Ergenekon and Turkish Gladio

[AlphaPapa]

Re: Ergenekon and Turkish Gladio

You admit to not having been to Armenia since you left in the early 90s. Or am I mistaken?

I did? Where did I say that?

Buying land is patriotism? Visiting? I know Tashnags that own land in Turkey, and visit frequently...are you calling them Turkish patriots?

[Armanen]

Re: Ergenekon and Turkish Gladio

I did? Where did I say that?

Buying land is patriotism? Visiting? I know Tashnags that own land in Turkey, and visit frequently...are you calling them Turkish patriots?

Buying, investing, and spending time in Armenia is more patritoic than spending time on forums bit*ching about how bad things are in Armenia, how Armenians are losing at everything, etc. Get your @ss out of the house and do something for Armenia, otherwise don't complain when you are not doing anything. If this doesn't apply to you, great, otherwise this convo is pointless since you don't seem sincere in wanting to know how to help Armenia.

Any Armenian who doesn't actually live in turkey, but owns land there rather than Armenia, regardless of party affiliation isn't an Armenian in my book. So yes, you could call them turkish patriots. The only exception being if they put whatever money they earn to the betterment of Armenians and/or Armenia.


I thought I had read in one of your first posts that you had left Armenia in 1993 and hadn't gone back since. If I am wrong, please say so.

[AlphaPapa]

Re: Ergenekon and Turkish Gladio

I have never lived in Armenia.

[AlphaPapa]

Re: Ergenekon and Turkish Gladio

If you search those keywords you'll find that we have covered this area extensively for the past 4 years.

It deserves its own thread. Only until these recent few years, have Turks even been able to talk about Armenians (other than the usual calling us terrorists, communists, and turk-haters), criticize its black hand (military rulers, the ruling elite), or Kurdish rights. These are very new to the Turkish world, and the internet should be a tool to help Turks accept that Armenians only want what is good for them and ourselves, Kurdish, Armenian, Greek and other minority rights/equality in Turkey, and to be free from the lies of its history.

[AlphaPapa]

http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/turkey/4448/

Turkish ‘Deep State’ Suspected of Silencing Witnesses
Two key figures in Malatya murder trial again fail to show despite court orders.
MALATYA, Turkey, July 21 (CDN) — Under the pretext of recovering from medical treatment he received earlier this month, a key suspect in the murders of three Christians in southeast Turkey dodged court for the second time, further stalling the legal process, prosecuting attorneys said.

Journalist Varol Bulent Aral, one of the suspected “middlemen” who allegedly incited five young men to brutally murder Turkish Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Christian Tilmann Geske at the Zirve Publishing Co. in Malatya two years ago, again failed to show at a hearing on Friday (July 17).

The three Christians were bound and tortured before they were murdered on April 18, 2007 at the Christian publishing house, where they worked. Suspects Salih Guler, Cuma Ozdemir, Hamit Ceker, Abuzer Yildirim and alleged ring-leader Emre Gunaydin were caught trying to escape from the scene of the crime.

Aral was admitted for mental health treatment a few days after the last hearing in June and was released from the Adiyaman penitentiary hospital on July 8. The gendarmerie, however, failed to produce him in court on Friday (July 17) claiming that he was recovering from treatment.

Prosecuting attorneys pointed out that the reason the gendarmerie did not bring him to the June hearing from the penitentiary in Adana, nearly 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Malatya, was due to lack of funds – yet the gendarmerie seemed to have no trouble finding funds to take him for treatment in Adiyaman, which is the same distance from Adana as is Malatya.

“Last time [in June] they said they couldn’t bring him because of insufficient funds,” said prosecuting lawyer Erdal Dogan. “This is unacceptable… now in the same way they make excuses, saying they took him to the hospital. It seems they are mocking us, especially since previous health reports said that he was in good health.”

Prosecuting attorneys also pointed out that it was suspicious that Aral was admitted to the hospital only days after a court order that he appear at the July 17 hearing.

“It seems to us that they are trying to silence him by making him evade court,” said prosecuting attorney Dogan of the “deep state” officials that he and his colleagues believe masterminded the murders of the three Christians. “I truly hope that is not the case.”

Charged with high-security cases, the gendarmerie are holding Aral, but some believe the gendarmerie and its intelligence services are connected with Turkey’s “deep state.”

In the last year, nearly 150 people have been arrested in Turkey under suspicion of being connected to a cabal of retired generals and politicians called Ergenekon, accused of trying to overthrow Turkey’s Islamic-leaning but secular government. Some key figures of the Ergenekon case are believed to be behind the Malatya slayings and the murders of Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro, killed in the Black Sea coastal town of Trabzon in February 2006, and Armenian Christian editor Hrant Dink, who was shot in front of the weekly Agos three months before the slaughter in Malatya.

The Malatya and Ergenekon prosecutors, however, are still researching links between the murders and have yet to try them jointly.

Aral has been arrested in conjunction with both cases. In a previous statement, he had complained that retired Gen. Veli Kucuk, who has also been arrested in connection to Ergenekon, had threatened him about testifying. Aral testified to the Ergenekon case state judges privately in May, but the content of his testimony has not been publicized.

Judges have found the phone numbers of ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz and Sevgi Erenerol, spokesperson for the Turkish Orthodox Church – a Turkish nationalist denomination –in Aral’s personal phone book. Both figures are accused of playing leading roles in Ergenekon and spearheaded prosecution of Christians Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal for speaking to people about their faith.

While in prison, alleged ring-leader Gunaydin testified to the state prosecutor that Aral had contacted him and instructed him to carry out the murders. Gunaydin had also testified that Huseyin Yelki, who worked as a volunteer at the Zirve office, had planned details of the crime with him.

Yelki is still obligated to appear at every court hearing and continues to be a suspected middleman. Thus far, however, his testimony has yielded no clear indication of his role.

Burcu Polat, Gunaydin’s girlfriend, also failed to appear in court on Friday, telling police that she was not ready because she is a student in Balikesir, in northwest Turkey. The prosecution noted in court that universities are not in session and requested that the court find her guilty of not fulfilling her duty to appear in court.

The court again has ordered Aral and Polat to appear in court at the next hearing on Aug. 21.

[Alexandros]

Re: Ergenekon and Turkish Gladio

Minority leader hit list found on major's computer

14 November 2009, Saturday

TODAY’S ZAMAN İSTANBUL

A list of 10 people to be assassinated has been found on the computer of a major arrested as part of the probe into weapons discovered in April during excavations launched as part of the investigation into Ergenekon, a clandestine group that allegedly plotted to overthrow the government.

Retired naval Maj. Levent Bektaş was arrested on Friday in connection to weapons found on land owned by the İstek Foundation in İstanbul's Poyrazköy district in April. The İstek Foundation is owned by Ergenekon suspect and former İstanbul Mayor Bedrettin Dalan, who is currently at large and believed to be abroad. The weapons at the site were registered in the inventory of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), according to a report from Turkey's sole weapons manufacturer, the state-owned Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation (MKE).

Investigators cracked the code of an encrypted file on Bektaş’s computer, revealing a list of names of people who subscribe to the Agos daily, a Turkish-Armenian biweekly whose editor-in-chief, Hrant Dink, was shot dead in 2007, and names of 10 prominent representatives of minority groups to be assassinated.

So far eight members of the military, including a naval major and two non-commissioned officers, have testified to prosecutor Murat Yönder, one of the prosecutors conducting the investigation into Ergenekon. Five of them were arrested on April 25 on charges of “membership in an armed organization” and “illegal possession of arms and explosives.” Yesterday, four more members of the military arrived at the Beşiktaş courthouse to testify to the prosecutor. Three of them were released, while one was referred to a court after the prosecution demanded his arrest. The names of the military personnel who testified yesterday were not released. Members of the press were not allowed to take photos as the three soldiers were released through the back door of the courthouse.

Ten light anti-tank weapons, 20 percussion bombs, three other bombs, 250 grams of C4 explosive, 19 emergency flares, 10 hand grenades, 800 G3 bullets and a large number of cartridges for revolvers were found on the İstek Foundation land. The discovery followed the unearthing of similar underground weapons caches in January during digs based on maps found in the homes of two suspects -- former Deputy Police Chief İbrahim Şahin and Mustafa Dönmez, a lieutenant colonel who turned himself in a few days after a warrant for his arrest was issued. Dalan was in the US during this wave of detentions and discoveries, which began on Jan. 7.

Link

[Alexandros]

Re: Ergenekon and Turkish Gladio

ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ [email protected] Columnists


Would you dare to say this to Bartholomew and Dink?

25 November 2009, Wednesday

Last Saturday, The New York Times published a news story titled “In Turkey, Trial Casts Wide Net of Mistrust.” It was about the Ergenekon gang, our infamous “deep state,” and the case opened against it. Unfortunately, the story was a completely distorted account of what really is happening in Turkey.

We all know which sources of “information” are behind this coverage. They are, before anybody else, Mr. Soner Çağaptay from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Mr. Gareth H. Jenkins, a freelance British journalist based in İstanbul. Mr. Jenkins was in Washington last week, giving briefings on Ergenekon and claiming “there is no such organization.”

The New York Times article, which referred to the views of not just Mr. Jenkins but also a few Turks who fully agree with him, began with this sentence: “The question many are asking, inside and outside Turkey, is whether the Islamic-inspired government is exaggerating the threat in order to wage a much larger battle against this moderate Muslim nation’s secular establishment.”

Who are these many people? There is, of course, a huge division between different segments of Turkish society about this case. There is a huge propaganda war to whitewash Ergenekon. If you talk to people who are linked to or sympathetic to this organization, of course they will convey this propaganda to you. Why, one wonders, do The New York Times reporters not talk with human rights defenders or with the representatives of minorities in Turkey?

Just to point out the mind-boggling pro-Ergenekon line The New York Times piece had, let me give you an example. The article mentioned “Ergün Poyraz, who has written more than five books critical of the government.” It then said that this “critical” voice had been silenced by the case.

Well, wouldn’t it be interesting to know exactly what sorts of books this “critical” Mr. Poyraz wrote? Let me tell you. Some titles of his books read: “The Rose of Moses --Abdullah Gül,” “The Children of Moses -- Tayyip Erdoğan” and “The AK Party of Moses.” In all these, the crazy argument is that Gül, Erdoğan and other Justice and Development Party (AK Party) personalities are actually secret xxxs working for the “elders of Zion” and the state of Israel to destroy Atatürk’s republic. (For more, see: Mustafa Akyol, “The Protocols of the Elders of Turkey,” Washington Post, Oct. 7, 2007.)

Moreover, documents unearthed in the Ergenekon investigation have shown that Mr. Poyraz, the anti-Semitic lunatic, has written all these books with the materials provided him by the Turkish gendarmerie intelligence, and he was regularly paid by the same organization to continue with his “studies.” His ties with gendarmerie intelligence are now a well-documented fact.

That’s not all. Ergün Poyraz wrote another book titled “Six Months Among the Missionaries,” which is simply hatemongering rubbish against evangelizing Christians in Turkey. The book created such an effect and caused a chain of horrific events: Three missionaries were brutally killed in Malatya in 2007. In other places, there were lynching attempts against Protestants.

So, the favorite “AK Party critic” of The New York Times is an anti-Semitic, anti-Christian extremist who gets paid by the deep state for carrying out hate propaganda. Isn’t this bizarre?

Here, Ergenekon is playing a dubious game. While they were trying to convince the Turkish public that the AK Party is “a puppet of American imperialism,” at the same time they are lobbying in America and Europe to convince them that the AK Party indeed has “a hidden agenda,” and its whole purpose is to bring Shariah to Turkey.

If Western journalists really want to understand what Ergenekon is, they should talk to people other than its sympathizers. Why doesn’t The New York Times talk to Turkey’s Christians, for example? They very well know what Ergenekon is and what purpose it has.

Let me ask Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Çağaptay: Do you have the courage to face His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and tell him that there is no Ergenekon? Can you do that?

Minorities in Turkey know the evils here so well. Would you dare to tell Rakel Dink, the widowed spouse of the slain Hrant Dink, that Ergenekon is just an urban legend? Do you have enough courage to say this to the face of these people?

Hrant Dink knew his murderers very well. After retired Gen. Veli Küçük paid a visit to the court in which Hrant Dink was being tried for “insulting Turkishness,” Hrant said to his friends that this was not a good sign. Soon after he was murdered by a 17-year-old nationalist apparatchik used by the deep state.

Do you know who Küçük is? Do you know JİTEM? Have you heard about the three thousand villages burnt and destroyed in south eastern Turkey? Have you heard that we have 17,500 murders attributed to JİTEM? Küçük is the founder of this organization. And he is the one of the prime suspects in the Ergenekon trial.

Is The New York Times really happy to have contributed to the whitewashing of this army of fascists?

Link

[Alexandros]

Re: Ergenekon and Turkish Gladio

Turkish lieutenant colonel commits suicide

Sunday, December 20, 2009

ISTANBUL - Doğan News Agency

A lieutenant colonel with the Turkish navy who was being investigated for involvement in an alleged plan to assassinate admirals committed suicide Sunday.

Lt. Col. Ali Tatar shot himself at a navy residential compound in Istanbul’s Beykoz district after police came to arrest him again in a case investigating the alleged assassination plot.

Tatar was released from custody last Wednesday after his lawyers complained to Istanbul’s 11th branch of the Court for Serious Crimes, which is hearing the case.

Tatar was arrested as part of an investigation that involves documents that were seized in recent months and artillery that was found buried in an empty plot of land in Istanbul’s Poyrazköy.

The artillery that was found in Poyrazköy led prosecutors to documents that disclosed a coup plan that allegedly originated in the Turkish navy, media reports said. The documents were alleged to indicate a plan called “Kafes” (“Cage” in English), which outlines a plan to pressure the government by murdering non-Muslims in Turkey.

The documents were also alleged to include plans to detonate a bomb in Koç Museum. A bomb was found in Koç Museum before the documents were published in the media.

This investigation is also linked to the ongoing Ergenekon case, which is an alleged gang that is accused of aiming to topple the government by creating turmoil in society. Journalists, academics, retired high-level military officers and politicians have been included in the investigation.

Link