Tuesday, 10 January 2012It all started in June 2007, with the discovery of weapons and explosives in a residential compound in Istanbul's Umraniye district. Police found documents allegedly outlining it all: a secret group calling itself Ergenekon composed of former military and intelligence personnel, and their civilian counterparts.
Since then, state prosecutors have detained more than 400 military and civilian defendants -- accusing them of aiming to overthrow the government and engaging in terrorist activities.
But none was as high ranking as former Chief of General Staff Ilker Basbug, who was arrested early in the morning on Friday (January 6th) after seven long hours of interrogation.
The accusations against him are twofold. First, is his alleged role in the conspiracy to allow military-operated internet portals to paint a negative picture of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The second, and more controversial, is that he formed and led a terrorist organisation.
The existence of internet portals "[a]ppear to be largely true", says Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul based analyst who read the Ergenekon indictments.
"However, the websites were mainly recycling articles, which had already appeared in the Turkish media, rather than the military writing the entire content of the websites by themselves," Jenkins told SES Türkiye, adding that the articles were neither hostile to the AKP, nor established during Basbug's command.
Calling the former head of the Turkish Armed Forces a terrorist has created a deep divide in the country, ushering in new dimensions to the debate over civil-military relations, democratisation and the judicial system.
The government has repeatedly stated that the trials follow the rule of law and the legal process must reach its conclusion without political interference.
However, as the trials increase in scope and appear to have no end in sight, suspicion that the trials are politically motivated increases.
Responding to the accusations against Basbug, Nationalist Action Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli said that is was a "grave" mistake to put the former head of the Turkish Armed Forces in the same category as the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, adding that the Ergenekon trials and the arrest of Basbug are hurting morale and the combat effectiveness of the army.
Main opposition People's Republican Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has also bashed Basbug's arrest -- including the continued detention of several elected CHP deputies under Ergenekon -- saying that with the politicisation of the judiciary, more arrests are in store.
"We are sliding straight towards a more despotic country," he said on Monday.
The arrest of Basbug has sparked concern by Turkey's Western allies too, who, while supporting democratisation and accountability, are concerned over the scope and length of the Ergenekon trials and the state of the Turkish judicial system.
"I find the charges that he [Basbug] headed a 'terrorist' organisation to be beyond belief," Eric Edelman, retired former US ambassador to Turkey, told SES Türkiye.
Basbug labelled the accusations against him "tragicomic", questioning why the government did nothing while he headed the armed forces between August 2008 and August 2010.
"If I had such bad intentions [overthrowing the government], as the commander of a 700,000-strong force, there would have been other ways of doing it," Basbug said.
While the AKP government argues that Turkey is becoming more democratised, "it does not seem to me to be a sign of healthy civil-military relations in a society governed by rule of law," says Edelman.
Dogu Ergil, a well-known academician, underlines that Basbug's arrest is a historical turning point for Turkey.
"What needs to be accepted as positive is that when a constitutional crime is committed, regardless of who has done that, the interrogation, trial, and punishment process can be launched," says Ergil.
But he is worried about the democratisation process in Turkey. "What interests me is that the guardianship system has not been terminated. It's only the guardian that changed." |
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
SETimes
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