Tag: Ergenekon

Prosecutor in Turkish Terror Case Moves to New Job

By AYLA ALBAYRAK

ISTANBUL—The prosecutor leading a massive court case in Turkey in which hundreds of people are facing charges of membership in an alleged terrorist organization appeared to be pushed aside Wednesday, after weeks of accusations that he was using the case to quell freedom of expression.

Zekeriya Öz (middle), Fikret Seçen and Ercan Şafak

It remained unclear Wednesday why Zekeriya Oz, the chief prosecutor leading the so-called Ergenekon investigation, was promoted by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors to a new job in which he will no longer have powers to pursue cases involving terrorism charges.

In one case, several hundred defendants are on trial on charges of membership in the alleged organization, known as Ergenekon, which is accused of attempting to destabilize Turkey and topple its leaders.

Mr. Oz drew fierce criticism from journalist associations, opposition political parties and other critics, including the European Parliament, when this month he arrested two journalists, Neden Sener and Ahmed Sik. Messrs. Sener and Sik have been charged with membership in Ergenekon and are in jail awaiting trial.

Mr. Oz’s office also confiscated the manuscript of a book by Mr. Sik that was due to be published ahead of parliamentary elections on June 12.

According to colleagues of Mr. Sik who say they have read the manuscript, it details the infiltration of Turkey’s police force and of the prosecution in the Ergenekon case by an influential Islamic religious group named after its leader, Fetullah Gulen.

The announcement of Mr. Oz’s promotion came a day after President Abdullah Gul said he thought the arrests of the two journalists were “wrong” and were damaging the country’s image. “Now they can probably sell hundreds of thousands of copies of a book which could have sold 10,000 copies,” President Gul said, according to state news agency Anadolu Ajansi.

The Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors made no public comment Wednesday on its decision to promote Mr. Oz. Attempts to reach the board for comment were unsuccessful.

Amid the controversy over the journalists’ arrests, chunks of the prosecution’s case against the two men have been leaked to pro-government newspapers that support the prosecution’s actions.

Defense lawyers for the two journalists have complained that the leaked evidence was withheld from them on grounds of “secrecy of the court.”

Prosecutors say they need the manuscripts as evidence the books were being written to discredit the Ergenekon case.

“The Ergenekon investigation and trial have become a tool for the [ruling Justice and Development Party] to limit freedoms,” Mr. Sik writes in his book, according to excerpts on a website that says it has a copy of the manuscript. It wasn’t immediately possible to verify that claim.

On Wednesday, Mr. Oz also ordered the search of the homes of a group of Islamic theologians—including one who said he was writing a book about Fetullah Gulen—in connection with an investigation into the 2007 killings of Christian missionaries in Malatya, Eastern Turkey.

Both Messrs. Sener and Sik had records of exposing the kinds of crimes now being prosecuted in the Ergenekon case, prompting a sharp reaction—including street protests—from Turkish journalists. Even some pro-government columnists argue that arresting the two men was a step too far, because prosecutors have failed to produce evidence the journalists were promoting violence.

Journalist organizations say Turkish laws enable journalists to be prosecuted for terrorism or for crimes against the state for what they write.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed the furor, saying repeatedly that of 27 journalists the government says are currently in detention in Turkey, none was arrested for something they had written.

The Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors was apparently “disturbed by the fact that there had been misuse and exceeding of powers” by Mr. Oz, said Mete Gokturk, a former prosecutor at Turkey’s State Security Court, commenting on Mr. Oz’s promotion on NTV television.

via Prosecutor in Turkish Terror Case Moves to New Job – WSJ.com.

March 31, 2011
Amerika’daki İmam

Ergenekon tertibiyle yaklasik 3 yildir cezaevinde olan yazar bu kitabiyla

Fetullah Gülen`in bilinmeyenlerine isik tutuyor.

Kitapta Fetullah Gülen`in soyu ile ilgili tüm bilgilerin yaninda Islamla telifi mümkün olmayan eylem erine yer veriliyor.

Gülen`in bir ayda hazirladigi risalesinde;

Allah`in sifatlarini eksik bildigini, Cuma`nin sartlarini bilmedigini,

namazin sartlarindan habersiz oldugunu, mezhepler ve mezhep imamlari hakkinda hiçbir bilgisinin olmadigini belgeliyor.

Kitapta; Ergenekon tertibinin Gülen`in ülkeye rahat dönebilmesi amacini tasidigini,

Gülen`in hocaliginin istihbarat örgütlerinin eseri oldugunu kanitliyor.

Yazar; kitapta Fetullah Gülen`in kimligine projektör tutuyor.

Burada verilecek karar; Gülen`in kendi halinde bir din adami mi,

yoksa Ankara Emniyet Müdürlügü`nün raporunda önemle vurguladigi gibi;

`Cumhuriyet`e karsi en sinsi, en kapsamli ve en tehlikeli olusumu köklendiren biri mi oldugu`dur.

Tabii ki takdir okuyucunun…

e-kitap olarak ektedir…

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December 1, 2010
Erdoğan

ERDOĞAN

The prime minister of Turkey has made a policy, indeed a habit, indeed a rather nasty, sneaky habit, of listening to the private conversations of Turkish citizens. Accordingly, he has destroyed many reputations and killed many careers, all on the basis of circumstantial and ill-gotten evidence. He has done this under the guise of protecting the nation from terrorism. To that end, hundreds of those opposed to his regime have been jailed. Many have become seriously ill from their confinement, some have died. And many more live in fear wondering about just who is the terrorist.

Now it is the prime minister’s turn. Wikileaks has lent more smoke to the fire of what has been well and widely known about the Turkish prime minister. Few aside from his most ardent supporters would quibble with the documentary descriptions of him as willful, arrogant, and harsh. And the dimensions of his newly gained wealth, and that of his loyal followers, and their children is of no surprise to anyone marginally alert and living in today’s Turkey.

One trademark of loud-mouthed bullies is that when they are confronted, physically or otherwise, they shut up. Tonight, in the face of a tidal wave of information indicating how corrupt and morally bankrupt he and his minions may be, the prime minister shut up. But his eager nation awaits and deserves a well-considered response. Perhaps when he returns from Libya after receiving the Distinguished Statesman Award from that distinguished statesman and humanitarian Moammar Gadhafi, a fellow leakee? Perhaps then the Turkish prime minister will bless the Turkish nation with his usual eloquence? Like that master of revenge, the Count of Monte Cristo, who summed up all human knowledge in three words, we “wait and hope.”

Cem Ryan
Istanbul
29 November 2010

November 30, 2010
Why Does Turkey Always Arrest So Many People at the Same Time? – By Joshua E. Keating | Foreign Policy

This week in the eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, 151 Kurdish activists, including 12 mayors of local towns, were put on trial for ties to the militant Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). In addition to the crime of belonging to the group, the activists are also accused of holding illegal demonstrations and distributing anti-government propaganda. According to reports, a special courtroom had to be built in Diyarbakir because of the number of defendants.

But trials of this size are hardly unprecedented in Turkey. Indeed, they’re becoming the norm. Eighty-six alleged PKK members were arrested in a nationwide crackdown this February. One-hundred-twenty suspected al Qaeda members were arrested in January. More than 100 people were arrested in connection with an alleged coup plot in January 2009. And Eighty-six were arrested for ties to the rumored “Ergenekon” coup conspiracy in 2008. In a less politically fraught move, 46 people were arrested following an investigation into soccer match-fixing this year. Why does Turkey always arrest so many people at once?

It’s probably not because Turkey has more massive criminal conspiracies per capita than anywhere else. Other countries manage to break up terrorist plots without resorting to mass arrests — it was the Buffalo Six not the Buffalo 86, for instance. More likely, Ankarauses the public spectacle of mass arrests to send a message. Under Turkish law, an individual can be charged for simply belonging to a banned organization, even if he or she hasn’t actually participated in any illegal activities. Because groups like the PKK don’t exactly keep membership rolls, Turkish authorities have pretty wide leeway to crack down on anyone they deem to be subversive. Many of those arrested in this week’s roundup may not actually be PKK members, but by lumping them in with the actual militants, the government could be sending a signal that it won’t tolerate overt Kurdish nationalism.

In the case of the shadowy ultranationalist organization Ergenekon, many doubt that it actually exists at all and believe the Turkish government is using it as a pretext to attack hard-line secularists in the military.

Despite its mass arrests, Turkey has a relatively low conviction rate — around 50 percent. Out of the original 86 Ergenekon arrests, only 48 are still on trial. But because Turkish law allows suspects to be held in prison during their trial, the arrest and trial itself can often be punishment enough — and a powerful deterrent for those who might think of instigating their own plots.

It’s not clear whether the mass-arrest strategy is working to quiet unrest — in the Kurdish case, discontent seems to be growing. But it’s certainly a logistical nightmare. In addition to the special courtrooms and prisons that have had to be built for Turkey’s conspiracy trials, the paperwork alone can be crippling. The Ergenekon indictment was 2,455 pages long and took more than 280 hours to read aloud in court.

Thanks to Gareth Jenkins, Istanbul-based journalist and senior fellow at the Silk Road Studies Program.

via FP Explainer: Why Does Turkey Always Arrest So Many People at the Same Time? – By Joshua E. Keating | Foreign Policy.

October 22, 2010
DARKNESS MADE VISIBLE BY THE TURKISH ZOLA

DARKNESS MADE VISIBLE BY THE TURKISH ZOLA

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
John Milton
Paradise Lost

When Emile Zola published his historic letter, J’Accuse, addressed to the President of France, in L’Aurore newspaper on 13 January 1898, he was rich and famous. But that did not stop his mighty anger. Outraged by the travesty of justice that resulted in the false arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus, a loyal Jewish army officer, he appealed to the president and the nation for reason and justice to prevail.

Dreyfus was convicted by falsified evidence and forged documents, and was a scapegoat for the thoroughly corrupt French Army general staff. He had been imprisoned at a hell hole called Devil’s Island for three years when Zola wrote his letter. (1)

Zola did so for two reasons. First, to draw the public’s attention to the shameful miscarriage of justice. Second, to provoke his own arrest for libel so that new evidence could be introduced that would prove Dreyfus innocent. He succeeded on both counts. Dreyfus was cleared in 1899 and fully exonerated and reinstated in the French Army in 1906. Zola died under suspicious circumstances on 29 September 1902, “a moment in the history of human conscience,” as eulogized by Anatole France. (2)

On 29 September 2010, 108 years to the day after Zola’s death, the ongoing disaster called Turkey received yet another Pinochet-style shock in its struggle to retain its secularity. Hanefi Avcı, the head of the police department in the city of Eskişehir, was arrested for writing a best seller. His book laid bare the widely suspected fact that Turkey’s highest government institution’s—police, army, and judicial system—had been infiltrated and indeed subverted by a religious cemaat, the Fethullah Gülen movement. (3) Since Avcı himself was once an eager activist for Gülen’s cemaat, the book has a certain whiff of authenticity.

And yesterday, Avcı was arrested. The reason? The usual nonsense of the Ergenekon prosecutor. It seems that suddenly the previously highly esteemed police chief has connections with a terrorist organization. Was the terror organization the Gülen movement? Ha, ha, ha, no not quite. The Gülenista government of Turkey, also known as the AKP, paid no attention to the compelling information in Avcı’s book about their sugar daddy, Gülen. It decided on some other “terror group,” some socialist or maybe, horror of horrors, some communist operation. Another Alice-in-Wonderland group, cobbled together with false documents and bogus telephone conversations, using the latest listening and stealth technology provided by…guess who?

Avcı refused to file a petition suggested by his lawyer to demand release from prison pending presentation of formal charges. Like Zola, he wants to experience the whole disgusting mess called Turkish justice. He also refuses to speak to any judicial or prosecutorial officials that he suspects of being members of the Gülen cemaat. But Avcı says that he will talk, at his trial. Like Emile Zola, may he sing long and loud.

Hanefi Avcı, KORKMA!

Cem Ryan
Istanbul

NOTES:
1. An excellent summary of the Zola/Dreyfus affair by University of Georgia law professor Donald Wilkes can be found at:
For those interested in a dramatic representation of this incident see the stunning classic film (1937) The Life of Emile Zola:

2. “Il fut un moment de la conscience humaine.” Anatole France, 5 October 1902.

3. Gülen lives in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. It is well and widely known that his activities are aided, abetted, and otherwise supported by the United States government, in particular by the CIA. The latter’s officials were signatories to Gülen’s permanent residency application (“green card”), which he was granted in 2008. For more detailed information see ISLAM, SECULARISM, AND THE BATTLE FOR TURKEY’S FUTURE at:

October 1, 2010
United States laid ground for Ergenekon “Deep State” in Turkey

WMR has discovered a formerly Secret document from the U.S. Department of State that confirms the United States not only supported the Turkish military coup that ousted the nation’s democratically-elected government in 1980 but actively supported the military-imposed Turkish Constitution as “reformist.”

The citizens of Turkey recently voted in a referendum and approved 26 constitutional amendments that will transform Turkey into a democratic state without the threat of the military and national security state-affiliated judiciary trumping the power of the Parliament and the people. Neocons have condemned the referendum as a threat to secularism in Turkey and a move to an Islamic state. However, the neocons and their allies in Israel are concerned that a Mossad -and CIA-imposed Turkish “Deep State” has finally seen its power largely destroyed with the impending adoption of a new Turkish Constitution. The referendum, which passed with 58 percent of the vote, is a victory for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Many of the roots of the creation of the most recent variant of the Turkish Deep State, known as Ergenekon, can be seen in the State Department policy paper dated September 5, 1981, and titled “USG Policy toward Turkey.” When the State Department document was drafted, Turkey’s military junta leader, General Kenan Evren, was drafting the present Turkish Constitution. The 1981 Turkish military draft Constitution’s “reforms” were referred to in the State Department policy document’s author Lawrence Eagleburger, the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs: “It is too early to judge whether the fundamental GOT reforms, now in place or in prospect, will succeed.” The document also talks about the “relief” provided to the United States by the 1980 military coup: “The military takeover of September 1980 brought temporary relief and for the moment broke the back of radical movements — including pro-Islamic ones — which had come to the fore in the 1970s.”

Eagleburger signaled his and the Reagan administration’s support for the Turkish junta because of the same bogus reasons that neocons today criticize the Erdogan government: the bogeyman of Turkish Islamic political power. Eagleburger warned that Turkey could “drift away from NATO and Western-style government; alignment with Middle East states which supply oil and markets; possibly even neutralism growing out of accommodations with the USSR.” Today, the neocons, Israelis, and their Ergenekon allies in Turkey argue the same points in demonizing the Turkish government: that Turkey is drifting from NATO, that it is turning to oil suppliers and markets like Iran, and has a growing relationship with Russia.

Eagleburger then outlines how the Reagan administration would cement U.S. ties with Turkey to prevent the above scenarios from being realized. He writes: “ . . . the Turkish-American relationship has no natural constituency in terms of shared history, economic interdependence, ethic or family ties. The absence of a ‘Turkish lobby’ in the United States is indicative.” Two of the recipients of the Eagleburger document would later help fill the void and help create the American Turkish Council (ATC), a lobby group patterned after their friends at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Those two recipients of the Eagleburger document were Richard Perle, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, and Paul Wolfowitz, Director of Policy Planning at the State Department. Other recipients of the Eagleburger policy document on Turkey included Robert Hormats, the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs [and who is now the Undersecretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs under Hillary Clinton]; Ronald Spiers, the director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 1977 to 1980; and the prospective U.S. ambassador to Pakistan; Richard Burt, the Director of Politico-Military Affairs for the State Department; and Nicholas Veliotes, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.

The nature of the bilateral U.S.-Turkish relations were described as a “best effort” to help Turkey in all respects, including an “understanding” of Turkey’s position in Greek-Turkish issues and dealing with “Armenian terrorism.” In 1981, Armenia was a constituent republic of the USSR. Today, it is “Kurdish terrorism” that plagues Turkey since Armenia is now an independent state with a natural and politically-powerful constituency in the United States. The Eagleburger document describes the Evren junta as perceiving the Reagan administration as making a “best effort” in providing financial support to Turkey from Washington’s “weighing in” on the “International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Saudis, and other potential donors.”

Eagleburger also warns of “nettlesome” issues that could adversely affect U.S. relations with the Turkish junta, for example, “Congressional badgering on Cyprus, on relations with Greece, on the pace of return to democracy, and an Armenian niche in the proposed Holocaust Museum.”

The United States, through an alliance with Israel and its influence peddlers in Washington, would ensure that the Turkish pace of democracy would not return to normal until the recent approval by the Turkish people of a new constitution that will eradicate the Turkish junta’s military “reforms” championed by Eagleburger and his band of proto-neocons in the Reagan administration in 1981. Attempts over the past eight years by Ergenekon to overthrow the AKP government failed and with the new constitutional changes, Ergenekon’s and Israel’s ability to influence events in Turkish politics have been curtailed, save for the continuing threat of covert Israeli provocation of terrorism involving the Kurds.

Source: Wayne Madsen Report, Sept 18, 2010

September 20, 2010