This article appears in the August 1, 2008 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
by Dean Andromidas
[PDF version of this article]
The nation of Turkey has been rocked by the indictment of a criminal network, the Ergenekon, for planning a military coup against the government, in an investigation that is only comparable to those conducted in Italy into the notorious P-2 Masonic Lodge and the Gladio NATO-linked “stay behind” networks responsible for Italian terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s. These revelations occur at a time when Turkey is playing a key role in mediating peace talks between Israel and Syria, and taking major initiatives with Iraq and Iran that directly counter British efforts to launch another Southwest Asia war.
The planned Ergenekon “strategy of tension,” complete with terror attacks and assassinations, aims to pave the way for a military coup against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Like those of the P-2 and Gladio in Italy, the Ergenekon investigation reveals links both to NATO and state security services and to terrorist, assassination, and criminal networks.
U.S. intelligence sources have told EIR that the British are fully committed to destabilizing, if not overthrowing, the Erdogan government. Turkey is targeted because of its central role on several fronts to promote peace and economic development throughout the Middle East, a role that threatens to overturn the British Middle East chessboard, which hasn’t changed since the Sykes-Picot agreement, where Britain and France carved up the region after World War I.
These peace initiatives include Turkey’s role as mediator in exploratory peace talks between Israel and Syria, which promise to further Israeli-Palestinian talks, and, eventually, to open the door to talks between Lebanon and Israel. Turkey has now offered to play a similar mediator role between Iran and the West, in order to build up trust between Iran and the European Union, the United States, Germany, France, China, Russia, and Great Britain.
On July 11, Erdogan was in Baghdad, where he signed an historic “strategic cooperation” agreement that has been compared to the Franco-German treaty of 1963, between Germany Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and French President Charles de Gaulle. The latter treaty created an alliance that formed the basis for the economic integration of Europe–a Europe of Fatherlands. The new strategic agreement will involve Turkey in the economic reconstruction of Iraq, and begin to integrate the two economies.
Recently, Turkey co-sponsored, with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, an international drug-enforcement conference, and Turkey is also playing a leading role in going after the multi-billion-dollar drug network that is trafficking heroin from Afghanistan. Thus, Turkey serves as a key flank against Britain’s new opium wars.
In this context, Britain’s historic assets have been unleashed.
Ergenekon: Modern Day Young Turks
On July 15, Istanbul Chief Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin submitted the indictment against the Ergenekon to Turkey’s high criminal court. The 2,455-page indictment named 86 suspects, 48 of whom are currently in custody, including retired–and possibly current–members of the armed forces, as well as academics, journalists, political activists, and organized crime figures. Among those arrested were retired generals Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur. The former had been the number two commander in the military when he retired, while the latter was former commander of the national gendarme force. Also arrested was the head of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, Sinan Aygun.
The charges against the Ergenekon include: “membership in an armed terrorist group”; “aiding and abetting an armed terrorist organization”; “attempting to destroy the government of the Republic of Turkey”; “inciting people to rebel against the Republic of Turkey”; “being in possession of explosives, using them, and inciting others to commit these crimes”; “encouraging soldiers to disobey superiors”; “openly provoking hatred and hostility”; and other similar crimes.
Among the specific crimes Ergenekon is charged with are the 2006 armed attack on the Council of State High Courthouse, where one High Court judge was killed; and a shooting and hand-grenade attack at the Istanbul office of the newspaper Cumhuriyet
The Turkish media has compared the Ergenekon to Italy’s Gladio “stay behind” terrorist network, and identified it as part of the “deep state” apparatus. But Dr. Mustafa Acar, an economics instructor at Kirikkale University, went much further in precisely identifying who is destabilizing Turkey, in a commentary July 2 in the Turkish daily Zaman. Entitled ” ‘Ergenekon’: An Opportunity for Peace Between State and People,” Acar’s article not only describes the group as the “Turkish branch of Gladio–designed as a semi-military organization in NATO,” but also points to the deeper role of the Progress and Union Party, also known as the Committee of Union and Progress or CUP, which was the organization of the Young Turks in the early 1900s.
(The CUP was a freemasonic-type operation founded by British Intelligence, through the British Scottish Rite and allied French and Italian Masonic Lodges in 1906, as a vehicle to take over the Ottoman Empire. These same networks created Italian fascism and European synarchism.)
Acar writes:
First, Turkey has to deal with Ergenekon effectively if it seeks to get rid of the dire impacts of the Progress and Union Party (IVT), which remained effective in the country for more than a century. The harm inflicted by the IVT, which revolted against Abdul Hamid II with the promise of bringing liberties but resorted to repressive policies after it took the office, is simply indescribable. The country had to deal with enormous problems during the IVT’s term between 1908 and 1918; every attempt by the IVT during this period brought nothing but disaster and destruction. The Balkan Wars, World War I, the Sarikamis failure, the Armenian incidents,[1] loss of the Balkans, northern Africa and the Hijaz, the invasion of Anatolia and the path to the Sèvres Treaty[2] are all products of the IVT rule. The harm inflicted by the IVT on this country is not limited to the acceleration of the Ottoman state’s collapse and the incorrect policies that caused the subsequent tragic events, which still impacts current politics.
Maybe the Ottoman state would have collapsed anyway, just like the big empires of the time, including the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, collapsed at the end of World War I. The actual harm done by the IVT was in the mindset of the party; the IVT mindset, based on excessive nationalism–some may even call it racism–centralist ideas, repression, alienation from the people and protection against external actors left indelible imprints in Turkey’s last century. Ever since then, the ongoing disagreement between the state and the public, the clashes between the elected and the appointed, the perception that freedoms will lead to turmoil, and the perception that the recognition of diverse identities will partition the country have all, to a great extent, carried the marks of the IVT. Removing the greatest barriers before Turkey is directly dependent on getting rid of the IVT mindset and its imprints in the bureaucratic mechanisms.
Pointing to the Gladio-type connection, outside of Turkey, Acar adds that treating the Ergenekon as a purely domestic operation is “a failure to see half the picture.” Pointing to previous coups in Turkey, he says:
The coups also include some external dimensions. Currently we are aware, from the proper analyses made and the publicized documents, that every coup promoted and staged in Turkey is somehow related to the Gladio-counter-guerrilla-Ergenekon organization and the attempt to preserve Turkey in Western orientation….
Unfortunately this gang, which extensively relied on a nationalist discourse, had done nothing but implement plans devised by NATO actors. Turkey needs to get rid of the Ergenekon gang if it seeks to become a stable, pluralist and democratic country that has good relations with its own people and the world, and is able to retain a high growth rate.
Although Acar does not directly identify this as a product of the British Sykes-Picot “mindset,” the naming of the Committee of Union and Progress precisely identifies the ongoing destabilization of Turkey as a British operation.
The British Imperial Roots of the Young Turks
EIR has documented the British imperialist roots of the Young Turks in many articles. (See, for example, Joseph Brewda, “Palmerston Launches Young Turks to Permanently Control Middle East,” April 15, 1994). Here we will give only a thumbnail sketch.
The Young Turks were part a stable of fascist movements inspired by British agent Giuseppe Mazzini, including Young Europe, Young Italy, Young Germany, and so on, which were created to subvert and take over the Ottoman Empire on behalf of the European imperialists, led by Great Britain, and including France, Italy, and Russia. The CUP was founded in 1906, in the Greek city of Salonika, and then within the Ottoman Empire, under the direction of Emmanuel Carasso, an Italian official of the B’nai B’rith. Carasso was also grand master of the Italian freemasonic lodge in Salonika called Macedonia Resurrected, which provided the headquarters of the Young Turks. By 1907, leading Young Turk Mehmed Talaat, became grand master of the Scottish Rite Masons in the Ottoman Empire.
Carasso also played a leading role in the Young Turks’ overthrow of the Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908, which paved the way for the CUP takeover of the administration of the Ottoman Empire, which the CUP ruled until 1918.
Through the Young Turks, the British gamemasters transmitted various false ideologies, including Pan Turkism, Pan Islamism, and even Zionism, as attested by the fact that Vladimir Jabotinsky was a member. Jabotinsky was the leader of the nationalist wing of Zionism and the spiritual guide of the Israeli right-wing Likud Party, particularly its chairman Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, Jabotinsky was the editor of the CUP’s Young Turk newspaper.
During this period, the CUP was responsible for the disasters outlined by Dr. Acar.
After the Committee of Union and Progress destroyed the Ottoman Empire from within, the British, who had imprisoned many of its members on the island of Malta after 1918, on charges of war crimes, released CUP members to subvert the nation-building vision of Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk. For instance, Adil Bey, a leading CUP member and former interior minister in the Ottoman government, was given £150,000 by the British, who returned him to Constantinople to form the “Society of the Friends of England.” This group lobbied openly for the protection of the British, while secretly organizing provocations throughout the country in an effort to discredit the nationalist movement and provoke an Allied intervention.
Mustafa Kemal was never forgiven by the British for sabotaging their plans to dismember Turkey as part of the Sykes-Picot scheme, which was drafted by England and France in 1916, to divide up the Ottoman Empire as the “spoils of war.” Britain won control of Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine, while France received control of Syria and Lebanon.
While acknowledging Turkey’s loss of these Arab provinces, Ataturk led a struggle between 1919 and 1923, to create a new Turkish state whose sovereignty and independence would be recognized by the world.
At first, Ataturk, who was keen on establishing a Western-style republic, allowed the CUP’s return on the condition it pledged loyalty to the new government. Initially, Ataturk encouraged the CUP to take up the role of the official opposition, only to find in 1926, that the Committee was plotting his assassination. CUP members have been deeply embedded in the Turkish political and economic circles, and the military and security forces ever since. A careful examination of the three Turkish military coups that have occurred since 1960, will reveal in many cases first-, second-, and even third-generation members of the CUP.
Today’s Ergenekon also has links to the Committee.
Ergenekon in the Image of the CUP
According to press reports, the indictment identifies the Ergenekon as a cult-like organization based on the so-called central Asian “Agarta” myth, a supposedly 600-year-old legend describing the roots of the Turkish people. Far from being six centuries old, Agarta, or Argharta, is a synthetic myth created at the end of the 19th Century by Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, a Martinist freemason, who later became one of the godfathers of the European Synarchy which formed the basis of the French fascist movement of the 1930s, and the spiritual basis for today’s neoconservatives.[3]
According to the Ergenekon indictment, and a second one yet to be released, the nearly 100 people under arrest or being sought, are linked to a kaleidoscope of organizations from the far left to the far right, and from ultra-secularist to Islamic fundamentalist. Some of them call for resurrecting the Istanbul Caliphate, which had been abolished by Ataturk, not only because he was a secularist, but also because it represented a hotbed of British and French intrigue. The Ergenekon met in a church of the so-called Turkish Orthodox Church, which has no congregation but claims ownership to several properties and churches formerly belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church.
Another direct link to the Committee of Union and Progress is the connection to several leaders of the notorious Grey Wolves, the Pan-Turkic movement whose member Ali Agca was convicted for the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. The spiritual godfather of the Grey Wolves was Ziya Golkalp, who died in 1924; he was the chief theoretician of the CUP and the chief protagonist of the racist Pan-Turkic ideology. This is another synthetic ideology; it was created in the 19th Century by Hungarian philologist, Orientalist, and Zionist, Arminius Vámbéry, an agent of Lord Palmerston and the British Foreign Office who served in the Sultan’s court in the 1860s.
The Ergenekon is also linked to the Pan Islamic Great East Raiders Front (IBDA-C) led by Salih Mirzabeyoglu and Saadettin Ustaosmanoglu. Mirzabeyoglu, who is in prison, proudly states his family’s anti-Ataturk roots going back three generations. But where does his Pan-Islamism come from? Although the CUP promoted Pan-Islamicism, it was created in the 1870s by Wilfred Blunt, who worked for the British Foreign Office. (Blunt’s infamous descendant is Anthony Blunt, the librarian of the British Royal family who was later exposed as one of the four men in the spy ring led by Kim Philby.)
The Turkish daily Zaman published details from a document allegedly showing the structure of the Ergenekon, which revealed it to be organized as a secret paramilitary society with seven commands, including one each for a presidency, intelligence, intelligence analysis, operations, financing, intra-organizational research, and planning. The documents states such things as, “In the 21st century, intelligence agencies will inevitably be the institutions shaping world politicians and global policies.”
The Turkish media links Ergenekon to almost every terrorist group that has surfaced in the last three decades, including the narco-terrorist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which is involved not only in attacks in Turkey; its Iranian branch, Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, has become part of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s operations against Iran.
Zaman quotes a former Ergenekon member, Tuncay Guney, as stating that Ergenekon had direct links to the PKK. Guney claims that imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan met with PKK leaders, and had told the PKK “not to mess with Ergenekon.” The Ergenekon also had controlling links to the extreme left-wing Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), which is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, and was behind the 1996 assassination of businessman Ozdemir Sabanci.
Turkey: A Target of Sykes-Picot
There have been three military coups in modern Turkish history: 1960, 1971, and 1980. Some Turkish commentators have added a fourth, the 1997 “post-modern” coup which saw the “judicial overthrow” of the government of Necmettin Erbakan, leader of the Islamic-oriented Welfare Party, after a pressure campaign by the military.
Commentators fear that the current case before the Constitutional Court seeking to close down current Prime Minister Erdogan’s ruling AKP party and ban 71 political figures, including Erdogan and Turkish President Abdullah Gül, from party politics for five years, is an attempt at another “post-modern coup.” Some have asserted that Ergenekon was to be part of this new “post-modern” coup.
It is feared that if the court rules against the AKP, there could be major disturbances. Unlike 1997, when the Islamic Welfare party had to rule in a coalition, the AKP won a new mandate in last year’s elections and holds almost an absolute majority in the Turkish parliament. More importantly, a new generation of military officers has entered the military; these officers had not participated in the three earlier coups, and are expected to stay in their barracks and remain loyal to the constitutional civilian government.
The “Gladio-Deep State” narrative that has identified NATO and the CIA as the hand behind the past three Turkish military coups has served only to mask the British hand, that has sought to use Turkey in its geopolitical schemes, to maintain Britain’s dominance in the Middle East. Its purpose is to perpetuate the Sykes-Picot “mindset” to prevent the economic development of a region that is at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, as well as Eurasia and Africa, and to maintain it as trigger for global war. With the current financial crisis, powerful British financial interests are now prepared to pull that trigger.
[1] Sarikamis is a battle during World War I in which the Ottoman Army was disastrously defeated. It was initiated by Enver Pasha, a leading CUP member. In its aftermath, the “Armenian incidents,” occurred, i.e., the Armenian genocide, which has been used internationally to destabilize Turkey.
[2] The Treaty of Sèvres was forced on the Ottoman Empire by the Allied powers, including Great Britain, France, Italy, and Greece, but it was never recognized by the United States or the Soviet Union. It not only removed all the Arab territories from the Ottoman empire, but also created a group of statelets out of what is now modern Turkey. Signed by the Young Turk-led Ottoman government, which was nothing by a puppet of the Allies, the treaty was opposed by the Nationalist movement led by Ataturk, who defeated the Allied powers’ attempt to use military force, to implement it.
[3] For a full discussion of the Synarchy and its links to Anglo-French financiers centered on Bank Worms, see Pierre Beaudry, “Synarchist-Terrorist Fifth Column in France,” EIR, June 9, 2006.
