Ergenekon Strikes Back: Arrests and Questions Mount

On Wednesday 7 January the Ergenekon affair made yet another triumphant comeback to Turkey's headlines. A new series of arrests involved thirty persons, including three retired generals, Tuncer Kilinc, Erdal Senel and Kemal Yavuz, a former President of the Higher Education Council (Yuksek Ogretim Kurulu-YOK), Kemal Guruz, and nine low- and mid-level active duty officers. Reaction to the new judicial actions was multifarious. The Chief of General Staff Ilker Basbug had a six-hour-long meeting with the commanders of land, air, and sea forces. Thereafter, he had unannounced meetings with President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an apparent attempt to show the military's serious concern about these developments. The news had a negative impact on the financial market, which slumped more than 5 percent on that day. Experts argued that this sharp decline should not be exclusively attributed to the Ergenekon news. The Turkish stock exchange market has recently enjoyed a "bear market rally," so a correction was expected. Its magnitude though had certainly to do with what had happened in Ankara on that Wednesday.

This was the first time that a person involved in the Susurluk affair, which had provided a glimpse into the criminal activities of Turkey's deep state in the 1990s, was arrested in the framework of the Ergenekon investigation. Ibrahim Sahin, a former Deputy Chief of the Special Forces Unit of the Turkish Police, had been imprisoned for six years due to his involvement with the Susurluk affair. Following his early release from prison, Sahin is said to be involved into the masterminding of a new series of assassinations. Following the instructions of maps found in Sahin's house a cache of weapons, bombs and ammunition was unearthed in Golbasi, in the suburbs of Ankara, while more searches took place in other locations in Ankara and other cities. The arrest of Sahin may mean that the prosecutors could establish a link between the Susurluk and the Ergenekon cases. This could shed light to the activities of Turkey's deep state in an unprecedented fashion.

While Ibrahim Sahin may appear to be the most interesting detainee regarding the course of investigation, retired General Tuncer Kilinc is certainly the best known among those arrested last week. Kilinc' last position was that of Secretary General of the National Security Council (Milli Guvenlik Kurulu-MGK), the institution which embodied the military's tutelary role in Turkish politics. Kilinc attracted domestic and international attention in March 2002 when he intervened in the hottest political issue of the time, EU-Turkey relations. At a time Turkey was trying to recover from the 2001 financial crisis and EU reform efforts were gaining momentum, he claimed during a conference at the Istanbul Military Academies Directorate that he opposed Turkey's membership of the European Union adding:

"Turkey absolutely needs to seek new alliances. In my opinion, the best direction would be to seek an alliance with the Russian Federation, which would include Iran, without ignoring the United States—if possible. Turkey has not received any help from the European Union. The European Union has negative approaches to the problems that concern Turkey.

Such opinions came as a surprise to many, as the military was perceived as the single most important agent of Turkey's Westernisation. At a time the Western and democratic credentials of Turkish political Islam were questioned, the army was seen as an anchor of the country's Western orientation. And then, one of the most senior military officers of the country appeared to prefer Turkey's alliance with Russia, the archenemy of the Ottoman Empire or –even more bizarrely– the Islamic Republic of Iran. In fact, Kilinc was not alone in his aberration from the Western vision of Kemalist orthodoxy. When the process of Turkey's European integration made clear that Turkey's full membership of the European Union would require the end of the military's tutelage over Turkish politics and society, some officers opted for the preservation of their institutional prerogatives. Advancing an anti-Western, isolationist agenda would secure the survival of the Kemalist regime and also bring Turkey closer to states strong but not famed for their democratic credentials such as Russia and Iran. What came to be known as Turkey's neo-nationalism (ulusalcilik) combined the anti-Western attitudes of traditional political Islam, the far right and the far left with the anti-democratic elements of the Kemalist bureaucracy. This synthesis which Kilinc personified has been a pervasive feature of Turkey's disparate anti-EU alliance. Its traces can be found in the Ergenekon affair.

At the political level, the major opposition Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi-CHP) took again openly the sides of the defendants. Ever since the outbreak of the Ergenekon affair, CHP members have argued that Ergenekon is an AKP ploy to eliminate its political opponents. The CHP leader Deniz Baykal even came to the point of arguing that "if Erdogan is Ergenekon's prosecutor, I am its attorney." Following last week's arrests, Baykal repeated in a special news conference that

".... we are looking at a political case and not a legal trial. In this case, we don't see the application of the law but rather a political settling of accounts by the use of the law.....We have seen this only in periods of regime change. Similar to the period before Khomeini and Hitler…."

Following the decision of the Constitutional Court in July 2008 and the hardening of the AKP's position in a number of issues related to Turkish national security, many argued that the relations of the AKP government with the military entered a detente and this could slow down the course of the Ergenekon investigations. Last week's developments proved that either no such deal existed or that the Ergenekon prosecutors pursue a truly independent investigation. Procedural shortcomings have been often noted. They referred both to the treatment of defendants and criminal procedures. The case of Kuddusi Okkir, an arrested defendant who was diagnosed with cancer during his custody and was released in July 2008 in miserable condition only days before his death is indicative. It is an irony though that these complaints look very similar to comments made in reports of the European Union, the very institution the defendants are said to have joined forces against.

(Published on Athens News on 16 January 2009)