- "Dani Rodrik is an interesting guy who has ties with both Harvard University and Ergenekon Terrorist Organization. The latter is of course indirect, becayse his father-in-law worked for this underground, clandestine organization. He staunchly believes and defends that his father-in-law is innocent. In the past months, I published a few columns by the Armenian columnist Etyen Mahcupyan, who criticized Rodrik in many sound ways. This time, a letter provides a very nice answer for the guy.”
Tuesday
Monday
Ergenekon Suspects Get the Deserved Sentences
 |
| Ergenekon suspects got lengthy sentences. |
Ilker Basbug, former chief of general staff, was sentenced to life along with almost 300 defendants who were sentenced to various terms ranging from life to a few years. The suspects were accused of plotting to overthrow the government.
The court sentenced former military chief Gen. İlker Başbuğ, journalist Tuncay Özkan, retired Col. Dursun Çiçek, lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, Workers' Party (IP) leader Doğu Perinçek, retired Col. Fuat Selvi, Hasan Ataman Yıldırım, retired generals Hurşit Tolon, Nusret Taşdeler, Hasan Iğsız and Şener Eruygur to aggravated life imprisonment. Retired Brig. Gen. Veli Küçük, Capt. Muzaffer Tekin and Council of State shooter Alparslan Arslan got consecutive life sentences in the trial. The court also acquitted a total of 21 of the 275 defendants.
The court also used the term "Ergenekon Terrorist Organization" officially.
Why Does an American Love Ultra-Nationalist Turks?
This mind-boggling question is keeping me busy for some time, because I am unable to come up with a satisfactory answer to this question. Isn't it odd that an American "seems" to love an ultra-nationalist Turk who hates Christians and Jews in his country?
Let me put it this way: The ultra-nationalist faction in Turkey is known for its sympathy for the Ergenekon Terrorist Organization (ETO). The favorite newspapers of this faction are Yenicag and Cumhuriyet, the only newspapers who did not put the Ergenekon arrests on their headline when the first wave of Ergenekon arrests took place. These two newspapers do not hide their support for ETO. They also have an influential website in ODA TV.
On top of that, Cumhuriyet newspaper was bombed a few years ago. The serial numbers of these bombs were from the same sequence as the ones that were found during Ergenekon investigation. So, it was clear that Ergenekon guys dropped the bombs in the front yard of their favorite newspaper so that they could easily put the blame on someone else.
This might come strange to you, but a question needs to be asked here: Why didn't Cumhuriyet pursue any investigation on the bombings in its own yard? Isn't it strange?
The most distinctive feature of this faction is their unending hate towards the non-Muslim minorities and Kurds. Four years ago, an ultra-nationalist member of this Ergenekon faction, Ogun Samast, killed Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist. Those guys also killed a priest in Malatya.
When we turn our heads to America, we see that the extension of Ergenekon is represented by those hated Americans. Since Ergenekon hates Fethullah Gulen in Turkey, the guys in ETO organization try to find someone who can attack Gulen in America so that the American government deport Gulen to Turkey. It seems they find their helpers among Armenians and some other Americans whom they hate. Those people fabricate Gulen Charter Schools fallacy.
Some time ago, one of the extensions of Ergenekon was exposed. It turned out that she was an Armenian, (named Vanessa Kachadurian), running quite a few blogs to attack Gulen and other people and organizations that she thinks related to Fethullah Gulen. So, actually, when this lady attacks some education institutes, her main target was nobody but Fethullah Gulen.
That Armenian lady and her comrades were actually serving to the interests of Ergenekon Terrorist Organization.
Dani Rodrik for the Last Time
| Etyen Mahcupyan's Last Piece of Dani Rodrik It is quite natural for a person to exhibit extra sensitivity and subjectivity toward a specific topic when it concerns his relatives. We can understand such a person if we come to accept that we should be more tolerant toward them and put ourselves in their place. At the beginning, many people in Turkey shared this approach for Dani Rodrik, a successful academic with international fame and a scholar known to be an advocate of democratic values. But he had come face-to-face with a very unexpected situation. | |
| As a matter of fact, he wouldn't be expected not to be cognizant of what views or political opinions his own father-in-law held. Indeed, what his father-in-law, Çetin Doğan, the retired former 1st Army commander, did during the postmodern coup of Feb. 28, 1997, was unacceptable even to the least fervent supporters of democracy. But the Turkish public chose not to discuss these matters in detail so as to give Rodrik an opportunity to protect his prestige. But as it turned out, he hasn't had the sensibility to understand this, as he continues to walk on a path that might lead to the complete destruction of his reputation. Actually, he has exhibited symptoms of his disease early on. It is sad to see an objective scientist bustle about along the narrow channels of kinship while he is supposed to be after the facts. I experienced this during a one-to-one e-mail exchange with him. After I wrote several articles assessing the investigation into the Sledgehammer (Balyoz) coup plan, he sent me responses via e-mail arguing that my approach to the matter was flawed, as there was a conspiracy against the generals who were arrested under the investigation. To prove his case, he claimed that the members of the military were so well-trained, disciplined and meticulous that they wouldn't have made the factual errors found in the documents that have been used as evidence in the case. (Today, on the contrary, Rodrik claims that it is “manifest” that the contradictory points in question were “human errors.”) In one of these messages, Rodrik misspelled my surname as "Mahçupoğlu," perhaps due to an excessive emotional surge, and I hadn't placed much emphasis on this matter. But when he claimed that the members of the military wouldn't commit factual errors, I, referring to his misspelling of my surname, noted that if he, as a meticulous and knowledgeable person, could make such a grave error, it wouldn't be logical to argue that the members of the military couldn't make factual errors. It may not be easy to adopt an objective position concerning a trial like Balyoz. For many, this trial represents an ideological confrontation in the first place, and they tend to wield a certain level of bias toward the politics of the ongoing trial. It is alleged that the court delivered a legally problematic verdict concerning the Balyoz trial and that many defendants were victimized during the litigation process. This may be true, but it is equally true that some members of the military were preparing to overthrow the government, that they developed a coup plan and that the senior members of this junta were therefore equitably punished. In this process, people like Rodrik acted, knowingly or not, as promoters of the neo-nationalist propaganda and eventually became part of the efforts to whitewash the coup mentality. They focused basically on two arguments: First, the documents referring to the coup plan can be found on only three CDs used as evidence in the prosecution, and second, these three CDs were tampered with. Both of these arguments are true. But the heart of the matter is that these three CDs contained documents also found on other CDs, and the court didn't need three CDs to convict Doğan and his friends. The audio recordings of the war game seminar, accepted by the defendants, already indicate what their intention was. If we read the journal entries of Cumhuriyet journalist Mustafa Balbay and former Land Forces Commander Adm. Özden Örnek, we naturally conclude that they had paved the groundwork for a military takeover. Rodrik chose to focus on inconsistencies in names and times in the documents used as evidence, claiming that these inconsistencies might be the work of conspirators. However, the General Staff was unable to discover a single member of this so-called network of conspirators who, Rodrik claimed, were able to penetrate the military and capable of modifying the documents hidden in a secret military cache. But there is an interesting possible corollary to what Rodrik is suggesting: The inconsistencies in the documents used in the case suggest that someone could have had access to them even in 2009, but we don't know who tampered with them. Broadly speaking, the possibility is equally strong that either the conspirators or coup perpetrators could have done the tampering. But Rodrik claims that the suggestion that coup perpetrators could have done so is a lie and, in his blog, he calls me a liar. He thinks that by calling one of the possibilities a lie, he can make his own suggestion the correct one. It is a pathetic situation, particularly for a person who advertises himself as a scholar. |
The Sledgehammer Facts
By Etyen Mahcupyan
Although the Sledgehammer (Balyoz) trial, in which the defendants stood accused of attempting to overthrow the democratically elected government in 2003, was concluded on Sept. 21 by the İstanbul 10th High Criminal Court at the 108th hearing of the case, debates surrounding the Sledgehammer trial still continue. This is why there is merit in summarizing the major developments in the case.
But I would first like to touch upon two important points: First, we see that the court’s decision concerning the sentences of the defendants (especially the low-ranking officers) varies from person to person and is not consistent. The second is that the intricate background of the Sledgehammer (Balyoz) coup plan is linked to many other coup attempts. The journals kept by Özden Örnek and Mustafa Balbay, the Ergenekon terrorist organization, the Council of State attack, the murder of Hrant Dink, the murder of Christian missionaries at the Zirve publishing house in Malatya, the murder of priest Andrea Santoro in Trabzon, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) reports, the statements of the General Staff and the content of documents found under the floor tiles at the Gölcük Naval Base are the major building blocks of this background. It is possible that this picture had an impact on the court’s decision but we need to underline that the picture is “real” and that these are not individual incidents. Now let’s turn to the Sledgehammer facts.
1) In early 2003, a seminar was held at the 1st Army Headquarters and the participants staged a war game. However, the content of the seminar was changed and the participants focused on a plan to eliminate internal enemies under the pretext of external threats. (The prosecutor claimed that the seminar was held without permission from the Land Forces Command, and low-ranking officials provided incomplete or incorrect information to their superiors. On the other hand, the defense lawyers claimed that although the content of the seminar was not approved by defendants’ superiors in the first place, the report on the details of the seminar was prepared and presented by their clients to their superiors.)
2) After the exposure of the Ergenekon terrorist organization, 19 CDs containing voice recordings of the seminar were leaked to the press. The CDs numbered 11, 16 and 17 list the strategies to be used for provocations and sabotage and the names of the officials tasked with these jobs. The other CDs do not contain this kind of information. The prosecutor claimed that these are the documents which were not discussed but used as presentation material during the seminar. They also added that these lists could not have been prepared without the permission of the officials mentioned in the lists. While some of the defense lawyers claimed the low-ranking officials were not sufficiently informed about the plans of their superiors, others have argued that all these documents are fabricated.
Of course these two things affected the court’s decision concerning the case, but they were not the real matter of controversy.
3) Many of the CDs contain information which was added to CDs later on, such as the names of foundations and companies established after 2003. (While the prosecutor claimed that the coup plotters might have updated the information on the CDs, the defense said that this was evidence of a fairly comprehensive plot against the defendants.)
4) There were some anachronisms in the documents which were deemed reliable by the prosecutor. (The prosecutor said that the same anachronisms in the 2003 documents also exist in the other documents described as criminal and that this situation also explains inconsistencies found in other documents. Claiming that these anachronisms are a result of human error, defense lawyers demanded they be separated from the previous documents.) Actually, this observation indicated that the documents were changed, but there was much debate surrounding who changed them. But in the meantime, something unexpected happened.
5) The same documents were on a hard drive which was found hidden under the floor tiles of the Gölcük Naval Command. The password of some of the documents on disc No. 5 from Gölcük was the same as the one for the computer of the major who was in charge of the secret cache in Gölcük. (The prosecutor considered it conformation of the coup plans, but the defense lawyers described it as part of a fairly comprehensive plot against their clients.)
This development supported the claims of the prosecutor because the documents in Gölcük were found in a storage area in the counter-intelligence section of the naval base, where security was very tight, and there was a major who was in charge of the secret cache in Gölcük and had access to many documents. The defense lawyers claimed that security was not very tight in the counter-intelligence section of the naval base and that anyone who had access to the hard disk could have forged any document.
The assumption of the defense lawyers can be considered an option, but they do not have even a single piece of evidence identifying those who planned the conspiracy against the military. This claim is based on the presumptions of the defense. On the other hand, there is the intricate background, a seminar whose content has been changed and computers assigned to specific officials. As for the anachronisms, unfortunately, they do not indicate a conspiracy against the military. They could be human error, as Çetin Doğan’s son-in-law, Dani Rodrik, has claimed, or the efforts of some coup plotters who are attempting to pervert judicial processes.
Now you decide which is more convincing. Is the Sledgehammer plan a conspiracy against the military or a coup attempt prepared by the military?
Tuesday
Dani Rodrik's Facts
Just hours after my article that referred to Dani Rodrik was posted on the Internet, Rodrik issued a response in his blog "Balyoz Davası ve Gerçekler" (Balyoz Trial and Facts). Apparently urged by a sense of duty, Rodrik naturally didn't want to lose any time in correcting my “misstatements.”
At the beginning of the blog post, three hypotheses are stressed. First, he says that the Balyoz (Sledgehammer) plan was not discussed in the 1st Army seminar held in 2003. There are similarities between some of the discussions at the seminar and phrases used in the coup documents, but these similarities "could have been easily introduced by those who fabricated the documents." Second, he claims that Çetin Doğan, the former head of the 1st Army and Rodrik's father-in-law, did not lie to his military superiors about what occurred at the seminar. He ended up going with a version of events that "differed from the version his superiors had asked for," but it "was distributed to his superiors beforehand." Third, Rodrik maintains that the seminar did not refer to a "coup" or "who would come to power following it." All of this information can be found on the evidential CDs. Rodrik tries to create a protective framework for his father-in-law. He prioritizes the voice recordings about the seminar, but trivializes the evidential documents. At the same time, since he knows this wouldn't secure sufficient protection for Doğan, he not only suggests that those documents could have been planted by "fraudsters," but also attempts to prove that Doğan's superiors have taken part in the crime. He does not address the fact that the “possibility” that the documents in question could have been planted by fraudsters does not automatically prove that these same documents were not created by Doğan and his cronies. Rodrik avoids any discussion of why Doğan's superiors attempted to prevent Doğan from disclosing the seminar records if there is no incriminating content, or why Doğan insisted on his version of the full scope of events or whether he communicated the content of that seminar to his superiors without any change. We should understand why Doğan acts this way: If you set out with the intention of diverting people from the facts, you will naturally not be eager to uncover the facts.
Rodrik's blog post then enumerates various arguments in response to my article. But first let me make a correction: Rodrik argues that the General Staff has acknowledged that they had the originals of some of the Balyoz documents, but that they are not related to coup plans. However, the General Staff had merely declared that not "all" of the Balyoz documents fall within its area of responsibility and that some plans which were part of the Balyoz coup were not in its archives any longer when the court's request was made. It provided the names of those documents that were not in the archives, and in so doing, the General Staff indirectly accepted the fact that the documents that it didn't name could have been in its archives. The General Staff has also not refuted the documents belonging to the major who was in charge of the secret cache in Gölcük. Unfortunately, we don't have any dignified reason for assuming that Rodrik is not capable of correctly reading even a simple General Staff statement.
On to Rodrik's reasoning: We have three interconnected assumptions: (1) "The files on the disputed CDs also exist on the authentic CDs, the veracity of which has not been challenged by the defendants," but the fraudsters could have planted them on the disputed CDs. (2) The documents in Gölcük were found in a storage area in the counter-intelligence section of the naval base, where the security was not very tight. Since many documents could be leaked to the outside, it is possible that some documents could likewise be brought inside. (3) Hard drive no. 5 from Gölcük was not password protected. Some documents were password protected, but coup documents were not. Therefore, he concludes, anyone who had access to the hard disk could have forged any document.
In other words, from Rodrik's perspective, the military has such a poor security system and such an undisciplined and heedless mentality that anyone can forge the military's documents. If they could do it, then we can assume that they have done it. If we can assume this, then Çetin Doğan is innocent. Well, let us suppose that the documents have been forged, but then how on earth is it possible that no military official has realized it? After the forgery, hasn't anyone had access to them? Or is that they have had access to them and realize what's in them, but they don't care? Rodrik fails to follow the trail of his own reasoning, and therefore he feels obliged to rely excessively on the possibility that there could have been an imaginary criminal.
If coup documents were forged by fraudsters, then how can we explain the anachronisms? Rodrik has an extremely humane, tolerant response to this. "They are isolated instances that obviously crept in as a result of human error," he says. Moreover, he says this in an effort to prove that there was no systematic updating of those documents. That is, there was no systematic updating because anachronisms were clearly the result of human error. Supposing that the anachronisms in the 2003 documents were the result of human errors made by the members of the military, how can he argue that the anachronisms in the “disputed documents” said to have been prepared in 2009 are not the result of the human errors made by the members of the military? Based on the anachronisms in CD no. 11, how can he claim that there was a conspiracy against Çetin Doğan?
Who Conspired Against Dani Rodrik?
By Etyen Mahcupyan
When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in the elections held in early November 2002, the military decided to take some action. In the following months, Çetin Doğan, the former head of the 1st Army, sent faxes where he made analogies between the AKP's election victory and the Nazis coming to power; he sent these documents directly from his office.
Documents Reveal How Military Carried out Internet Campaign
This interesting article is from Sunday's Zaman.
Documents retrieved from computers of the Information and Support Unit of the General Staff clearly reveal how a pro-coup junta nested within the Turkish military, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), has engaged in propaganda to discredit the government and faith-based groups in the eyes of the people.
The documents are currently being examined by a group of computer experts at the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court, which is involved in a trial against anti-government websites allegedly established by the military. The General Staff recently sent hard disks of its computers, used by the Information and Support Unit between 2005 and 2009, upon a request from this court. After examining the documents, the computer experts prepared a preliminary report about their findings and sent it to the İstanbul court. The court is now awaiting a final report from the experts.
Weekly news magazine Aksiyon has devoted its latest cover story to details emerging from the preliminary report. According to the report, the documents show that the pro-coup junta carried out three kinds of propaganda against the government and faith-based organizations: white, gray and black. In military terms, white propaganda seeks to inform people. Black propaganda, on the other hand, works to discredit something or someone. And gray propaganda is a mixture of the two.
Special unit to fight ‘harmful elements’
According to the documents, the TSK set up a unit to carry out the propaganda campaign against groups or individuals that the military thought were harmful to its existence. This unit was established in the 1950s and had branches both in the Special Warfare Department of the TSK and the General Staff’s department of intelligence. The documents said the unit did not initially work effectively in the years after it was established, but it began to be more active as of 1980 when the military staged a coup d’état and set up some institutions, such as the National Security Council (MGK), to put the civilian will under the control of the armed forces. The unit was called the Information and Support Unit in 1995. “Even though the unit carried out some effective operative and tactical activities at those times [after 1995] when acts of terror and religious fundamentalism reached their peak, it failed to turn into an establishment to act in line with the national strategy and in the light of science. And its scope of psychological warfare has been further narrowed since 2002 as part of plans to curb the role and effectiveness of the TSK in the social and administrative areas. And the psychological warfare unit [or the Information and Support Unit] has become a formation taking passive measures [against acts of terror and religious fundamentalism] and failing to even protect the dignity of its name,” according to the documents.
The latest activity of the Information and Support Unit of the General Staff’s Mobilization Department is the setting up and running of a number of websites to support the unit’s propaganda campaigns against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government and civilian groups. A deepening investigation into the websites shows that the unit, led by jailed Col. Dursun Çiçek, established 42 websites to back their psychological warfare campaign against civilian groups they deemed “religious fundamentalist,” “separatist,” “pro-AK Party” and “anti-TSK.” Former Chief of General Staff retired Gen. İlker Başbuğ was arrested in 2012 as part of the investigation.
Documents retrieved from the hard disks of the General Staff also included information gathered by the military staff about the Hizmet movement inspired by internationally renowned Turkish and Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. According to one such document, the movement is well respected among the people in Turkey because “its followers stay far away from conflicts or clashes with others, serve peaceful purposes, live in harmony with other groups and do not seek to work against the interests or welfare of others.” “There is a widespread conviction [among people] that the Gülen group [as the Hizmet movement is referred to by some circles in Turkey] poses no threat to Turkey,” said the document.
In the documents, the General Staff’s Information Support Unit discussed how to bring the financial sources of the Hizmet movement under control so that the movement would be unable to work. The documents also suggested that a conflict that would emerge for leadership after Gülen dies would lead the movement to collapse.
In attempts to prevent the Hizmet movement from working, the General Staff suggested that its harmony with the US and other countries should be damaged. “The US should end its policy of supporting moderate Islam, documents and required information should be seized and shared with the media to show the real faces of Gülen followers to the people, and a widespread conviction should be created in Turkey and Muslim countries that the movement is controlled by the US and serving the purpose of imperialism,” the document notes and adds that schools and other educational institutions currently operating in roughly 50 countries worldwide should be shut down.
The documents seized from the hard disks also feature plans by the General Staff to launch a propaganda campaign to allege that the Hizmet movement and its followers are the driving force behind some ongoing trials in Turkey that aim to cleanse the country of anti-democratic formations.
“Propaganda should be spread that the news [of anti-coup investigations] is leaked to the media by Gülen followers who are nested in the police force and that there is a large number of senior officers in the police force,” according to one of the documents. The same document also reveals plans to discredit the investigations against clandestine networks nested in various state bodies, an alliance that is often referred to as the “deep state.” “We should spread claims that people captured as part of the ongoing fight against the deep state are indeed too weak to be members of the deep state and that the deep state in fact has nothing to do with those weak people, that Gladio is controlled by the US, that the deep state [in Turkey] was rooted out with Turkey’s alliance with NATO, that groups, individuals and institutions that seek to protect national rights have become [by their opponents] a center of accusations and that the US has helped the pro-Gülen formation infiltrate the police force.”
The General Staff, at this point, sought the help of some media outlets to help it spread those claims. Officers at the General Staff wrote news stories and columns to downplay the investigations launched against coup plotters and the deep state and sent them to some newspapers to publish them as if staff members at those newspapers wrote them. “The said campaigns are being carried out by sending documents to columnists, newspaper administrators, editors-in-chief and civil servants via e-mails that feature an imaginary username and e-mail addresses,” one of the documents retrieved from the hard disks of the General Staff indicates.
‘Less than psychological warfare’
Such activities were, however, not psychological warfare, according to the General Staff. “Having a place in the media [creating news reports and columns published by some newspapers] does not mean launching psychological warfare. Carrying out psychological warfare requires us to make our activities in a manner to impact the opinions, feelings and stance of the target group.”
In one other document, the General Staff complains that websites are not an effective means to carry out a propaganda campaign because it is very easy for computer experts to find out who set up and administered the websites. “The virtual network is an area where covert and semi-covert psychological warfare methods may effectively be applied. It is not appropriate for open methods. For this reason, we are carrying out white propaganda campaigns on our websites. And this decreases the yield we may derive from the websites [and propaganda campaigns]. Websites run by us are subject to bureaucratic transactions, and we always face the risk of being exposed as the administrators of those websites.”
The documents go on to state that the General Staff sought to cooperate with secularist civil society groups and individuals who also oppose the trial against Ergenekon, a clandestine criminal network accused of working to overthrow the government, in attempts to discredit the trial in the eyes of the people. The documents indicate the General Staff should prepare books and brochures about the risk of rising religious fundamentalism in the country and send them to those civil society groups. “In addition, important writings and opinions [denouncing the Ergenekon trial] could be sent to opinion leaders, editors-in-chief of newspapers, leading columnists, civil society organizations and websites of those organizations and deputies,” the documents add.
Documents retrieved from computers of the Information and Support Unit of the General Staff clearly reveal how a pro-coup junta nested within the Turkish military, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), has engaged in propaganda to discredit the government and faith-based groups in the eyes of the people.
The documents are currently being examined by a group of computer experts at the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court, which is involved in a trial against anti-government websites allegedly established by the military. The General Staff recently sent hard disks of its computers, used by the Information and Support Unit between 2005 and 2009, upon a request from this court. After examining the documents, the computer experts prepared a preliminary report about their findings and sent it to the İstanbul court. The court is now awaiting a final report from the experts.
Weekly news magazine Aksiyon has devoted its latest cover story to details emerging from the preliminary report. According to the report, the documents show that the pro-coup junta carried out three kinds of propaganda against the government and faith-based organizations: white, gray and black. In military terms, white propaganda seeks to inform people. Black propaganda, on the other hand, works to discredit something or someone. And gray propaganda is a mixture of the two.
Special unit to fight ‘harmful elements’
According to the documents, the TSK set up a unit to carry out the propaganda campaign against groups or individuals that the military thought were harmful to its existence. This unit was established in the 1950s and had branches both in the Special Warfare Department of the TSK and the General Staff’s department of intelligence. The documents said the unit did not initially work effectively in the years after it was established, but it began to be more active as of 1980 when the military staged a coup d’état and set up some institutions, such as the National Security Council (MGK), to put the civilian will under the control of the armed forces. The unit was called the Information and Support Unit in 1995. “Even though the unit carried out some effective operative and tactical activities at those times [after 1995] when acts of terror and religious fundamentalism reached their peak, it failed to turn into an establishment to act in line with the national strategy and in the light of science. And its scope of psychological warfare has been further narrowed since 2002 as part of plans to curb the role and effectiveness of the TSK in the social and administrative areas. And the psychological warfare unit [or the Information and Support Unit] has become a formation taking passive measures [against acts of terror and religious fundamentalism] and failing to even protect the dignity of its name,” according to the documents.
The latest activity of the Information and Support Unit of the General Staff’s Mobilization Department is the setting up and running of a number of websites to support the unit’s propaganda campaigns against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government and civilian groups. A deepening investigation into the websites shows that the unit, led by jailed Col. Dursun Çiçek, established 42 websites to back their psychological warfare campaign against civilian groups they deemed “religious fundamentalist,” “separatist,” “pro-AK Party” and “anti-TSK.” Former Chief of General Staff retired Gen. İlker Başbuğ was arrested in 2012 as part of the investigation.
Documents retrieved from the hard disks of the General Staff also included information gathered by the military staff about the Hizmet movement inspired by internationally renowned Turkish and Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. According to one such document, the movement is well respected among the people in Turkey because “its followers stay far away from conflicts or clashes with others, serve peaceful purposes, live in harmony with other groups and do not seek to work against the interests or welfare of others.” “There is a widespread conviction [among people] that the Gülen group [as the Hizmet movement is referred to by some circles in Turkey] poses no threat to Turkey,” said the document.
In the documents, the General Staff’s Information Support Unit discussed how to bring the financial sources of the Hizmet movement under control so that the movement would be unable to work. The documents also suggested that a conflict that would emerge for leadership after Gülen dies would lead the movement to collapse.
In attempts to prevent the Hizmet movement from working, the General Staff suggested that its harmony with the US and other countries should be damaged. “The US should end its policy of supporting moderate Islam, documents and required information should be seized and shared with the media to show the real faces of Gülen followers to the people, and a widespread conviction should be created in Turkey and Muslim countries that the movement is controlled by the US and serving the purpose of imperialism,” the document notes and adds that schools and other educational institutions currently operating in roughly 50 countries worldwide should be shut down.
The documents seized from the hard disks also feature plans by the General Staff to launch a propaganda campaign to allege that the Hizmet movement and its followers are the driving force behind some ongoing trials in Turkey that aim to cleanse the country of anti-democratic formations.
“Propaganda should be spread that the news [of anti-coup investigations] is leaked to the media by Gülen followers who are nested in the police force and that there is a large number of senior officers in the police force,” according to one of the documents. The same document also reveals plans to discredit the investigations against clandestine networks nested in various state bodies, an alliance that is often referred to as the “deep state.” “We should spread claims that people captured as part of the ongoing fight against the deep state are indeed too weak to be members of the deep state and that the deep state in fact has nothing to do with those weak people, that Gladio is controlled by the US, that the deep state [in Turkey] was rooted out with Turkey’s alliance with NATO, that groups, individuals and institutions that seek to protect national rights have become [by their opponents] a center of accusations and that the US has helped the pro-Gülen formation infiltrate the police force.”
The General Staff, at this point, sought the help of some media outlets to help it spread those claims. Officers at the General Staff wrote news stories and columns to downplay the investigations launched against coup plotters and the deep state and sent them to some newspapers to publish them as if staff members at those newspapers wrote them. “The said campaigns are being carried out by sending documents to columnists, newspaper administrators, editors-in-chief and civil servants via e-mails that feature an imaginary username and e-mail addresses,” one of the documents retrieved from the hard disks of the General Staff indicates.
‘Less than psychological warfare’
Such activities were, however, not psychological warfare, according to the General Staff. “Having a place in the media [creating news reports and columns published by some newspapers] does not mean launching psychological warfare. Carrying out psychological warfare requires us to make our activities in a manner to impact the opinions, feelings and stance of the target group.”
In one other document, the General Staff complains that websites are not an effective means to carry out a propaganda campaign because it is very easy for computer experts to find out who set up and administered the websites. “The virtual network is an area where covert and semi-covert psychological warfare methods may effectively be applied. It is not appropriate for open methods. For this reason, we are carrying out white propaganda campaigns on our websites. And this decreases the yield we may derive from the websites [and propaganda campaigns]. Websites run by us are subject to bureaucratic transactions, and we always face the risk of being exposed as the administrators of those websites.”
The documents go on to state that the General Staff sought to cooperate with secularist civil society groups and individuals who also oppose the trial against Ergenekon, a clandestine criminal network accused of working to overthrow the government, in attempts to discredit the trial in the eyes of the people. The documents indicate the General Staff should prepare books and brochures about the risk of rising religious fundamentalism in the country and send them to those civil society groups. “In addition, important writings and opinions [denouncing the Ergenekon trial] could be sent to opinion leaders, editors-in-chief of newspapers, leading columnists, civil society organizations and websites of those organizations and deputies,” the documents add.
The End of a Myth
Today's Zaman's Ihsan Dagi wrote a piece about the Sladgehammer case.
The Balyoz coup trial, which started on Dec. 16, 2010, was concluded on Friday.
Most of the 365 defendants have been sentenced to 20, 18 or 16 years imprisonment. With one exception, all of those who have been acquitted are non-commissioned military officers. This shows that the court has conducted a fair and careful review vis-à-vis the low-ranking officers, who might have been involved in the coup attempt unknowingly. Of course, there is also the appeals process, following which the case will be finalized. However, though there might be some modifications to the convictions, it could be said that it is established the crime of coup plotting has taken place.
In the criticisms raised against the Balyoz trial, it is commonly argued that the case was politically motivated. Of course, a coup investigation has a political dimension. In a country like Turkey with a past of many coups, the people know the meaning of coup well. The impunity in past coups had a political dimension which contributed to the emergence of subsequent coups; the effective action against the coups now has a political aspect as well.
It has been possible to raise political discourse independent of the Kemalist elites and military bureaucracy following the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to power on Nov. 3, 2002. During this process, some coup attempts have been made against the AK Party. The April 27 memorandum and the Constitutional Court's decision on the presidency of Abdullah Gül were of a political nature; they were explicit support by the judiciary of coups. True, politics is everywhere. But which politics are we talking about?
Is it political preference or action to halt an elected government, stage coups and rely on the state institutions to achieve these goals? Is it not a better policy to create a country where these acts would not go unpunished? Support from people who are sick of coups and who have lost sons to the coups for a government backing coup trials is, true, a political stance.
Besides, the defense side has adopted an extremely political attitude and position since the beginning of the case. They have insistently and frequently argued that the defendants were secular and Kemalist military servicemen, and that for this reason they could not be considered criminals, and that they were dealing with conspiracies performed by the AK Party and the Gülen movement. Back then, nobody complained that this approach could harm the case and put pressure on the court.
Of course, the convicted parties have families and relatives; and they are sad now. I wish this had never happened. We are not happy when others suffer out of revenge. But justice should also be served. Had this coup taken place, I would not have written this column. This is very serious. A serious coup attempt was identified, and a competent independent court investigated it. The updated list of names of people to assume roles in the interim government formed following the coup is out there. We have seen this before. By this ruling, the structure of the Turkish military, which generates coups and harbors the pro-coup juntas, has also been convicted. The military would have remained reconciled to these structures if the Taraf daily had not published the Balyoz coup plans, if brave prosecutors had not initiated a process of investigation and if the government had not backed these initiatives.
And this is exactly what should be questioned. This coup mindset might be in decline now after the Balyoz and Ergenekon cases, but does that show that it is therefore completely gone and eliminated, and that it has not turned into something else? I made this point in my previous column. The army has made many mistakes since Uludere, but because the incidents are not properly identified and investigated, we are unable to understand what is going on. I cannot help wondering whether a different method is being tried against the democratic regime.
There is big difference between the submission of the military to the government and a truly democratic military. And the military has not gone through that process of reform. There is reason for us to believe that further coup attempts in Turkey may be possible.
The Balyoz coup trial, which started on Dec. 16, 2010, was concluded on Friday.
Most of the 365 defendants have been sentenced to 20, 18 or 16 years imprisonment. With one exception, all of those who have been acquitted are non-commissioned military officers. This shows that the court has conducted a fair and careful review vis-à-vis the low-ranking officers, who might have been involved in the coup attempt unknowingly. Of course, there is also the appeals process, following which the case will be finalized. However, though there might be some modifications to the convictions, it could be said that it is established the crime of coup plotting has taken place.
In the criticisms raised against the Balyoz trial, it is commonly argued that the case was politically motivated. Of course, a coup investigation has a political dimension. In a country like Turkey with a past of many coups, the people know the meaning of coup well. The impunity in past coups had a political dimension which contributed to the emergence of subsequent coups; the effective action against the coups now has a political aspect as well.
It has been possible to raise political discourse independent of the Kemalist elites and military bureaucracy following the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to power on Nov. 3, 2002. During this process, some coup attempts have been made against the AK Party. The April 27 memorandum and the Constitutional Court's decision on the presidency of Abdullah Gül were of a political nature; they were explicit support by the judiciary of coups. True, politics is everywhere. But which politics are we talking about?
Is it political preference or action to halt an elected government, stage coups and rely on the state institutions to achieve these goals? Is it not a better policy to create a country where these acts would not go unpunished? Support from people who are sick of coups and who have lost sons to the coups for a government backing coup trials is, true, a political stance.
Besides, the defense side has adopted an extremely political attitude and position since the beginning of the case. They have insistently and frequently argued that the defendants were secular and Kemalist military servicemen, and that for this reason they could not be considered criminals, and that they were dealing with conspiracies performed by the AK Party and the Gülen movement. Back then, nobody complained that this approach could harm the case and put pressure on the court.
Of course, the convicted parties have families and relatives; and they are sad now. I wish this had never happened. We are not happy when others suffer out of revenge. But justice should also be served. Had this coup taken place, I would not have written this column. This is very serious. A serious coup attempt was identified, and a competent independent court investigated it. The updated list of names of people to assume roles in the interim government formed following the coup is out there. We have seen this before. By this ruling, the structure of the Turkish military, which generates coups and harbors the pro-coup juntas, has also been convicted. The military would have remained reconciled to these structures if the Taraf daily had not published the Balyoz coup plans, if brave prosecutors had not initiated a process of investigation and if the government had not backed these initiatives.
And this is exactly what should be questioned. This coup mindset might be in decline now after the Balyoz and Ergenekon cases, but does that show that it is therefore completely gone and eliminated, and that it has not turned into something else? I made this point in my previous column. The army has made many mistakes since Uludere, but because the incidents are not properly identified and investigated, we are unable to understand what is going on. I cannot help wondering whether a different method is being tried against the democratic regime.
There is big difference between the submission of the military to the government and a truly democratic military. And the military has not gone through that process of reform. There is reason for us to believe that further coup attempts in Turkey may be possible.
Sledgehammer Case: Tapes of the Generals
Here is the actual voices of the generals who made a coup attempt to overthrow the elected government in Turkey a few years ago. Remember they got very heavy sentences for their attempts.
Three Former Turkish Generals Get 20 Years
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| Former 1st Army Commander retired Gen. Çetin Doğan (L), former Naval Forces Commander Adm. Özden Örnek (C) and former Air Forces Commander Gen. Halil İbrahim Fırtına (R) have been sentenced to 20 years in prison on coup charges. (Photo: AA) |
21 September 2012 / TODAYSZAMAN.COM
Three former Turkish generals, who were key suspects in the Sledgehammer coup trial, have
been sentenced to 20 years in prison on coup charges, a ruling that is
expected to help curtail the Turkish military's hold on politics.
Former 1st Army Commander
retired Gen. Çetin Doğan, former Air Forces Commander Gen. Halil İbrahim
Fırtına and former Naval Forces Commander Adm. Özden Örnek were
initially given life imprisonment but the court said the three would
only serve 20-year prison sentences because they were unsuccessful in
their bid to topple the government. It acquitted 34 officers in the
case, which has underlined civilian dominance over the once all-powerful
military in Turkey.
Retired Gen. Engin Alan, War Academies Commander Gen. Bilgin Balanlı, retired Gen. Ergin Saygun, former National Security Council (MGK) Secretary-General Şükrü Sarıışık, retired Gen. Nejat Bek, retired Adm. Ahmet Feyyaz Öğütçü and retired Gen. Süha Tanyeri were also each sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Prosecutors had demanded 15-20 year jail sentences for the 365 defendants, 364 of them serving and retired officers.
The court issued 16 year jail sentences for 214 suspects, including the retired Col. Dursun Çiçek and retired military judge Ahmet Zeki Üçok, in the historic coup trial.
Çiçek was arrested on charges of preparing the Action Plan to Fight Reactionaryism, which sought to undermine the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government and the religion-based Gülen movement.
Among the 365 suspects, 250 behind bars and the rest pending trial outside of custody. The verdict session was the 108th hearing in the trial.
Suspects entered the courtroom to the applause of viewers, who sang various military anthems as the suspects, most of whom are of military background, walked in.
Four defendants delivered their final statements on the last day. The court adjourned before announcing the verdict.
On Friday, Naval Col. Hakan Mehmet Köktürk, jailed at Maltepe Military Prison, was taken to the İstanbul hospital of the Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine (GATA) reportedly after suffering a heart attack.
İsmail Tepecik, a lawyer for retired Gen. Çetin Doğan, the main suspect in the investigation, said all suspects should be acquitted, speaking to reporters outside the courtroom before the session's start.
Security was tight outside the courtroom on the final day of the hearing. Those who entered the building were frisked and searched with the help of detector dogs. About 500 court viewers, 60 members of the press and 30 lawyers were allowed in.
Some of the highest-ranking former and current members of the military have stood trial in the Sledgehammer case, including Gen. Balanlı, former Air Force Commander retired Gen. Fırtına, former Naval Forces Commander retired Gen. Örnek and former generals Doğan and Saygun, who both served as commanders of the 1st Army.
The 10th High Criminal Court heard the trial. All of the sessions were held at a courthouse built on the property of Silivri Prison. Military suspects in the trial were kept at the military prisons of Hadımköy, Hasdal and Maltepe. The suspects entered the courthouse at 1 p.m.
Presiding Judge Ömer Diken and the other members of the panel of judges entered the courtroom shortly after. After opening the hearing, Diken recalled that the court had adjourned on Thursday to discuss the verdict, but said it had not yet reached a decision. The court adjourned again after the four remaining suspects delivered a final statement.
Retired Gen. Alan, who was elected to Parliament from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in the last election, is also among the suspects. Retired Gen. Levent Ersöz is another prime suspect in the investigation. He did not attend Friday's hearing.
While verdicts seemingly have stormed the public and sparked many debates, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declined to comment on court rulings with regards to the Sledgehammer coup trial. He said the process will continue at least for a while regarding the appeal rights of convicts as they likely will appeal court orders to the Supreme Court of Appeals.
“It is not true to make a comment at the moment. We’ll have the chance to make overall assessment after complement of the process.” Erdoğan said.
Sledgehammer: the beginnings
The first time the Sledgehammer plot was publicly discussed was on Jan. 20, 2010, when the Taraf daily claimed that a group of generals had conspired to overthrow the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, devising a plot titled the Sledgehammer Security Operation Plan. The daily claimed that among the plans of the generals was bombing the Fatih Mosque, one of İstanbul's biggest, during a busy Friday prayer and other atrocities to shake public confidence in the government. The plot was devised in 2003, according to the paper. The next day, the İstanbul Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation into the claims. Forty retired generals and officers on active duty -- including high-ranking former and current generals or admirals Doğan, Süha Tanyeri, Saygun and Özden Örnek were detained on Feb. 24, 2010.Seven people, including Ramazan Cem Gürdeniz, a senior admiral, were arrested in the first wave of arrest. On Feb. 26, Doğan and retired Gen. Engin Alan testified to specially authorized prosecutor Bilal Bayraktar, and were put under arrest by a decision of the 10th High Criminal Court, facing charges of “attempting to overthrow the government of the Republic of Turkey with the use of force and violence.”
The indictment against the suspects was accepted on July 19, 2010. There were initially 196 suspects -- all of them retired or active duty military officers -- in the trial.
On Dec. 6, 2010, the trial took on a new course when nine sacks of documents were found hidden under the floor tiles at Gölcük Naval Command, detailing the alleged plot to overthrow the AK Party. The first hearing was on Dec. 16, 2010.
In June 2011, four more military officers were arrested in the trial. Prosecutor Hüseyin Ayar completed a second indictment on June 16, indicting 28 defendants, including Gen. Bilgin Balanlı and Gen. İsmail Taş. The indictment was accepted by the court on June 28, 2011, with the prosecutor demanding up to 20 years for the suspects on charges of attempting a coup d'état. On Aug. 15, 2011, the court started hearing the accusations in the second indictment.
A key arrest was made on Sept. 19, 2011, when Senior Col. Ümit Metin -- who was already under arrest as part of a separate investigation into an alleged plot to assassinate several naval admirals -- was arrested as a Sledgehammer suspect.
On Oct. 3, 2011, Gen. Beyazıt Karataş, who was wanted as a suspect, turned himself over to the authorities. Also in October the court merged the two indictments into a single trial. Yet a third indictment -- against 143 suspects -- was accepted on Nov. 23, 2011. This indictment was incorporated into the main trial on Dec. 29, 2011, bringing the total number of suspects in the trial to 365. On March 2 this year, former Chief of General Staff retired Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt and Gendarmerie General Commander Gen. Bekir Kalyoncu testified in court as witnesses. On March 14, retired Gen. Ergin Saygun, another suspect who was wanted by the prosecution, turned himself in. He was arrested on the same day. On March 29, the prosecution delivered its 920-page opinion on the trial. On April 6, the court filed a complaint against 11 lawyers with attempting to influence a fair trial. On Aug. 3, retired Gen. Hilmi Özkök, who was the chief of general staff at the alleged time of drafting of the Sledgehammer plot, testified in court. He said he had warned the generals against crossing the line during a seminar in 2003 on the Sledgehammer plot -- which the defendants said was only a war strategy game. On Aug. 16, the defendants delivered their final statements.
Indictment basics and evidence overview
According to the Sledgehammer Indictment, soon after the general elections of November 2002, a full-fledged coup plan under the leadership of 1st Army commander Doğan was launched to topple the AK Party government. The plot contemplated the bombing of mosques, downing a Turkish fighter jet, the takeover of hospitals and pharmacies, the closing of NGOs, the arrest of journalists and politicians.The indictment also charges that the coup plot was given a dress rehearsal on March 5-7, 2003 in a seminar at the 1st Army Headquarters.
The first evidence against the suspects emerged in January 2010, when an anonymous tipster delivered a suitcase to journalist Mehmet Baransu. The suitcase contained various materials, including documents not related to the investigation. Three CDs -- which formed the backbone of the prosecution's argument -- in the suitcase were the subject of the Sledgehammer investigation. The journalist shared the documents with the prosecutors shortly after obtaining them. The CDs contain documents that mention Sledgehammer and related activities such as operational plans (subplots the generals called Oraj, Suga, Çarşaf, Sakal), a list of civil society organizations that would be closed once the generals were in power, blacklists of individuals from various institutions, journalists to be arrested, vehicles, hospitals and pharmacies to be taken over and personnel assignments. Later, the documents found at Gölcük were added to the pile of evidence against the suspects.
Number of skulls found in Diyarbakır increases to 23
First bone fragments and skulls were accidentally discovered over the past two weeks by some laborers laying pipes in the İçkale neighborhood of Diyarbakır.
Four more skulls were unearthed Wednesday morning during excavations in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, bringing the total count of human skulls found in the province's historic İçkale neighborhood in the past two weeks to 23.
A representative from the Diyarbakır Prosecutor's Office told the Anatolia news agency that the total increased to 23 following renewed search efforts on Wednesday by a team of 20 experts employed by the Diyarbakır Governor's Office. A large number of bone fragments and a number of skulls were inadvertently discovered last week by laborers laying pipes in an area where the former headquarters of JİTEM, a clandestine intelligence organization within the gendarmerie that is believed to have been responsible for thousands of unsolved murders in eastern and southeastern Turkey in the 1990s, was located. As news emerged on Wednesday about the increase in the skull count, Republican People's Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Sezgin Tanrıkulu told the ANKA news agency that the situation has reached a grave point.
Tanrıkulu, who is a former president of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, said he is waiting for the Ministry of Justice to make a comprehensive statement as to how the investigations should be carried out and called for a more comprehensive and intensive operation. He urged the government to take measures that are in accordance with international conventions.
“We need photographs of every stage of this excavation [and] in what arrangement these bones and skulls have been found. Is it likely these people were the victims of a massacre? These are questions that need to be asked. It will do no good for ministers to go to the east and be pictured having snowball fights in the snow. This is a serious matter and it requires a serious investigation,” Tanrıkulu said.
On Monday, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Diyarbakır deputy Altan Tan called for the establishment of a parliamentary commission to investigate suspected extrajudicial murders by JİTEM and the ongoing excavations in Diyarbakır. Mehmet Emin Aktar, the president of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, told prosecutors on Monday that the use of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) will add to the reliability of the search. Aktar also stated that the geophysics departments of several universities have GPR capable of showing the presence of objects larger than 5 centimeters. This method of detection can search up to 40 meters deep.
The intensive excavations in the area over the past two weeks have raised hopes that light will be shed on some of the unsolved murders that took place during the dark period of the 1990s in the Southeast. Hundreds of people are said to have been tortured at the JİTEM headquarters. Although İçkale was known as one of JİTEM’s execution sites, no excavations in search of human remains were allowed before the discovery in the area because it had been designated an historic site.
Bone fragments and skulls that were unearthed last week have been transported under high security to the Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) in İstanbul, where DNA tests will be carried out. Blood samples from the relatives of missing persons from Turkey’s Southeast, who continue to seek answers regarding the fate of their loved ones, will then be taken and analyzed in an attempt to identify the bodies.
Tanrıkulu, who is a former president of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, said he is waiting for the Ministry of Justice to make a comprehensive statement as to how the investigations should be carried out and called for a more comprehensive and intensive operation. He urged the government to take measures that are in accordance with international conventions.
“We need photographs of every stage of this excavation [and] in what arrangement these bones and skulls have been found. Is it likely these people were the victims of a massacre? These are questions that need to be asked. It will do no good for ministers to go to the east and be pictured having snowball fights in the snow. This is a serious matter and it requires a serious investigation,” Tanrıkulu said.
On Monday, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Diyarbakır deputy Altan Tan called for the establishment of a parliamentary commission to investigate suspected extrajudicial murders by JİTEM and the ongoing excavations in Diyarbakır. Mehmet Emin Aktar, the president of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, told prosecutors on Monday that the use of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) will add to the reliability of the search. Aktar also stated that the geophysics departments of several universities have GPR capable of showing the presence of objects larger than 5 centimeters. This method of detection can search up to 40 meters deep.
The intensive excavations in the area over the past two weeks have raised hopes that light will be shed on some of the unsolved murders that took place during the dark period of the 1990s in the Southeast. Hundreds of people are said to have been tortured at the JİTEM headquarters. Although İçkale was known as one of JİTEM’s execution sites, no excavations in search of human remains were allowed before the discovery in the area because it had been designated an historic site.
Bone fragments and skulls that were unearthed last week have been transported under high security to the Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) in İstanbul, where DNA tests will be carried out. Blood samples from the relatives of missing persons from Turkey’s Southeast, who continue to seek answers regarding the fate of their loved ones, will then be taken and analyzed in an attempt to identify the bodies.
Silopi excavation reveals bones suspected to belong to missing villagers
Excavations were carried out near the Görümlü Gendarmerie Battalion Headquarters in Görümlü village, Silopi district, Şırnak province. (Photo: AA)
Excavations near the Görümlü Gendarmerie Battalion Headquarters in Görümlü village, Silopi district, Şırnak province for the remains of six villagers allegedly killed 19 years ago revealed three bone fragments on Wednesday.
After a witness testified that he saw the six villagers murdered, the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office issued a statement saying excavations would be carried to search for the villagers' remains at the headquarters. By order of the provincial prosecutor's office, the Silopi Public Prosecutor's Office began to excavate at the Görümlü Gendarmerie Battalion Headquarters.
The witness who had provided information to the prosecutor's office about the six missing villagers said he was there to complete his military service at the time. According to the witness' statement, lead weights were tied to the villagers' feet before they were murdered and buried near the Görümlü gendarmerie headquarters.
A total of 938 bones have been discovered in the region in the past two years at seven different sites in southeastern Turkey that have investigated in an attempt to cast some light on the region's dark history of unsolved murders. Some 530 of these bones were later deemed by forensic investigators to be those of animals.
The existence of death wells has long been an issue of contention. Several people have claimed that JİTEM, a clandestine gendarmerie intelligence unit established in the late 1980s to counter ethnic separatism in the Southeast, was behind the killings of hundreds of people in the region in the 1990s. It was alleged that JİTEM summarily executed a large number of people, doused their bodies in acid and buried them in wells located near facilities belonging to the state-owned Turkish Pipeline Corporation (BOTAŞ) in several southeastern cities.
Şırnak Bar Association Chairman Nurşirevan Elçi, who observed the excavation, said following the dig three bone fragments were found, but the digging had to stop as it was getting dark. He added that they will continue searching on Thursday.
The witness who had provided information to the prosecutor's office about the six missing villagers said he was there to complete his military service at the time. According to the witness' statement, lead weights were tied to the villagers' feet before they were murdered and buried near the Görümlü gendarmerie headquarters.
A total of 938 bones have been discovered in the region in the past two years at seven different sites in southeastern Turkey that have investigated in an attempt to cast some light on the region's dark history of unsolved murders. Some 530 of these bones were later deemed by forensic investigators to be those of animals.
The existence of death wells has long been an issue of contention. Several people have claimed that JİTEM, a clandestine gendarmerie intelligence unit established in the late 1980s to counter ethnic separatism in the Southeast, was behind the killings of hundreds of people in the region in the 1990s. It was alleged that JİTEM summarily executed a large number of people, doused their bodies in acid and buried them in wells located near facilities belonging to the state-owned Turkish Pipeline Corporation (BOTAŞ) in several southeastern cities.
Şırnak Bar Association Chairman Nurşirevan Elçi, who observed the excavation, said following the dig three bone fragments were found, but the digging had to stop as it was getting dark. He added that they will continue searching on Thursday.
Coup suspect confesses to discussing coup at 2003 seminar
A Sledgehammer coup case suspect on Thursday confessed that instead of an official military plan, three action plans regarding the post-coup period were discussed at a seminar in military barracks in 2003, during which preparations were allegedly made for the Sledgehammer coup plot.
Sledgehammer is a suspected coup plot believed to have been devised in 2003 with the aim of unseating the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government through violent acts. According to the Sledgehammer plan, the military was to systematically foment chaos in society through violent acts, among which were bomb attacks on the Fatih and Beyazıt mosques in İstanbul.
One of the Sledgehammer suspects pending trial, Lt. Gen. Tevfik Özkılıç, made his defense at the 75th hearing of the Sledgehammer case at the İstanbul 10th High Criminal Court on Thursday. During the hearing one of the jailed suspects in the case, Ayhan Taş, asked Özkılıç whether he had sensed the alleged preparations for a coup during the 2003 seminar, which he participated in as an observer. In response Özkılıç said “no,” adding that instead of discussing the official military plan named the “Egemen Action Plan,” a proposal was made to discuss “private matters,” which included a “martial law plan,” a “rear area security plan” and a “state of emergency security plan.”
Özkılıç also noted that he was opposed to the proposal to discuss other issues on the grounds that the subject of a seminar could not be changed three months prior to the seminar.
After the remarks from Özkılıç, retired Gen. Çetin Doğan, a key suspect in the case who is currently under arrest, took to the stand and asserted that he did not demand that the Egemen action plan be completely removed from the seminar.
In response to a question from retired Gen. Recep Rıfkı Durusoy, a jailed suspect in the case, who asked if the Sledgehammer action plan included any actions against the government, Özkılıç said he did not remember and that he did not know if such actions were included.
Doğan had said in a hearing on June 16, 2011 that only the Egemen action plan was discussed at the 2003 seminar.
Another suspect in the case pending trial, Meryem Kurşun, also delivered her defense at Thursday's hearing. She said: “I applied to the military as a sociologist in 2005. I was informed by the military which websites I should follow [anti-government propaganda websites constructed to disseminate propaganda against the government with the intention of overthrowing it with the military], so I didn't have the ability to choose what news to post on the websites. These websites are not my personal websites; I only did what was done by the rest of the officers serving in the information support department of the military.”
The Sledgehammer plot allegedly sought to undermine the government to lay the groundwork for a coup d'état. The military, which has overthrown three governments since 1960 and pressured a conservative government to step down in 1997, has denied that such a plan existed. All suspects are accused of a failed attempt to destroy Parliament and overthrow the government. Such a charge calls for a jail sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
The Cihan news agency reported on Friday that the head of the İstanbul 10th High Criminal Court conducting the trial, Ömer Diken, said that there are still suspects pending trial who did not attend the hearing, although the court ordered district gendarmerie commands to make the suspects available the day before the hearing. In the Sledgehammer case, Article 250 of the Code on Criminal Procedure (CMK) says that a person facing charges that fall under the scope of terrorist activities cannot benefit from any immunity, regardless of his or her rank.
Diken went on to say that the court will take necessary measures for the suspects who did not attend the hearing and the district gendarmerie commands that did not bring these suspects to court on the day of their hearing.
A full 171 suspects are under arrest and 41 who are pending trial attended the 75th hearing of the Sledgehammer case on Thursday. However, 78 of the suspects who are under arrest -- including War Academies Commander Gen. Bilgin Balanlı and former military prosecutor Ahmet Zeki Üçok -- did not attend the hearing. Gen. Levent Ersöz, who is currently in jail as a prime suspect in the investigation of Ergenekon and also pending trial as a suspect in the Sledgehammer case, as well as Col. Dursun Çiçek, who is in jail as part of an anti-government Internet campaign probe and is also pending trial as a suspect in the Sledgehammer case, did not attend the hearing on Thursday.
One of the Sledgehammer suspects pending trial, Lt. Gen. Tevfik Özkılıç, made his defense at the 75th hearing of the Sledgehammer case at the İstanbul 10th High Criminal Court on Thursday. During the hearing one of the jailed suspects in the case, Ayhan Taş, asked Özkılıç whether he had sensed the alleged preparations for a coup during the 2003 seminar, which he participated in as an observer. In response Özkılıç said “no,” adding that instead of discussing the official military plan named the “Egemen Action Plan,” a proposal was made to discuss “private matters,” which included a “martial law plan,” a “rear area security plan” and a “state of emergency security plan.”
Özkılıç also noted that he was opposed to the proposal to discuss other issues on the grounds that the subject of a seminar could not be changed three months prior to the seminar.
After the remarks from Özkılıç, retired Gen. Çetin Doğan, a key suspect in the case who is currently under arrest, took to the stand and asserted that he did not demand that the Egemen action plan be completely removed from the seminar.
In response to a question from retired Gen. Recep Rıfkı Durusoy, a jailed suspect in the case, who asked if the Sledgehammer action plan included any actions against the government, Özkılıç said he did not remember and that he did not know if such actions were included.
Doğan had said in a hearing on June 16, 2011 that only the Egemen action plan was discussed at the 2003 seminar.
Another suspect in the case pending trial, Meryem Kurşun, also delivered her defense at Thursday's hearing. She said: “I applied to the military as a sociologist in 2005. I was informed by the military which websites I should follow [anti-government propaganda websites constructed to disseminate propaganda against the government with the intention of overthrowing it with the military], so I didn't have the ability to choose what news to post on the websites. These websites are not my personal websites; I only did what was done by the rest of the officers serving in the information support department of the military.”
The Sledgehammer plot allegedly sought to undermine the government to lay the groundwork for a coup d'état. The military, which has overthrown three governments since 1960 and pressured a conservative government to step down in 1997, has denied that such a plan existed. All suspects are accused of a failed attempt to destroy Parliament and overthrow the government. Such a charge calls for a jail sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
The Cihan news agency reported on Friday that the head of the İstanbul 10th High Criminal Court conducting the trial, Ömer Diken, said that there are still suspects pending trial who did not attend the hearing, although the court ordered district gendarmerie commands to make the suspects available the day before the hearing. In the Sledgehammer case, Article 250 of the Code on Criminal Procedure (CMK) says that a person facing charges that fall under the scope of terrorist activities cannot benefit from any immunity, regardless of his or her rank.
Diken went on to say that the court will take necessary measures for the suspects who did not attend the hearing and the district gendarmerie commands that did not bring these suspects to court on the day of their hearing.
A full 171 suspects are under arrest and 41 who are pending trial attended the 75th hearing of the Sledgehammer case on Thursday. However, 78 of the suspects who are under arrest -- including War Academies Commander Gen. Bilgin Balanlı and former military prosecutor Ahmet Zeki Üçok -- did not attend the hearing. Gen. Levent Ersöz, who is currently in jail as a prime suspect in the investigation of Ergenekon and also pending trial as a suspect in the Sledgehammer case, as well as Col. Dursun Çiçek, who is in jail as part of an anti-government Internet campaign probe and is also pending trial as a suspect in the Sledgehammer case, did not attend the hearing on Thursday.
European court says Turkey’s Ergenekon arrests legal
Europe's top court has said the arrest of chief Ergenekon defendant Tuncay Özkan is legal, rejecting the plaintiff's complaint that he was deprived of his right to a fair trial.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) accepted Özkan v. Turkey despite the fact that Özkan had not exhausted all domestic judicial remedies, but rejected some of his core complaints, including his claim that he was denied the right to a fair trial and the legality of his arrest.
The ECtHR defined Ergenekon as a “terrorist organization attempting to topple the government by the use of force” and said it will wait until the judicial proceedings of Özkan's case are finished. The European court also rejected Özkan's claim that his right to freedom was violated. His complaint regarding the time he has spent in jail will be assessed later in an interim decision.
The European court also said there is “strong evidence” regarding the existence of the Ergenekon clandestine terrorist organization and rejected Özkan's demand to be tried without arrest. The court said Özkan's trial without arrest would make it difficult for security forces to fight organized crime.
ECtHR sources also told the Cihan news agency that Özkan v. Turkey might set a precedent for other Ergenekon-related complaints. The decision is also the first official assessment of the European court with respect to Ergenekon. Ergenekon is a clandestine network of individuals who appear to be nested within the state hierarchy and who are currently on trial for multiple counts of murder and causing public disorder that ultimately aimed to overthrow the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.
The court said Özkan was deprived of his freedom for being a member of a terrorist organization aiming to topple a democratically elected government. It also added that Özkan seized many documents that belong to security forces, directed a TV channel that broadcast programs designed by Ergenekon and kept a bomb in his own home.
The European court judges also said there are telephone transcripts of conversations between Özkan and military members of Ergenekon that strengthen the evidence against him and underlined that his arrest is legal. The Strasbourg-based court added that the arrest of Özkan by Turkish judicial authorities is based on “tangible evidence” and “legitimate reasons.”
Özkan, the former owner of the Kanaltürk TV station, was detained in İstanbul in late September 2008 as part of an investigation into Ergenekon. The court said Özkan's arrest is not in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The European court also rejected Özkan's allegation that he is not aware of what he has been charged with, claiming that İstanbul police informed him that he was under arrest for being a part of a coup plot and that he had been sufficiently informed of the accusations against him so as to be able to defend himself.
The ECtHR defined Ergenekon as a “terrorist organization attempting to topple the government by the use of force” and said it will wait until the judicial proceedings of Özkan's case are finished. The European court also rejected Özkan's claim that his right to freedom was violated. His complaint regarding the time he has spent in jail will be assessed later in an interim decision.
The European court also said there is “strong evidence” regarding the existence of the Ergenekon clandestine terrorist organization and rejected Özkan's demand to be tried without arrest. The court said Özkan's trial without arrest would make it difficult for security forces to fight organized crime.
ECtHR sources also told the Cihan news agency that Özkan v. Turkey might set a precedent for other Ergenekon-related complaints. The decision is also the first official assessment of the European court with respect to Ergenekon. Ergenekon is a clandestine network of individuals who appear to be nested within the state hierarchy and who are currently on trial for multiple counts of murder and causing public disorder that ultimately aimed to overthrow the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.
The court said Özkan was deprived of his freedom for being a member of a terrorist organization aiming to topple a democratically elected government. It also added that Özkan seized many documents that belong to security forces, directed a TV channel that broadcast programs designed by Ergenekon and kept a bomb in his own home.
The European court judges also said there are telephone transcripts of conversations between Özkan and military members of Ergenekon that strengthen the evidence against him and underlined that his arrest is legal. The Strasbourg-based court added that the arrest of Özkan by Turkish judicial authorities is based on “tangible evidence” and “legitimate reasons.”
Özkan, the former owner of the Kanaltürk TV station, was detained in İstanbul in late September 2008 as part of an investigation into Ergenekon. The court said Özkan's arrest is not in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The European court also rejected Özkan's allegation that he is not aware of what he has been charged with, claiming that İstanbul police informed him that he was under arrest for being a part of a coup plot and that he had been sufficiently informed of the accusations against him so as to be able to defend himself.
Vanessa the Loyal Goose Network Member
I haven't posted for a while. I was also planning not to post for a few months, but I saw something incredible on some other blogs. Someone from Goose Network blog gives us some clues about the Ergenekon connections of the Gulen charter school attackers.
Whole article is linked here. But I wanna give you the glimpse of it:
I am very proud to announce the new addition to Goose Network gang. This newest addition will probably complete the final missing part of the big puzzle, the Goose Network, who has been eagerly busy with hatching their eggs everywhere in the Cyber World. Ladies and gentlemen, here comes the final missing piece of the Goose Network puzzle: Vanessa Kachadurian.
(I am not going to put her picture here for privacy reasons. As for her full name, I think it is a fair treatment for her considering that she has by far published a number of people’s full names in her numerous blogs. Besides, I do not have the intention to make her a target in the eyes of other people. This shameless tactic belongs to Goose Network members, not me.)
When I first launched this blog more than a year ago, I published a list of Goose Network members. That list included Vanessa’s name as well. Yet since that time, her name has totally slipped out of my mind. Recently, I have decided to make a quick search after seeing her name on that list again. To my astonishment, the things I found out were really huge. I soon realized that I was encountering arguably the most enthusiastic member of the Goose Network. So much so that, many of my claims have proved me wrong on some issues. Now, I am both hoping to clarify my previous claims and add new stuff here. But one thing is clear: Vanessa Kachadurian is one of the most active members of the Goose Network and she is definitely on someone else’s payroll, because as you will see below, thanks to countless evidence, nobody would allocate such amount of time for something that is irrelevant (or not directly relevant) to one’s life.
Initially I took searching her name very lightly, but as I found new things, I got the motivation to continue and decipher more, because new information was in rapid succession.
The Crucial Information
For this, I decided to Google her name. Writing Vanessa Kachadurian Gulen (becuase she is one of the inventors of so-called Gulen Charter Schools concept , I came up with this comment. In case, the link is removed, you can see the picture below.
She (perhaps accidentally) wrote her name (Vanessa Kachadurian) at the bottom of her own comment, because in order to claim otherwise (that is the deliberate writing of her name) one has to be idiot to inscribe UtahMom on top of the page and then Fresno, California, along with the real name at the bottom. In that comment, I randomly took a sentence and made a quick copy-paste of it and came up with the same exact comment on different blogs and websites but this time under various nicknames such as MD Parent (!) and EducationTruth. It looks like she was becoming UtahMom, Maryland (or medical doctor) Parent or EducationTruth depending on the blog, news or the school she commented about.
She exactly writes the same comment and sometimes changes her nickname. I saw that she wrote the same comment on her Facebook page where she uses her real name in a slightly different way.
I also found out that she was using countless nicknames when attacking what she calls Gulen Charter Schools. She is also constantly giving links to many admiral ship websites, particularly “Charter School Watchdog” website and to her blogs whose link I am planning to provide below.
Her Facebook Adventures
On Facebook (as mentioned above), she has pages of comments along with… guess who? Bill Thacker of Arizona! Surprise surprise, right? Using a slightly different name (Vanoush Khatchaturyan) there, Vanessa has been using this discussion page for more than a year only to give links and write responses to another paid member of Goose Network, Mr. Thacker. Together, they filled like seven pages to defame charter schools. write unfounded things about them but if you actually copy and paste what they have written to a single Word page, it will take more than a hundred pages (actually 113 pages). In their comments they just support each other’s claims but they are not afraid to show their teeth to any “would-be intruders”. It is like this is their backyard to play in. I can’t help but admire their dedication. On another occasion, Vanessa comments on one of Bill Thacker’s posts by thanking him and acting as if she was the first time visitor and did not know much about the info Thacker provided.
Even on Facebook India she writes defamatory things about Erdogan, Gulen etc. She uses other Facebook websites in various languages again in order to represent her true Goose Network spirit. She actively uses ANCA (The Armenian National Committee of America) Grassroots. Such determination!
That is it? Just started! She utilizes her real Twitter account to inform people about some radio programs where Donna Garner was invited as a guest. There, hardliner Garner gives complete misinformation about so-called Gulen Charter Schools. Through her Twitter account, she also helps the Goose Network team defame American charter schools 24/7. Even in the midst of a hot genocide debate among fellow Armenians, she joins the debate with the sole purpose of writing only about Gulen and American charter schools. She sometimes goes too far to use the same aggressive rhetoric to the politicians in Hawaii. Like I said, she is so busy with the comments and other activism she puts on the web that even when there is no comment under any news of a not-so-much-visited webpage, she takes this opportunity to write the same things by employing the artifacts of her copy-paste mindset.
Read the rest
Whole article is linked here. But I wanna give you the glimpse of it:
I am very proud to announce the new addition to Goose Network gang. This newest addition will probably complete the final missing part of the big puzzle, the Goose Network, who has been eagerly busy with hatching their eggs everywhere in the Cyber World. Ladies and gentlemen, here comes the final missing piece of the Goose Network puzzle: Vanessa Kachadurian.
(I am not going to put her picture here for privacy reasons. As for her full name, I think it is a fair treatment for her considering that she has by far published a number of people’s full names in her numerous blogs. Besides, I do not have the intention to make her a target in the eyes of other people. This shameless tactic belongs to Goose Network members, not me.)
When I first launched this blog more than a year ago, I published a list of Goose Network members. That list included Vanessa’s name as well. Yet since that time, her name has totally slipped out of my mind. Recently, I have decided to make a quick search after seeing her name on that list again. To my astonishment, the things I found out were really huge. I soon realized that I was encountering arguably the most enthusiastic member of the Goose Network. So much so that, many of my claims have proved me wrong on some issues. Now, I am both hoping to clarify my previous claims and add new stuff here. But one thing is clear: Vanessa Kachadurian is one of the most active members of the Goose Network and she is definitely on someone else’s payroll, because as you will see below, thanks to countless evidence, nobody would allocate such amount of time for something that is irrelevant (or not directly relevant) to one’s life.
Initially I took searching her name very lightly, but as I found new things, I got the motivation to continue and decipher more, because new information was in rapid succession.
The Crucial Information
For this, I decided to Google her name. Writing Vanessa Kachadurian Gulen (becuase she is one of the inventors of so-called Gulen Charter Schools concept , I came up with this comment. In case, the link is removed, you can see the picture below.
She (perhaps accidentally) wrote her name (Vanessa Kachadurian) at the bottom of her own comment, because in order to claim otherwise (that is the deliberate writing of her name) one has to be idiot to inscribe UtahMom on top of the page and then Fresno, California, along with the real name at the bottom. In that comment, I randomly took a sentence and made a quick copy-paste of it and came up with the same exact comment on different blogs and websites but this time under various nicknames such as MD Parent (!) and EducationTruth. It looks like she was becoming UtahMom, Maryland (or medical doctor) Parent or EducationTruth depending on the blog, news or the school she commented about.
She exactly writes the same comment and sometimes changes her nickname. I saw that she wrote the same comment on her Facebook page where she uses her real name in a slightly different way.
I also found out that she was using countless nicknames when attacking what she calls Gulen Charter Schools. She is also constantly giving links to many admiral ship websites, particularly “Charter School Watchdog” website and to her blogs whose link I am planning to provide below.
Her Facebook Adventures
On Facebook (as mentioned above), she has pages of comments along with… guess who? Bill Thacker of Arizona! Surprise surprise, right? Using a slightly different name (Vanoush Khatchaturyan) there, Vanessa has been using this discussion page for more than a year only to give links and write responses to another paid member of Goose Network, Mr. Thacker. Together, they filled like seven pages to defame charter schools. write unfounded things about them but if you actually copy and paste what they have written to a single Word page, it will take more than a hundred pages (actually 113 pages). In their comments they just support each other’s claims but they are not afraid to show their teeth to any “would-be intruders”. It is like this is their backyard to play in. I can’t help but admire their dedication. On another occasion, Vanessa comments on one of Bill Thacker’s posts by thanking him and acting as if she was the first time visitor and did not know much about the info Thacker provided.
Even on Facebook India she writes defamatory things about Erdogan, Gulen etc. She uses other Facebook websites in various languages again in order to represent her true Goose Network spirit. She actively uses ANCA (The Armenian National Committee of America) Grassroots. Such determination!
That is it? Just started! She utilizes her real Twitter account to inform people about some radio programs where Donna Garner was invited as a guest. There, hardliner Garner gives complete misinformation about so-called Gulen Charter Schools. Through her Twitter account, she also helps the Goose Network team defame American charter schools 24/7. Even in the midst of a hot genocide debate among fellow Armenians, she joins the debate with the sole purpose of writing only about Gulen and American charter schools. She sometimes goes too far to use the same aggressive rhetoric to the politicians in Hawaii. Like I said, she is so busy with the comments and other activism she puts on the web that even when there is no comment under any news of a not-so-much-visited webpage, she takes this opportunity to write the same things by employing the artifacts of her copy-paste mindset.
Read the rest
Friday
Where is Paul Williams?
I found an article on Paul Williams, who has long been disappeared. Looks interesting...
Did you notice that Paul Williams has been lying low in the last a few months? Where did he go? His notorious website (The Last Crusade) has suddenly disappeared due to some unknown reasons! Before his website disappeared, he had already been inactive since last February adding no new inflammatory and provocative content about Islam, Fethullah Gulen (and his so-called Gulen Charter Schools) and his radical perspective on some Muslims around the world.
The last unfortunate incident in Norway must have scared some people like Paul Williams, Brigitte Gabriel and Daniel Pipes, because in the last a few years they have been doing nothing but fear-mongering with their boogeyman concepts like Islamophobia, radical Islam etc.
Anyway, Paul Williams' The Last Crusade is now gone even though its blog-type version is still active with some funny narratives. For example, he tried to display a kitsch example of yellow journalism with his false article on Fethullah Gulen. He made some weird claims about Gulen: "Fethullah Gulen has established a 45 acre mountain fortress. The fortress remains protected by 100 Turkish guards and a sentry post. Local residents have complained of automatic gunfire coming from the complex and of a low flying helicopter that surveys the area for would-be intruders."
Of course those claims had to be verified by some upright journalists like Dan Berrett of Pocono Record. He published a rather neutral piece contradicting what Herr Williams had to say.
Upon seeing his yellow journalism was refuted by the real journalists, Paul Williams, in his blog version of his website accused Mr. Barrett of being deceived by the sweet rhetoric of Gulen comparing the latter to Hitler.
Those reactions really bug me. OK, you were just exposed and what you had to do was to sit still instead of accusing a neutral journalist who did his best to portray a somewhat controversial figure in the United States.
He was also adept in false descriptions as well. He once talked about a Harmony Science Academy, but showed a picture related to Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy. This clearly shows his biased and hate-filled approach about any charter schools like Harmony Public Schools.
Maybe Paul Williams is busy with the lawsuit McMaster University brought to him. I won't go into detail on this issue. You can find more information on Goose Network website. Whatever the reason, Paul Williams, such a fervent and zealous guy, suddenly disappeared leaving a number of accused people and coined concepts (like Gulen Charter Schools) behind him.
He is more than welcome to return as long as he gives up his old antics!
Did you notice that Paul Williams has been lying low in the last a few months? Where did he go? His notorious website (The Last Crusade) has suddenly disappeared due to some unknown reasons! Before his website disappeared, he had already been inactive since last February adding no new inflammatory and provocative content about Islam, Fethullah Gulen (and his so-called Gulen Charter Schools) and his radical perspective on some Muslims around the world.
The last unfortunate incident in Norway must have scared some people like Paul Williams, Brigitte Gabriel and Daniel Pipes, because in the last a few years they have been doing nothing but fear-mongering with their boogeyman concepts like Islamophobia, radical Islam etc.
Anyway, Paul Williams' The Last Crusade is now gone even though its blog-type version is still active with some funny narratives. For example, he tried to display a kitsch example of yellow journalism with his false article on Fethullah Gulen. He made some weird claims about Gulen: "Fethullah Gulen has established a 45 acre mountain fortress. The fortress remains protected by 100 Turkish guards and a sentry post. Local residents have complained of automatic gunfire coming from the complex and of a low flying helicopter that surveys the area for would-be intruders."
Of course those claims had to be verified by some upright journalists like Dan Berrett of Pocono Record. He published a rather neutral piece contradicting what Herr Williams had to say.
Upon seeing his yellow journalism was refuted by the real journalists, Paul Williams, in his blog version of his website accused Mr. Barrett of being deceived by the sweet rhetoric of Gulen comparing the latter to Hitler.
Those reactions really bug me. OK, you were just exposed and what you had to do was to sit still instead of accusing a neutral journalist who did his best to portray a somewhat controversial figure in the United States.
He was also adept in false descriptions as well. He once talked about a Harmony Science Academy, but showed a picture related to Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy. This clearly shows his biased and hate-filled approach about any charter schools like Harmony Public Schools.
Maybe Paul Williams is busy with the lawsuit McMaster University brought to him. I won't go into detail on this issue. You can find more information on Goose Network website. Whatever the reason, Paul Williams, such a fervent and zealous guy, suddenly disappeared leaving a number of accused people and coined concepts (like Gulen Charter Schools) behind him.
He is more than welcome to return as long as he gives up his old antics!
Wednesday
If Whoever Touched Gulen was Doomed, We'd Be Ashes by Now
“A number of things have been published against me; dozens of books have been written. However, I have never done anything to keep an unprinted book from publication. | ||||
| I only pursued my rights as a citizen by legal means in the face of baseless accusations, slander, and assaults against my individual rights. Even books which were identified as illegal by court decisions and whose authors were sentenced to pay compensation have been reprinted. “Particularly during the period that started with the Feb. 28, 1997 unarmed military intervention, many books, manipulated by certain parties as part of a psychological war against me, have been marketed. The allegations in these books were no different from the allegations raised in the courts where I was acquitted. These books were even part of the case dossier and their contents were included in the indictments. The value of the allegations in these books is well known by the public. It is clear that it is impossible in this age of information to prevent any publication from reaching readers. It is also apparent that such attempts would only result in greater interest in the publication one sought to prohibit. Personally, I have made no appeal or complaint about the said book or its author.” These are the words of Turkish Islamic Scholar Fethullah Gülen. The book Gülen referred to is “İmamın Ordusu” (“The Imam’s Army”), whose draft manuscript was prepared by journalist Ahmet Şık, who has since been arrested in connection with the Ergenekon investigation, and included a compilation of past allegations that the Gülen movement has seized control of the Turkish state. Şık shouted “Whoever touches him is doomed” when he was taken into custody; shortly after his arrest, his lawyer Bülent Utku made the following comment: “My client informed us that he was arrested because of a book he had recently drafted that he is planning to name ‘İmamın Ordusu,’ depicting how Fethullah Gülen’s movement is entrenched within the state.” The party to which Şık’s accusations were directed was now identified as the Gülen movement. On March 3, 2011, in addition to Şık, Ergenekon suspects Professor Yalçın Küçük, journalist Nedim Şener, OdaTV Coordinator Doğan Yurdakul, OdaTV writer İklim Bayraktar, OdaTV writer Müyesser Yıldız, journalist Sait Çakır, OdaTV Ankara representative Mümtaz İdil and Aydın Bıyıklı were taken into custody after their houses were searched. Former National Intelligence Organization (MİT) member Kaşif Kozinoğlu’s house was also searched, but he was taken into custody later because he was abroad. The persons who were detained had allegedly assumed roles in carrying out media activities on behalf of Ergenekon. The İstanbul 12th High Criminal Court decided to confiscate the draft of the book seized during the search in Şık’s house because its publication would “serve the goals of the Ergenekon armed organization and prevent a fair trial.” ‘Şık’s draft manuscript was written to undermine and devalue the Ergenekon investigation’ Police notes, issued on March 16, 2011, stated that a draft manuscript by Şık, titled “The Imam’s Army,” was seized during the search at OdaTV on Feb. 14, 2011. It was also noted that the draft seized at OdaTV was 189 pages long and that a document titled “Ulusal Medya 2010” as well as Microsoft Word documents titled “000KITAP,” “Nedim,” “Hanefi” and “Sabri Uzun” were seized during the same search. The notes go on to say: “A review of the documents revealed that ‘Ulusal Medya 2010’ details the current strategy of the Ergenekon terrorist organization, while the Word document 000KITAP contains a draft manuscript of ‘The Imam’s Army.’ The Word documents ‘Nedim’ and ‘Hanefi’ contain notes showing that a book by Hanefi Avcı, ‘Haliçte Yaşayan Simonlar,’ was written upon instructions by the Ergenekon terrorist organization, and the Word document ‘Sabri Uzun’ includes a note reading: ‘Sabri has reservations about the book matter. Let us try to convince him. The book should be ready before the elections. Nedim will see Ahmet Şık about this matter. Be brave while working on the book. Do not hesitate on making additions to removals from the book. This should be more comprehensive than ‘Simon.’ I congratulate Nedim. He should force Ahmet to work. Hanefi will get out and join you. Extend moral support to Emin and Sabri. Try to convince Sabri to allow himself to be cited as an author. It should be quick. It should be ready before the elections’.” The search notes also state that the digital data seized during the search carried out at Şık’s house as part of the investigation included three separate Word documents, ‘000KITAPSON’ (299 pages), ‘Ahmet Kitap’ (301 pages) and ‘KİTAPPPPPPPPPPPPP’ (302 pages), and that there was no significant difference between these three versions of the book. The relationship between the draft seized at OdaTV and the drafts found in Şık’s house was explained as follows: “The draft manuscript seized at OdaTV included a section at the end with the headline, ‘Notes,’ suggesting that these were notes on the manuscript, and it seemed that these notes were relevant to the first two pages in the copies of the manuscript seized at Şık’s house. The police logs kept during the seizure of the drafts also said that the draft manuscript found during a raid of the OdaTV offices did include the part titled ‘Notes,’ but this part was included in a different section of this version than in the copy seized at Şık’s home. There were also some sentences left out in the OdaTV version that were present in the version found at Şık’s house.” The notes further say that in line with the instructions in the Word document “Sabri Uzun,” seized at OdaTV, members of the organization made additions to and removals from the draft forwarded to Şık. The search notes concluded as follows: “The notes seized at OdaTV, the notes in the draft manuscripts and other evidence reveal that the book ‘The Imam’s Army’ was a product made under the instruction and direction of the Ergenekon terrorist organization and that this work was done actively by Ahmet Şık, Nedim Şener, Soner Yalçın, Sabri Uzun and OdaTV staff as well as other unidentified suspects.” The 49-page review note also stated that the book was a work prepared in accordance with the strategies spelled out in the file “Ulusal Medya,” and that its ultimate goal was to undermine the Ergenekon investigation in the eyes of the public. The draft seized by prosecutor Zekeriya Öz was uploaded to the Internet as part of a campaign of civil disobedience on March 31, 2011. The uploaders argued that Şık’s book included the assertion that the Gülen movement was in control of the state apparatus. However, Şık’s allegations were nothing new: The book makes references targeting Gülen and the Gülen movement. Some journalists and writers who have been observing the growing interest in Fethullah Gülen since the 1980s have made strong criticisms against the movement of which he is the spiritual leader, with some publishing extremely derogatory books and articles. Was the argument that whoever touches him is doomed? Has anything happened to those who criticized him? ‘I published the harshest pieces against Gülen and nothing happened to me’ One of the most suitable people to satisfactorily answer this question is İsmail Arlı, owner of Togan Publishing since 2003. Arlı owns a publishing house that sent some tapes which he claimed belonged to Gülen to private TV stations during the Feb. 28, 1997 coup. He also published, among a number of anti-Gülen titles, “The True Face of Fethullah Gülen,” which served as the basis for an indictment against Gülen, as well as books by Ergün Poyraz, who is now in prison as an Ergenekon suspect. We asked Arlı: “You are probably the one person to have ‘touched’ Gülen the most. What happened to you?” He has already responded, remarking: “If whoever touches him is screwed, it should have been me who would have gotten screwed first; I should have been in ashes by now because I have published the harshest material against Gülen. I have published the most derogatory books against him. Even the Cumhuriyet Publishing House is inspired by my cover designs. Nothing has happened to me so far.” Books that ‘touch’ him become best-sellers Arlı has published many books harshly criticizing Gülen and the Gülen movement and directing serious accusations against them, including Ergun Poyraz’s “Kanla Abdest Alanlar (Those Who Perform their Ablutions with Blood)” (2007), Zübeyir Kandıra’s “Cemaatin Copları (The Batons of the Cemaat)” (2010) [Cemaat is the word used by Gülen’s critics and dissenters to refer to the movement], Serdar Öztürk’s “AKP ve Gülen’i Kurtarma Planı: Made in CIA (The Plan to Save the AKP and Gülen: Made in CIA)” (2011), Ahmet Akgül’s “Küresel Fesatçılık ve Fethullahçılık (Global Evilism and Fethullahism)” (2010) and Eren Erdem’s “Nurjuvazi (Nur-geoisie)” (2011) [from the combination of the word “Nur,” a follower of the religious community that follows Islamic writer Saidi Nursi, and bourgeoisie]. Noting that he has never faced any prosecution or pressure in relation to the marketing of these books, Arlı says: “Kandıra’s book was published by another publisher 13 years ago. I hold the publication rights for two years; we have sold 8,000 copies; and we are still selling it, the fourth edition is in circulation now. We have sold 1,500 copies of Hüseyin Özalp’s book, and 5,000 copies of Serdar Öztürk’s book. Even though it is a new publication, we have sold 8,000 copies of ‘Nur-geoisie.’ It is in its fifth edition. The total number of [anti-Gülen books] we have sold exceeds 30,000.” Noting that he did not find Şık’s remark “whoever touches him is doomed” sincere, Arlı argues that Şık’s draft included in its first 40 pages many direct quotes from his publication “The Batons of the Cemaat.” After reading a draft of “The Imam’s Army” on the Internet, the author of that book asked Arlı, as his publisher, to file plagiarism charges against Şık. İsmet Arslan, owner of Asya Şafak Publishing, which published an anti-Gülen book last year titled “Ergenekon ve Fethullah-Yeni Osmanlı Misyonuyla Kürdistan’ın İnşası” (Ergenekon and Fethullah: The Building of Kurdistan with a Neo-Ottoman Mission), says: “We consider some points before publishing an item. Nothing happened to us.” The ‘curious’ case of Saygı Öztürk Arlı also noted that Saygı Öztürk was another author extensively quoted in Şık’s draft manuscript. Öztürk, a veteran journalist, “touched” Gülen in his book “Okyanus Ötesindeki Vaiz” (The Preacher on the Other Side of the Ocean) published by Doğan Books in 2010. Öztürk, who also writes a column for the Sözcü daily in which he makes very strong criticisms against the AK Party and the Gülen movement, says that his book has sold 25,000 copies in a year. Öztürk hosts a TV program on the ART television network known for its neo-nationalist orientation, as well as on news station S Haber, a Gülen-affiliated network. Noting that he has never faced any investigation or pressure in relation to his book, Öztürk says: “When I was about to send the draft to the publisher, an old colleague of mine said to me: ‘I have a favor to ask. The conditions are just not right. It would be better if you do not send it to the publisher.’ I told him: ‘You either do journalism, or you don’t. If I have documentation, I do not insult anyone, and I do not take sides, then this book should be no different from any other.’ There has been no problem at all with the publisher.” Noting that his books are based on evidence and documentation and that he makes sure to speak to the relevant people before publication, Öztürk says he has never been accused of anything except breach of confidentiality. Once his book was released, he received an offer from the Samanyolu News TV station. Öztürk, who “touched” the Gülen movement with this book, explains why he accepted the offer to host a TV program on a channel close to the movement as follows: “At the time my book had just been published, and I got an offer. For me whether it’s with A TV or B TV does not matter. I am hosting a TV show on ART TV right now. I am a frequent guest on a program aired at Kanal D. I am a commentator on a radio program. I am just a journalist. I am doing what journalism ethics requires. I would not think, ‘Well, let me not hurt these people just because I am with STV [the network that owns S Haber]. [Hiring me] was the producer’s decision. I am not insulting anyone; I pay attention to that. I did not make any effort to attract attention and praise. I am in favor of the truth. I am friends with everyone at STV, including the tea server and the cameraman. Just like at other TV stations…just the way I see friendship and love at other channels, I see the same at S Haber. I have no considerations other than journalism. I have never been treated negatively.” Etyen Mahçupyan: Şık and Nedim Şener’s attitudes support argument that they are part of an operation Etyen Mahçupyan, who brought the arrests of Şık and Nedim Şener under the spotlight in his column in the Zaman daily on March 10, 2011, wrote the following:“Şener and Şık have both written and are currently writing books based on documents and information that fall outside of regular journalistic sources. The information they are using comes from one of the shadowy and illegal groups within the state. It is therefore legitimate to ask who the actual writer is. You may write the book by yourself, but what you write depends on the sources that influence and manipulate you. Furthermore, the reliability of the information provided to you is another matter of controversy. … The name of Şık’s book is ‘İmanın Ordusu’ (The Imam’s Army). It is very suspicious for someone seeking to write a book about the Gülen movement and give objective analysis on the role of the movement within the police force to choose this title. It is too provocative and aggressive of a title. This choice suggests that the author of the book has an ideological motive rather than writing the book out of purely journalistic reasons. Of course every writer is entitled to call his book whatever he wants and every title has a function, but this particular case just goes to show that the book isn’t just about journalism. When he was arrested, Şık said, ‘Whoever touches him is doomed.’ A number of books, however, have been published against Gülen’s movement so far and none of the authors of these books have been doomed. This suggests that this is not about ‘touching’ Gülen, but about what you do and whose interests you serve and what group you are a part of when you do the touching. Şık’s reaction unfortunately shows that he does not have an objective stance and that he might have violated the limits of journalism.” Mahçupyan said that journalist Şener’s words “For Hrant Dink, for Justice” as he was being carried away by the police were unfortunate. Mahçupyan stressed that the case of Dink -- a close friend of his -- had become a subject open to abuse and exploitation and that Şener wanted to take advantage of this. Mahçupyan concluded his column with the following sentences: “In conclusion, the argument that Şener and Şık’s supporters put forth is meaningless. The question is whether their recent activities should be considered proper journalism. And, sadly, their attitude supports the view that they have become part of a larger plan.” Faruk Mercan: We haven’t seen anyone who writes about Fethullah Gülen doomed in the last 25 years Journalist Faruk Mercan is one of those who best know the legal process against Gülen in Turkey. He responds to the question as to whether he has experienced any incident where publications against Gülen faced legal action as follows: “Many people, including Professor Alpaslan Işıklı and Emin Değer, the advisor to the General Staff on legal affairs during the March 12, 1970, military intervention period, have published against Fethullah Gülen. Hikmet Çetinkaya alone has written about 15 books. Saygı Öztürk authored five-to-six books on Gülen. Starting in the mid-1980s, journalists started writing books and articles about Fethullah Gülen. If whoever touches him had been doomed, we should have seen at least a few such incidents over this period. No one has been doomed in this 25-year period. Besides, those who argue that they were doomed are not journalists who had shown an interest of any kind in the Gülen movement previously. They appear from nowhere with a book on Gülen. The prosecutor concludes that they assume this task upon directions from a certain circle. And this task is to undermine and delegitimize the Ergenekon investigation. They were not interrogated in regards to the content of the books on Gülen.”Mercan notes that the evidence held by the prosecutors shows a link between Şık, Şener, OdaTV and other Ergenekon suspects. Mercan goes on to say: “Considering that the various parts of these books were also found on other computers, the question ‘Who wrote the final draft of this book?’ is a fairly legitimate one to ask. Editorial contribution to these books is normal; however, who decided to assign the authors to write these books, why were these parts changed and who drafted the final version of these parts are important questions that need answering. Therefore, the way they wrote these books is not usual. Above all, it is not the content of the books that is being questioned. What is under investigation is the objectivity of these books that the prosecutors say were part of a plot. The goal here is to undermine the Ergenekon case and to intimidate the police officers and judges handling this case. In fact, the actual target is not Gülen. He is used as an argument and a tool here. Even Gülen himself declared that he had no complaints or plans to file a lawsuit with respect to the books.” ‘That book did not befit Ahmet Şık,’ says Alper Görmüş, his former boss at Nokta newsweekly These remarks by Faruk Mercan may also be considered together with statements by Alper Görmüş, who in 2007 served as editor-in-chief of the Nokta newsweekly, where Şık was also employed at the time. Görmüş, who was strongly criticized after the arrest because he did not stand up to defend Şık, made the following comment on Şık in a book launch meeting held in İstanbul on May 11: “Ahmet Şık’s book is very poor; it is a book of propaganda that includes no new information. I hope Ahmet is released so that we can discuss this. That book did not befit him. There is nothing in it that was newsworthy. However, the masses still think that the book presents extraordinary information, and for this reason the Gülen movement took action to make sure that it was prohibited. This is a big mistake.” Noting that the prosecutor has the right to track the process in the case of Şık’s arrest, Görmüş says: “It is the right of the prosecutor to pursue the trace of the notes on an unpublished manuscript seized at OdaTV. But it was a big mistake that the book was not published.”Court of Appeals unanimously acquitted Gülen of charges of seizing the state in 2008 In an indictment he drafted on Aug. 30, 2000, then-Ankara State Security Court (DGM) Chief Prosecutor Nuh Mete Yüksel filed a lawsuit against Gülen in the Ankara 2nd DGM, requesting his conviction under Article 7/1 of the Counterterrorism Law (No: 3713) and claiming that he had since 1989 been involved in activities to establish an illegal organization to create a state based on religion by changing the secular state structure.His indictment included the same allegations voiced by those who today claim that whoever touches Gülen is doomed. The allegations against Gülen in that indictment were as follows: “That he seeks to create a theocratic Islamic dictatorship by imposing Islamic provisions in all systems of the state; that he plans on eradicating the Republic of Turkey, a democratic and social state governed by the rule of law, replacing it with an Islamic state governed by Shariah law; that he would use the youths brainwashed in his schools to achieve this goal; that he is eager to create a support base by relying on the foundations, schools and study centers under his control and on the effective financial power he has in hand using an Islamist ideological approach; that he seeks to ensure that his followers find employment in public posts, including the police department and the Ministry of Education; that he wants to raise youths that hold positive sentiments towards political Islam in Turkey; that he attempts to govern all Muslims in the world by meeting with the pope and that he abuses the secular regime to attain his goals through his movement’s infiltration into state institutions.” The indictment made no reference whatsoever to any concrete action constituting a crime as spelled out in the Counterterrorism Law. Instead, the charges in the indictment were based on his views in print and visual media as well as his social activities. In other words, his ideas and beliefs constituted the basis for the charges against him. The Ankara 11th High Criminal Court, in judgment number 2000/124 E-2003/20 K on May 5, 2006, decided to acquit Gülen upon the trials and hearings due to unsubstantiated claims. An appeal was filed with the 9th Chamber of the Court of Appeals, which unanimously endorsed Gülen’s acquittal by the Ankara 11th High Criminal Court on March 5, 2008. The Office of the Prosecutor at the Court of Appeals objected to this verdict on April 4, 2008, under Article 308 of the Code on Criminal Procedure (CMK), which offers an extraordinary course of law with the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeals. The chamber, however, dismissed the objection by the office of the prosecutor on June 24, 2008. In this way, the acquittal was ascertained and finalized. Çetinkaya: I wrote what I wrote about Gülen. I have nothing else to write about himThe most serious and protracted opposition to Fethullah Gülen was carried out by Cumhuriyet columnist Hikmet Çetinkaya, who did not even hesitate to depict Fethullah Gülen on the front pages of his books as an American accomplice with an “angry Uncle Sam” portrait.He authored the following books on Gülen over the years: “Kuzu Postunda Kurt Türkiye’de Tarikatların ve Cemaatlerin Örgütlü Siyasi Gücü, Fethullah Hoca’nın Önlenemeyen Yükselişi” (1996) (Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: The Political Power of Organized Religious Orders and Communities, the Unstoppable Rise of Fethullah Hoca); “Fethullah Gülen’in 40 yıllık Serüveni 1” (2004) (The 40-year Venture of Fethullah Gülen-1); “Fethullah Gülen’in 40 yıllık Serüveni 2-Yol Arkadaşı Nurettin Veren Anlatıyor” (2005) (The 40-year Venture of Fethullah Gülen-2: His Best Friend Nurettin Veren Speaks Up); “Fethullahçı Gladyo” (2008) (The Pro-Fethullah Gladio); “Amerikan Mızıkacıları” (2009) (American Musicians). In legal terms, he was most probably the man who had most frequent legal disputes with Gülen. In these days when the slogan “whoever touches him is screwed” has become popular, Çetinkaya’s visit to the Journalists and Writers’ Foundation, of which Gülen is the honorary chair, is actually meaningful. Doğan Akın, who covered this visit on July 10, 2011 on the website of the T24 News Portal, where he works as editor-in-chief, uses the following direct quote from Çetinkaya: “They invited me to the foundation; so I went there. We had breakfast for two hours. Jokes were exchanged. Yes, in the past, they made kids [in the Turkish Olympiads] recite Necip Fazıl rather than Nazım, Cemal Süreyya and Atilla İlhan. The world is changing, so we have to change as well. I am improving myself. I am changing. I wrote what I wrote about Fethullah Gülen. I have nothing else to write about him anymore. The guy has been living abroad since 1998.” Çetinkaya, who stressed in the same piece that he always based his allegations against Gülen and the Gülen movement on court decisions, further said: “No information was leaked to me from the police. I never received information or intelligence from the police or the military. I never went through the doors of the General Staff. They would never call me anyway. I have been writing these things since 1973, but I never received information from the police. I do not know Hanefi Avcı or others. Some of my colleagues, let me keep their names to myself, file reports based on information coming from the police.” Noting that Gülen has filed a number of lawsuits against him, the Cumhuriyet columnist says: “I won some of these and he won some. In the cases lost, I was ordered to pay fines and compensation. I will write again if there is anything new. I would not write the old stuff as that would be me repeating myself.” Journalist Doğan Akın, who reiterated remarks made by Journalists and Writers’ Foundation Chairman Mustafa Yeşil, quoting from Gülen, saying: “Hikmet Çetinkaya has always bravely written what he believed. I never damned or cursed him.” He further noted: “We have to think about the Gülen movement and Çetinkaya’s venture. That venture, no matter what we think, says we have to try to understand and at least listen to each other. Trying to agree to disagree will be even better than chanting slogans because democracy does not promise anything more valuable than tolerance of diversity. And everything that is solid is evaporating.” Because it was out of business, we could not ask Günizi Yayıncılık, which published Çetinkaya’s books, whether they faced repercussions when they “touched” him.
Ahmet Akgül “Küresel Fesatçılık ve Fethullahcılık” (Global Troublemakers and Fethullahism), Togan Yayıncılık, İstanbul, 2010. | ||||
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