The Ergenekon Case: A Brief Summary

Police operations in six different cities resulted in the detention of 37 more people.

Going back to Susurluk

The Ergenekon organisation has been likened to the clandestine paramilitary Gladio organisation in Italy. The case has been labelled the “case of the century”, but it is not uncontroversial. 

Some believe that this organisation is linked to many extrajudiciary killings and has its roots in the Susurluk network which was exposed in 1996 but never prosecuted in a satisfactory manner. Others believe that the investigation has become a smoke screen for the ruling party’s persecution of political opponents. 

The Ergenekon organisation is said to be dedicated to toppling the government of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), since the members see themselves as defenders of secularism. Western influence in Turkey is also scorned and an isolationist attitude prevalent.

Weapons and extrajudiciary killings

The first notice the Turkish public took of this organisation was when a weapons arsenal was found in a house in Ümraniye, Istanbul, in June 2007. Subsequently the organisation has been linked to bomb attacks on the Cumhuriyet Newspaper in 2006 and the attack on the Council of State in 2006 (where one judge was killed). 

The indictment has claimed that the organisation has also had a hand in the murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007, the priest Andrea Santoro in Trabzon in 2006, as well as three Christians in Malatya in 2007. Other extrajudiciary killings have been laid at the organisation’s door, and it is claimed that they were planning to kill further Alevi and Armenian community leaders, as well as intellectuals.

The indictment states that when all the incidents are taken together, it becomes clear that the goal was to create internal conflict, chaos and terror in the country so that the conditions would be just right for a military intervention.

Journalists, academics, generals, ...

In the waves of arrests, Turkey has seen politicians, journalists, academics and retired generals arrested. The actual trial began in October 2008, when the indictment of over 2,000 pages was read out. Currently, there are 86 people on trial, 46 of them in detention.

Some arrests in tenth wave

After the tenth wave of detentions on 7 January, Prof. Dr. Yalçın Küçük and retired Colonel Mustafa Levent Göktaş have been arrested. Others arrested were İbrahim Şahin, the former head of Police Special Operations, teacher Oğuzhan Sarıoğlu, Special Operations police officer Yaşar Oğuz Şahin, as well as six others. 

In addition, the Alevi leaders Ali Balkız (of the Alevi Bektaşi Federation) and Kazım Genç (of the Pir Sultan Abdal Culture Association) have been provided with police protection, following claims that they were to become targets of the Ergenekon organisation. 

Retired General Tuncer Kılınç, as well as retired Colonel İlyas Çınar and retired Major General Erdal Şenel were released. The son of former Istanbul mayor Bedrettin Dalan, Barış Dalan, as well as Bedrettin Dalan’s driver Coşkun Umur, have also been released, together with three others. They are to be tried without detention. 

In all, sixteen people have been released and another 17 been added to those previously arrested in the Ergenekon investigation. (EÖ/AG)