Turkish politics has been shaken up by operations against the Ergenekon gang, starting on 22 January. On 15 January, Diyarbakir MP Akin Birdal had made a speech in parliament about Hrant Dink’s murder. To be honest, I did not anticipate then that the decisive answer by Minister of the Interior Besir Atalay, who said that it was a “matter of honour” to find those who had carried out and planned […] the murder, would be followed by such an operation.
Optimism was impossible
Indeed, it was impossible to be very optimistic, considering the fact that since the start of the Dink murder trial there has only been permission to investigate three of the dozens of public officers clearly responsible for, or at the very least negligent in, the murder: one was Ahmet Ilhan Güler, the head of the Istanbul Police Intelligence Branch, the other two gendarmerie officers who were on duty in Trabzon at the time of the murder, Veysel Sahin and Okan Simsek.
Veiled reference to Ergenekon
However, when Besir Atalay spoke, I immediately understood from certain hints that the Ergenekon gang had become a target. He had said:
“Those who carried out or planned this attack are diseased minds who are uncomfortable at our country opening up towards the world, particularly the EU, who are trying to prevent this, and who want to destroy social peace.”
From this I knew that Ergenekon was targeted because I had written an article entitled “Turkey Has Shown Many Signs of Becoming Fascist”, published in the Birikim journal in June. In the article, I had written about the fundamental aims of the organisation, which are listed in a booklet called “The Remaking of the State”:
a) “To reorganise the state hegemony and independent decision making mechanisms and base them on the people.
b) To found a special war, an independent national intelligence organisation in order to […] evaluate all of Turkey’s resources, especially human resources, in order to strengthen and reinforce the power of the Turkish Armed Forces to apply sanctions independently of world centres. To speed up the construction of a national defense industry, so that Turkey becomes independent of arms imports from certain centres and so that there is diversification.
c) Considering the first two articles, to revive Atatürk’s regional foreign policy, and to develop policies which answer the threat of the new Sevre threat from the West with a new power centre based on Russia, China and India in Asia. In order to carry out these three duties, it is vital that the independent decision making mechanisms of the nation state be reorganised. A foreign policy focusing on the region and Eurasia would create the international environment for such policies."
No simple "criminal gang"
From these aims it becomes clear that Ergenekon is not a simple criminal organization. In the same article, after pointing out that there were signs that the nationalist NGOs who had organised the “Republican Rallies” had close connections with this organisation, and argued that [Ergenekon] was the real agitator behind the rising fascism in Turkey.Despite the fact that I could relate this to Besir Atalay’s speech and could feel that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government was made uncomfortable by the existence of the organization, I could not have predicted this operation.
USA clearly disturbed
The reason was that I did not think that the AKP would display the determination and courage to allow this operation in spite of the General Staff.
Now I realise that I did not reckon with the USA, who are disturbed by the political aims of this organisation which aims at fundamentally changing the foreign policies of the Turkish state.
It is clear that the USA, the General Staff and the AKP have agreed to break the back of Ergenekon.
Will the operation go far enough?
What is important now, is whether the operation will stop at neutralising the power centre, or whether it will be used to shed light on all the actions aimed at pushing Turkey into darkness, from Hrant Dink’s murder, to the bombing in Semdinli, the murder of Priest Andrea Santoro, the attack on the Council of State, the bombings of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, etc.
We shall have to wait and see…(CÖ/TK/AG)
* Cem Özatalay is a sociology lecturer at Galatasaray University, Istanbul.
