerely fear that Sharia rule may one day be instituted, then the actions of the Welfare party in the 1990s go a long way in accounting for that fear. Erbakan was in fact trying to be a moderate, but some of the representatives of the Welfare Party were saying such things that it remains near-impossible to this day for the AKP to reassure those who were then scared to think that Sharia rule is a real threat. Certain things are never forgotten, for instance Erbakan’s words “all our people will eventually accept the national outlook [the Islamist ideology]. But they will decide whether this will come about with or without bloodshed”.

© Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center, 2010. This article may be reprinted provided that the following sentence be included: "This article was first published in the Turkey Analyst (www.turkeyanalyst.org), a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center".

The Turkey Analyst
The Turkey Analyst is a publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Joint Center, designed to bring authoritative analysis and news on the rapidly developing domestic and foreign policy issues in Turkey. It is published bi-weekly, and includes topical analysis, as well asa summary of the Turkish media debate. It is edited and compiled under the supervision of Svante E. Cornell and Halil M. Karaveli.

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