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ANKARA: Dozens More Detained In New Wave Of Raids On Ergenekon

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  • ANKARA: Dozens More Detained In New Wave Of Raids On Ergenekon

    DOZENS MORE DETAINED IN NEW WAVE OF RAIDS ON ERGENEKON

    Today's Zaman
    Jan 8 2009
    Turkey

    Seven retired generals were detained yesterday along with at least
    30 others as part of the ongoing Ergenekon investigation. A former
    senior prosecutor and the former head of the Higher Education Board
    were among those detained.

    Nearly 40 individuals were detained yesterday in simultaneous
    police operations staged in six cities as part of the ongoing
    investigation into Ergenekon, a shady clandestine network of groups
    and individuals accused of plotting to overthrow the government. The
    new detainees include military officers, an academic with left-wing
    political activist background, the former head of the Police Special
    Operations Unit, seven retired generals and the former head of the
    Higher Education Board (YOK).

    The raids, ordered by a court on a query from prosecutors investigating
    Ergenekon, started in the early morning hours yesterday in six cities,
    including Ankara, Ä°stanbul, Ä°zmir and Sivas. The first person to
    be detained was Yalcın Kucuk, a professor who in various left-wing
    journals and parties defended an ideology called the National
    Democratic Revolution. Kucuk's computer and some of his documents
    were seized during the operation.

    In response to the question, "Do you know why you were detained?" from
    a journalist as he was being taken to the Ankara Police Department
    for interrogation, Kucuk replied, "The dictatorship."

    Another person who was detained was Erdal Å~^enel, a retired
    senior general who worked as the legal undersecretary of the General
    Staff. Å~^enel was still in his post during the Feb. 28, 1997, period,
    which started with an unarmed military intervention that forced the
    government to resign.

    Retired Gen. Kemal Yavuz; retired Col. İlyas Cınar; former head of
    the Special Operations Unit of the National Police Department, Ä°brahim
    Å~^ahin; and Independent Republican Party (BCP) Deputy Chairman Engin
    Aydın were also detained. Tuncer Kılınc, another retired general,
    was also detained. Eleven people, including a navy captain and a senior
    police officer, were detained in Sivas in yesterday's operations. The
    police officer was identified as E.E., while the identity of the navy
    captain was withheld.

    The police found 22 hand grenades, four revolvers and one Kalashnikov
    rifle in the house of a lieutenant colonel detained yesterday as part
    of the operation in the city of Adapazarı, officials said.

    Police intelligence indicated that the 10 people detained in Sivas
    on suspicion of Ergenekon membership were planning sensational
    assassinations, Sivas Gov. Veysel Dalmaz announced yesterday at a
    news conference. Two hand grenades, a pen-shaped gun, 36 bullets,
    a large number of unlicensed rifles and other ammunition were found
    during the raids, the governor said.

    Speaking to the police after his client's arrest, Yalcın Kucuk's
    lawyer Levent Gök said the search in Kucuk's home was conducted under
    a search-and-capture warrant issued by the Ä°stanbul 9th High Crime
    Court. Gök said both of Kucuk's homes were searched by the police,
    who seized all the CDs and documents inside the houses.

    Gök said his client had maintained his high spirits and had been
    cooperative. "He, with his known views, is a public figure, a very
    select and special intellectual. He is a valuable writer of ours who
    has greatly contributed to democracy in our country. All of Turkey
    knows Mr. Kucuk's views both from his published articles, books and
    appearances in the media.

    "He, too, has failed to understand why this order to search his home
    was given. He is a lover of our republic, a modern and contemporary
    individual who believes in democracy. We believe that pressure and
    threats against our intellectuals and writers will negatively influence
    the democratic environment in our country," he said, adding that his
    client would be questioned at the Ankara Police Department.

    The police also searched the house of former Chief Prosecutor of the
    Supreme Court of Appeals Sabih Kanadoglu yesterday, but Kanadoglu
    was not detained.

    Dalan to cut short US trip

    Bedrettin Dalan, a former mayor of Ä°stanbul and president of the
    Ä°stek Foundation's board of trustees, is also being sought as part
    of the Ergenekon investigation warrant. But when the police searched
    Dalan and his assistants' offices and an office at Yeditepe University
    owned by the Ä°stek Foundation, they found that Dalan was abroad in
    the US. In a statement made later in the day, Dalan said he would
    be cutting his trip short and coming back to Turkey early because of
    the investigation.

    CHP deputies react to Ergenekon investigation

    Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal called a press
    conference yesterday over the detentions, criticizing the operation as
    an attempt to move Turkey from its historical path to a new direction.

    "The situation we are faced with shows that we are looking at a
    political case and not a legal trial," he said. "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. You cannot oppose any state of law
    in such a systematic way. We have seen this only in periods of regime
    change. Similar to the period before Khomeini and Hitler. Respected
    figures in society change places. We are faced with such a picture
    again," he said.

    He said the investigation was an attempt to scare those protecting the
    republic and deter others that might follow in their footsteps. "This
    is an effort to make reputable people in society answer [for
    history]. These people are being placed in the same position as
    members of the mafia. Why is this seen as a special case at a special
    court?" he asked, saying the trial was seeking to make people answer
    for being decent moral people who love their country.

    "There is no doubt that the government is behind the trial. I have been
    saying this all along," he said. Baykal also accused the government of
    trying to change the structure of the media in the country. He said the
    effort had at its target a change in the principles and values of the
    republic. "The republic is being dragged into radical change. ... There
    is more need than ever before to defend the republic. It is obvious
    that all these events are a part of this," he said.

    He said it was being done to avenge the past, but did not
    elaborate. "The kind of revenge that this is can be assessed
    individually by everyone," he said.

    Meanwhile, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Å~^ahin, in a statement he made
    on the recent operation, denied allegations that the detentions were
    politically motivated. "It is a completely judicial process. It is
    not a political process. I am following it from the press just like
    you do," he told press members while addressing their questions at
    Parliament yesterday.

    The trial of Ergenekon

    A criminal court in Istanbul began trying 86 suspects, 45 of whom
    are being held in prison, in the Ergenekon terrorist organization
    case on Oct. 20. Among the suspects are several retired generals,
    including one who headed an ultra-Kemalist organization that organized
    massive anti-government rallies in 2007; other retired army officers;
    a number of mafia bosses who were also ultranationalist youth
    leaders in the '70s and '80s; an ultranationalist lawyer who filed
    charges of "insulting Turkishness" against various intellectuals --
    including writer Orhan Pamuk -- over statements that contradicted
    the state's position; journalists; drug lords; the spokesperson of
    a dubious organization called the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate;
    academics, including the former rector of the Ä°stanbul University;
    and a Council of Forensic Medicine expert, among others. A number
    of people currently jailed on charges of Ergenekon membership were
    also detained or called to testify in the Susurluk investigation
    of 1996, which revealed similar shady links between a police chief,
    a politician and the crime world.

    The indictment, made public in July, accuses the Ergenekon network
    of being behind a series of major political assassinations over the
    past two decades. The victims include a secularist journalist, Ugur
    Mumcu, long believed to have been assassinated by Islamic extremists
    in 1993; the head of a business conglomerate, Ozdemir Sabancı, who
    was shot dead by militants of the extreme-left Revolutionary People's
    Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) in his high-security office in 1996;
    secularist academic Necip Hablemitoglu, who was also believed to have
    been killed by Islamic extremists, in 2002; and a 2006 attack on the
    Council of State that left a senior judge dead.

    Alparslan Arslan, found guilty of the Council of State killing,
    said he attacked the court in protest of an anti-headscarf ruling it
    had made. But the indictment contains evidence that he was connected
    with Ergenekon and that his family received large sums of money from
    unidentified sources after the shooting.

    The indictment also says retired Gen. Veli Kucuk, believed to be one
    of the leading members of the network, had threatened Hrant Dink,
    a Turkish-Armenian journalist slain by a teenager in 2007, before
    his murder -- a sign that Ergenekon could be behind that murder as
    well. Kucuk was also detained but later released in the Susurluk
    affair of 1996.

    Suspects began appearing in court on Oct. 20, facing accusations
    that include "membership in an armed terrorist group," "attempting
    to destroy the government," "inciting people to rebel against the
    Republic of Turkey" and other similar crimes.

    --Boundary_(ID_tur+XCP9SFGehTNRfPYeYw)--
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