Ferruh Demirmen
The Ergenekon verdicts in Turkey announced on August 5 shook the Turkish judicial system and left an indelible mark on the conscience of Turkish people. The confidence that most Turks had in their judicial system received a major blow. Jail sentences were showered on all but 21 of the 275 defendants, including nearly two dozen journalists.
The case started 5 years ago, but arrests and detentions started 6 years ago.
The hearing was held in prison compound in Silivri, 70 km from Istanbul, in an atmosphere of martial law, at arms distance from police barriers, water cannons and gas bombs, and within an earshot of rubber bullets, with chanting, flag-waiving protestors taking shelter in scorched, burning fields, while countless busses trying to bring plain folk to the compound from across the country were stopped on track by government order. It was not a pretty picture. Not for a government that preaches democracy.
Due process, including the right to speak before sentencing, and the right to have next-of-kin present at the trial, was denied to the defendants. Holding hearings in a prison compound also drew criticism.
ALLEGED PLOT
Officially, “Ergenekon” was the name of a clandestine terrorist organization that tried to overthrow the Turkish government. Politicians (three of them parliamentary deputies), journalists, academics, university presidents and retired and active-duty military officers, including 4-star generals, were members of an alleged terrorist organization.
A terrorist establishment, as it turned out, that lacked a leader, an organizational chart, and a manifesto. A group, most members of which had not even known each other. No document bearing the name “Ergenekon” existed in the state archives, and no weapons had been found in possession of any of the terrorists. To implement their nefarious plans, we are led to believe, the terrorists relied on a cache of hand grenades found in a shanty house in 2007, and later in the garden (buried) of a deserted house in 2009. The hand grandees were destroyed soon after “discovery.”
There were indications that the ammunition “discovered” had been planted, and doubts lingered in the press as to whether the ammunition found was live. Defendants denied the validity of incriminating evidence introduced during the trial, and in one case, the prosecution admitted that the incriminating message found in the mobile phone of a defendant had been “mistakenly recorded” by police. Many defendants, including the world-renown transplant surgeon Prof. Dr. Mehmet Haberal, said they did not know what they had done wrong.
But these concerns did not stop the prosecution from filing a series of indictments running thousands of pages.
It was extraordinary that a pro-Sharia convict, found guilty in a prior murder case (assassination of Council of State judge), and implicated in the bombing of the secular-oriented daily “Cumhuriyet,” was brought into the Ergenekon case as a suspect and tried together with defendants that were starkly opposite in ideology. The convict, whom the prosecutors affectionately called “Osmanım” (“My Osman’), turned a secret prosecution witness and was set free at the end of the trial. “It was a payoff,” observed the opponents.
It was ironic that journalists İlhan Selçuk (now deceased) and Mustafa Balbay, columnists at “Cumhuriyet,” became co-defendants with criminals that had bombed their daily.
Among the secret witnesses was Şemdin Sakık, at one time a high-ranking leader of the terrorist organization PKK.
THE REALITY
But in reality, the Ergenekon was a plot orchestrated to undermine the very foundation of a democratic, secular state by silencing the opponents of the current Islamic government. A desire to “settle the score” in connection with the 1997 “soft coup” against the Islamist Farewell Party – an event that forced Fethullah Gülen to flee to the U.S. – no doubt also played a role.
One attribute that united the Ergenekon defendants was their conviction in a secular, democratic state driven by Kemalist reforms.
It was very unusual that a sitting Prime Minister, ignoring the separation of the executive and judiciary powers, declared himself early in the trial to be the prosecutor of the case.
A court case that attracted wide criticism in its breach of judiciary standards. Although the court has not yet issued the basis for its conclusions, legal experts familiar with the case have characterized the verdicts as absurd, arbitrary, inconsistent, and disproportionate.
One journalist, Tuncay Özkan, receiving an aggravated life sentence, said after the verdicts that, although he was exonerated of charges of keeping weapons and ammunition in his house, was penalized because he – much to the dislike of the government – had organized the “Cumhuriyet meetings.”
Balbay, receiving a 34-year and 8 months jail sentence, maintained all along that he was penalized for doing his job as a journalist. He denounced the treatment the defendants received on the day of sentencing, adding that even an occupying force would have acted in a more respectful manner. He was particularly resentful that “Osmanım” had been released.
Another journalist/author, Ergün Poyraz, who has written books critical of the PM Erdoğan and Fethullah Gülen (e.g., Children of Moses, The Imam in America), and under detention since 2007, was sentenced to 29 years 6 months of aggravated jail sentence.
Doğu Perinçek, the leader of the Workers’ Party (İP), receiving aggravated life term, said he does not recognize the verdict.
Perhaps the defendant that attracted most attention was İlker Başbuğ, the former Chief of Staff of the military, who received life sentence. General Başbuğ was appointed to the top military post by the Prime Minister, and for two years served directly under the PM.
As someone who commanded the second largest NATO army, the verdict against Başbuğ rattled the political establishment, and no doubt also the military. How to explain a terrorist commanding a 700,000 strong army, how his terrorist activities had gone unnoticed, and what all this means for NATO, were questions that naturally came to mind.
Main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said the verdicts were illegitimate, adding that those who had appointed Başbuğ to the top post should be tried on charges of supporting terrorism. The government spokesman Bülent Arınç, deputy PM, issued a warning to Kılıçdaroğlu.
Başbuğ himself said the target in the Ergenekon case was the Turkish army. He was pointedly indignant that he was denied a right that was granted to Saddam Hussein: the right to speak before his sentence was announced. Four other retired 4-star generals received life term.
As for the academics, Peter Diamond, a professor of economics at M.I.T. and a Nobel laureate, after having looked into the cases of eight academics, concluded that there appeared to be no credible evidence to convict his colleagues.
Judge Köksal Şengün, who, for three years, presided over the 3-man panel of judges in “Ergenekon,” but later removed from the case, commented that he could not support the verdicts. With 187 hearings behind him, Şengün was well familiar with the evidence. Upon his removal from the case in 2011, Şengün disclosed that he was in favor of dismissing many charges, but was opposed by the two other judges.
PUTTING IT IN CONTEXT
With all of its implications, “Ergenekon” marks a dark chapter in Turkey’s history.
Alluding to the draconian sentences handed out by the court, some observes drew analogy to the death sentence announced by the Istanbul government against Mustafa Kemal in May 1920.
Turkey’s Syndicate of Judges, an independent organization, declared the Ergenekon convictions null and void because two reserve judges, with no voting rights, participated in the final deliberations preceding sentencing. Such participation violated the law, it was noted.
There is a general feeling that the government intends to declare a general amnesty encompassing the Ergenekon victims and the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. That would open the door for the terrorist leader – now serving life term – to be released from prison.
A scenario that, if materializes, would surely create a firestorm in Turkey.
In the background to the Ergenekon imbroglio lies the near-unanimous 2008 decision of the Constitutional Court that found that the ruling party had become the focal point for anti-secularist movements. The ruling party at that time barely escaped closure. The make-up of the Constitutional Court has since changed.
All this happening in a country where the government boasts of the freedom expression while children 16 years of age are dragged to court on charges of insulting the Prime Minister because they tore down a poster bearing the PM’s Bayram message.
Istanbul-based British analyst Gareth Jenkins, who has reviewed the voluminous documents in the Ergenekon case, has concluded that there is no such organization as Ergenekon, and that the investigation bearing this name was carried out as a collaborative effort between RTE and Fethullah Gülen. He has stressed the role of the Gülen movement. Jenkins appears correct in his conclusions.
But the story Jenkins tells is incomplete. To ascribe the “success” of the Ergenekon plot solely to RTE-Gülen cooperation is to overlook the limitations of such alliance. A meticulously planned plot, “Ergenekon” could not have been executed without outside help. The story of a third, “dark force,” that provided clandestine help in “Ergenekon,” also needs to be told.
