Turkey: Conspiracy investigation revives concern about the "deep state"

By Nicholas Birch: 2/11/08

An ongoing investigation in Turkey into a gang suspected of high-profile killings and a plot to murder Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk is captivating the nation. The investigation suggests that the so-called Deep State, a shadowy network of ultra-nationalists that views itself as above the law, continues to be a force that must be reckoned with.

In all, 29 people – including a retired general and a prominent lawyer – have been charged by an Istanbul prosecutor with "provoking armed rebellion against the government." They allegedly conspired to assassinate public intellectuals, Kurdish politicians, even military targets, as part of a campaign to destabilize Turkish society and force the military to intervene.

Dubbed Ergenekon by the Turkish press, the conspirators apparently aimed to foment a military coup by 2009. Yet, after two years of increasing social tensions that culminated in army coup threats in April 2007, the group already seems to have a lot to account for.

"If only half the rumors about Ergenekon are true, the complete eradication of this secret network is crucial for Turkey's future," Joost Lagendijk, a member of the European Parliament and chair of that body's Committee on Turkey, wrote in a commentary published February 8 by Today's Zaman.

"Authorities must be praised that they have not given in to fear and have brought this conspiracy to daylight," Lagendijk continued. "However, Turkey has won only the first battle. To win the war against the ‘Deep State,' the government has to persevere."

One of the men charged in the conspiracy is Alparslan Arslan, currently on trial for the May 2006 murder of a judge at the High Court in Ankara. The attack on this secularist bastion triggered a backlash that culminated in last spring's massive secular demonstrations. The judge's death was blamed at the time on extremist Islamists. Yet, while Arslan himself appears to be religious, many of those behind him are secular-minded, self-styled patriots.

It's a mix Turks call ‘the Red Apple coalition', a counter-intuitive collaboration based on rabid nationalism and a determination to block Turkey's path from authoritarianism to full democracy.

Unsurprisingly, evidence linking Ergenekon to the murder of Hrant Dink, a mould-breaking Armenian-Turkish journalist whose assassination last January sparked deep social polarization, is mounting fast. Press reports the group has also been linked to the grisly murders of three evangelical Christians in April 2007 in the southeastern city of Malatya. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

One of those arrested in a series of police raids in late January was Kemal Kerincsiz, the lawyer who opened dozens of cases against dissident intellectuals including Dink and Pamuk. A key suspect, meanwhile, is retired Gen. Veli Kucuk, whose presence at Dink's trial – Dink later wrote – convinced him that the death threats he was getting were serious. The alleged founder of a shadowy military police intelligence unit suspected of the murders of dozens of Kurdish activists in the 1990s, Kucuk also has strong links to Trabzon, the home town of Dink's killers.

"He recently set up a security company there, and owns a local magazine," explains Belma Akcura, an investigative journalist whose book on state-Mafia links was published in 2007. "Who writes for the magazine? A retired colonel linked to the nationalist group Dink's killers frequented."

Akcura points to another of the bizarre coincidences piling up around the Ergenekon investigation: the High Court gunman and the Trabzon man suspected of masterminding the Dink murder attended the same secondary school in the eastern city of Elazig.

Kucuk rose to notoriety in 1997, when it turned out that he was the last man to talk to a convicted nationalist multi-murderer who died when a car carrying a police chief and a pro-state Kurdish MP crashed at high speed. Dubbed Susurluk, the ensuing scandal shed a grim light on the Turkish state's dabbling in organized crime.

For many Turks, Kucuk's presence in Ergenekon indicates that the gang is connected to the "Deep State," an amorphous collection of politicians, civilian and military bureaucrats and Mafiosi that is trying to foist an anti-democratic agenda on the country.

Back in 1997, the then prime minister blocked a parliamentary commission's demand that Kucuk give testimony, and the army promoted him shortly afterwards. Some see his arrest now as evidence of progress in Turkey's democratization process. "It's early days, but I'm optimistic we're seeing signs of a fundamental change in the balance of power between the elected government and the state," says Alper Gormus, editor of a magazine that was shut down in 2007 after it revealed a top admiral's plans for a military coup.

Others point out that, back then, Kucuk was then an active officer. Now he's not. "What we have here is a bunch of retired men trying to use the influence they once had to their own ends," says Fehmi Koru, a prominent columnist who was on the gang's hit-list.

Most analysts think the real crunch will come when magistrates move against acting officers whose Internet chats on the finer points of Ergenekon strategy began leaking into the press in late January. The allegations brought an uncharacteristically cautious public statement from Turkey's Chief of Staff. "The Turkish armed forces are not a criminal organization," declared Gen. Yasar Buyukanit. "Those who commit an offense as army members will be tried in court and punished."

In an investigation whose success ultimately depends on government determination, analysts are divided as to how far it will go. Some think the army – whose coup threats in 2007 served only to boost the government's popularity – will think twice before mulling an intervention again. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Others think the government's backing for the investigation has more to do with short-term power struggles with the army than any deep desire to cleanse the state of its links to crime.

For Belma Akcura, the government's limitations have become evident in its lack of interest in following up the Dink murder, an investigation it has no vested interest in. "I've looked into 100s of political murder cases, and in all of them, all you get at the end are the foot soldiers, never the top of the pyramid," she says. "‘To have the will to get to the top, you have to believe in law, in democracy. These people do not."

Editor's Note: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.

Posted February 11, 2008 © Eurasianet