The New York Times gave coverage yesterday to the issue of press freedom in Turkey in light of the ongoing trial against journalists Ahmet Şık (use Turkish letters when spelling!) and Nedim Sener (click here for past post). Both are world renown journalists, and Sener, in 2010, won the International Press Institute's World Press Hero award.
Both men have been in prison for 309 days since their arrest in March on charges of being "terrorists" affiliated with the shadowy Ergenekon network. They are being tried by an Istanbul court along with eight journalists in the employ of Oda TV. The charges against the journalists stem from a file that police reportedly found on a computer at Oda TV's offices, but which defense lawyers and expert witnesses say were electronically planted using malware. The file tied the journalists to the shadowy Ergenekon network, alleged to constitute the "deep state" and be behind numerous attempts to overthrow the government. The court did task the Scientific and Technological Research Council (TUBITAK) with carrying out analysis on the computer disks at the center of the investigation. Another hearing is expected on Jan. 23.
Sener says his arrest is revenge for working to reveal the forces behind the assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007, which contrary to the charges against Sener, is thought to be the work of the deep state. Neither Sener nor Şık have anything in common with the ultra-nationalist ideology with which the Ergenekon network is associated -- both are devout leftists with a long history of writing and political activity.
At the time of Şık's arrest, the journalist was working on a book about the infiltration of members of the also shadowy Gulen religious network, which is headed by Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive cleric based in Pennsylvania who preaches a moderate version of Islam and whose ideas and influence have deeply penetrated Turkish state and society (for a foreign journalist's take on Gulen, see Financial Times reporter Delphine Strauss's take last April).
Gulen's intentions and influence in Turkish politics are widely debated, and he no doubt wields a great amount of power among elements of the ruling AKP government (for more, see past post). Indeed, tension between Gulenists and non-Gulenists in the AKP is speculated to run quite high and was on display last spring when Prime Minister Erdogan dismissed Zekeriya Oz, the prosecutor formerly responsible for the Ergenekon investigation, including the arrests of Şık and Sener; last fall when the AKP divided itself over a law aimed to reduce the penalty for fixing soccer matches; and in recent days, in coverage of the Uludere tragedy that has appeared in Zaman, which is owned by Gulen (for an example, see Aziz Istegun's analysis soon after the attack) and Gulen's declaration that the strike was coordinated by people intent to undermine "harmony."
The case has become a rallying cry in a country where, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) last April, at least 57 journalists are currently imprisoned (more than in China; the New York Times put the number at 97 in this report). The government has asserted that of these journalists are not in prison for anything they have written, but for being members of terrorist organizations, though the argument has failed to convince waves of protestors that have assembled since Şık and Sener's arrest, in addition to international critics (for the OSCE's report in April, click here).
Milliyet journalist Nedim Sener was acquitted Friday after being charged in relation to his book looking into the Dink murder and subsequent investigation. From Hurriyet Daily News:
The journalist faced trial for “making targets of civil servants,” “obtaining secret documents” and “exposing secret documents” in his book, “Hrant Dink Cinayeti ve İstihbarat Yalanları” (The Hrant Dink Murder and Intelligence Lies).
The court concluded that some of the plaintiff names were already known by the public before the book’s release and that the so-called secret documents in the book were accessible in the Dink assassination case before its publication.
“I do not approve of the case’s participants washing their dirty hands with this file,” said Şener, who attended the hearing, as did one of the plaintiffs, security officer Muhittin Zenit. Two of the case’s other plaintiffs, security officers Ali Fuat Yılmazer and Faruk Sarı, were represented by their lawyer at the hearing. The lawyer of plaintiff Ramazan Akyürek did not attend the hearing.
“Since my code name was uncovered, I have become a target of terror organizations. The change of my code name will not amend the situation,” Zenit said at the hearing.
Public Prosecutor Celal Kara repeated his request on the case, demanding a one- to three-year prison sentence for Şener on the count of “making targets of civil servants fighting terrorism.” He dropped the other charges since the “secret” documents in the book were no longer classified.
Şener’s lawyer Yücel Döşemeci said Zenit’s name and code name were mentioned in the indictment at the court dealing with the Hrant Dink assassination, and that Akyürek’s assignment was announced in the Official Gazette. “My client has not written on anything other than what is already known by the Istanbul court,” Döşemeci added.
For more in-depth coverage of the trial, see Bianet. Sener's trial helped bring Dink's murder back into the public conscience when former Intelligence Unit Chief Sabri Uzun's testimony in his trial verified information in Sener's book: some intelligence officers working surveillance on Dink's assassins had hidden/falsified information before Dink's murder (see April 29 post). For more background, see Feb. 11 and June 28, 2009 posts.
In other news on the Dink front, Dink family lawyer Hakan Karadag was found dead in his house on Friday, though initial reports from those close to him indicate that Karadag probbably committed suicide. Additionally, the trial of eight gendarmerie officers in Trabzon continued on Monday, and is expected to wrap up with the defense of the officers of July 28. Dink lawyers are still requesting that the Trabzon case be merged with the case in Istanbul, but to no avail.
Journalist Ahmet Şık has been detained in the Ergenekon investigation. Most ironically, Şık helped to expose the Ergenekon group as well as past coups against the government. Colleagues say it is highly unlikely he had anything to do with Ergenekon. More likely: He was working on a book on links between the Gulen Movement and the Turkish police . . . playing with fire indeed.
Turkish police Thursday targeted more journalists as part of a controversial probe into alleged coup plots, among them a prominent award-winning reporter, Anatolia news agency reported.
Police were searching the homes of 11 people in Istanbul and Ankara, following a similar raid targeting the media last month that sparked an outcry over press freedom in EU-hopeful Turkey and drew a U.S. rebuke, Agence France-Presse reported.
A prosecutor issued a detention order for the suspects, and journalist Ahmet Şık was detained after his home was searched for six hours, daily Hürriyet reported on its website. Nine others, mostly journalists, were also detained, The Associated Press reported.
Şık already faces prosecution for co-writing a critical book about the crackdown on the so-called Ergenekon network, broadcaster NTV reported.
Police had reportedly discovered a draft book by Şık that allegedly focuses on the religious groupings within the police force on the hard disk of one computer seized in last month's raid on Oda TV, several news websites said.
Also among the suspects was Nedim Şener, an investigative reporter for daily Milliyet and author who last year received the International Press Institute's "World Press Freedom Hero" award for a book that put blame on the security forces in the 2007 murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.
Şık (use Turkish letters when spelling!) and Sener have both been in-and-out of the news in recent years, and neither can be loved much by the government. Radikal journalist Şık's most recent investigation of links between the Turkish police and the Gulen movement, a most controversial subject in Turkey, has certainly not won the journalist any friends, and many have speculated in the Turkish media that this was the reason for his arrest.
The government has taken a lot of domestic and international heat for its treatment of the press, and many have long accused the government of using the Ergenekon investigation to silence its critics, including journalists.
The current situation is “ridiculous and tragic,” said journalist Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, noting that Ahmet Şık, one of the journalists whose homes were searched, had been instrumental in opening the Ergenekon case in the first place. The diaries in Şık’s “Coup Diaries” story for weekly Nokta in 2007, an article that led to the magazine being shut down, were among the key evidence that led to the investigation, Mavioğlu said.
It is a very “immoral accusation to place Ahmet Şık next to the ‘deep state’ and Ergenekon,” said Mavioğlu, a journalist with daily Radikal and co-author with Şık of a two-volume book about the Ergenekon case. Speaking to the Daily News while in front of Şık’s house as the search continued, he said he cannot compare the situation to anything but McCarthyism.
For more reaction against the arrests, including a strong denunciation by CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and CHP deputy leader in charge of human rights (who I interviewed last summer), click here. For more on Sener and the trumped up charges he faced last year for leaking state secrets (that could be found in public documents), click here.
Shame, shame, the whole way round . . .
UPDATE I (3/4) -- The Turkish Journalists Association (TGD) has issued a statement in regard to the press raids (thanks to Bianet): 60 journalists are currently detained in prison; more than 2,000 journalists are being prosecuted. Investigations have been launched against 4,000 journalists. Death threats against journalists and trials carrying hundreds of years of imprisonment and are continuing.
. . . .
The government seems to remain a passive spectator of the threats against press freedom and journalists by giving the impression that they are not disturbed by the situation that the source of the threats is not being removed. Crimes of thought are on the rise again in this country with journalists being taken into custody, arrested and tried.
Head of the Turkey-EU Joint Parliamentary Commission Helene Flautre has made the following statement on the arrests: "The professional orientation and research carried out by the journalists do not give the impression that they are affiliated with nationalists and supporters of a coup like the Ergenekon organization, I think."
UPDATE II (3/5) -- The New York Times' Sebnem Arsu has the story here.
PHOTO from Girgir Prime Minister Erdogan and religious leader Fethullah Gulen play a game of chess. Erdogan declares, "I have taken all of your pawns," to which Gulen retorts, "My child, you will force me to take your king."
Hakan Fidan is not a name soon to be forgotten nor is the recent row between the Gulen movement and the Erdogan government. Yet the row does not center on Fidan alone, but is rather a larger struggle for control sparked by the government's increasing uneasiness with the control Gulen wields over the judiciary and police -- or, what Vatan columnist Rusen Cakir (for English, thanks to Hurriyet Daily News, click here) points to as the "axis of courts with special authorities" by which the movement has been able to use police, prosecutors, and judges to target political opponents.
This week included announcements by some AKP officials that specially-authorized courts had gone too far, and included more aggressive talk of reforming Articles 250 and 251 in the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) by which these courts derive their power. Reform of these articles has been discussed for sometime, but never with as much focus. On Wednesday, Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek called for new arrangements to regulate the power of specially-authorized courts, though noting their past utility in dealing with state terrorism, namely Ergenekon. Yet, according to Cicek, while the courts are still needed, more focus needs to be paid to how they work in practice -- the implementation of Articles 250 and 251.
And, so what does this mean? Why is it significant? And why the shift in attitude? Let's start with the last question first. As prominent Islamic liberal Yeni Safak columnist Ali Bayramoglu explains in what is a fairly polemical interview with Cakir, the Hakan Fidan affair should be read as an intervention by Gulen -- a challenge to the AKP's authority. Tensions between Erdogan and Gulen have been on the rise given the amount of bad publicity the government has received thanks to the Ergenekon investigation, in particular the arrests of journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener last March. Following these arrests, Erdogan dismissed Ergenekon lead prosecutor Zekeriya Oz, who is known to be close to the movement and a mastermind of the Ergenekon probe (see past post).
As Radikal columnist Omer Sahin writes, Erdogan was content to use the Ergenekon prosecution to purge anti-government forces from the state, namely those perched in high places in the military and in the Turkish press. Gulen and Erdogan supported each other in this push from the AKP's 2002 entry into office up to just more than a year ago. Yet, as Bayramoglu observes (see his Wednesday column), now that the government has largely defeated resistance within the Turkish Armed Forces, things have changed.
This shift is further explained, as Bayramoglu continues, by the sheer frustration of Erdogan with the blatantly adversarial nature of the investigations. In August 2010, prosecutors went after police chief Hanefi Avci, who once sympathetic to Gulen, was arrested two days prior to a scheduled press conference at which Avci was going to present evidence as to how the movement had infiltrated the judiciary. The next year he was charged with membership in Ergenekon, as were Sik and Sener following similar attempts to bring light to the nexus between the Gulen organization and the police.
The cost of the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer investigations are simply no longer worth the effort, and now that prosecutions seem to be targeting figures with whom the AKP has friendly relations (i.e. Fidan) and potentially elements in the military that are now pro-AKP, Erdogan, wary of power that is not his own, is likely to come down hard on Gulen. He will do this by curtailing the judicial and police power the Gulen movement has established for itself, and the first target will likely be weakening the axis of power to which Cakir refers.
Yet still unexplained is the sheer tenacity of the Gulen organization toward the Erdogan government in this first serious battle. It is true that the past weeks have evinced tension building between the two groups (stirs over the match-fixing scandal and the Uludere strike, by which Gulen figures also tried to smear the MIT -- see past post), but the source of this latest conflict is still unsure. Perhaps it was an attempt to test Erdogan. Or, it might have been a way to express Gulen's opposition to the state's efforts to negotiate with the PKK, which could be restarted in coming months. A combination of the two? We are probably unlikely to ever know.
What we can say, though, is that what was witnessed last week was a serious test of Erdogan's authority. As Bayramoglu tells Cakir, the Gulen movement expressed a unique determination this time around: first, it mobilized its media outlets and network to smear the MIT (my question: was Uludere an opening act?); second, even when Erdogan expressed that he would standby Fidan, prosecutor Sadrettin Sarikaya not only continued in his pursuit of Fidan, but upped the ante by issuing arrest warrants for four high-ranking intelligence officials. It was only when Erdogan suspended top brass officials in the police that Gulen seemed to back down.
But the end is likely not over. Bayramoglu conjectures that Gulen may take to the sidelines, realizing that Erdogan is not likely to allow Gulen to continue such free-wielding control of the police and judiciary, though not all are so sure. For sure, Erdogan does not want to see a shakeup before he ascends to the presidency in 2014 and passes a new constitution that he likely still hopes will bolster his power once there but at the same time it is unclear if Gulen will be so comfortable with his rise -- and, just what the exiled leader might do about it. As Cakir writes, rather fatalistically I might add, such a clash will largely be spectacle for most Turks, third parties will not matter, and as TUSIAD head Umit Boyner expressed last week, will simply observe in horror.
UPDATE I (2/25) --Today's Zaman columnist Emre Uslu had a column on Friday which I nearly missed and in which the columnist postulates a conspiracy against the Gulen movement in which he implies the government is complicit. According to Uslu, the government has long been intent on curbing the powers of specially-authorized courts, and this latest episode rather was an operation against the Gulen movement. From Uslu:
If this insistent call for the amendment of Articles 250 and 251 of the anti-terror bill had been made in conjunction with the MİT crisis, I would believe that it had something to do with the MİT crisis. However, this call was made 10 days before the outbreak of the MİT crisis, in a report by the Sabah daily. The report said: “It is possible to associate every offense with terror charges, which could be further subjected to special investigation and trial procedures. To ensure the right to a fair trial, Articles 250, 251 and 252 of the Code on Criminal Procedure [CMK] on the workings of special courts and their procedures shall be revised.”
The insistent calls after the MİT crisis made reference to the same points. The meaning of this is obvious: The KCK investigations will be conducted more leniently, and KCK suspects will be released.
If you live in a country like Turkey; are aware that the KCK investigations will be ceased and the relevant parties to those protocols agreed to the release of KCK suspects; if you have read in a paper, known for its staunch support of the government before the outbreak of the MİT crisis, that Articles 250 and 251 will be revised; and all writers and columnists supportive of the KCK-AKP-MİT equation insistently called for the amendment of Articles 250, 251 and 252 of the CMK when the MİT crisis erupted; and if you call all of these a coincidence, you are surely naïve.
And for these reasons, I would say that the situation presented to us as an MİT crisis is in fact an operation jointly conducted by MİT, the pro-negotiation figures within the AKP and some pro-negotiation intellectuals. The prosecutor and the police department were framed in this operation; MİT planned and executed this operation. The signals from the AKP show that this operation will be completed, despite the decision by the Court of Appeals that the KCK is a terror organization. You will see that Articles 250, 251 and 252 of the CMK will be amended, the KCK suspects will be released and pro-Gülen movement bureaucrats will be removed from duty."
Sabah is a paper friendly to Prime Minister Erdogan, and according to Uslu, it is the government to blame for the excesses of the Ergenekon investigation, not the Gulen movement. Of course, this is highly unlikely given that it is the prime minister who ordered Oz's dismissal after the Sik/Sener arrest and the targeting of Avci, but the accusation is there all the same. Uslu also does a good job of further smearing the AKP by including a desire to release KCK/PKK suspects as part of the operation, thereby using the Kurdish issue to heighten tension.
While several figures, especially those in the government such as Yalcin Akdogan, have done their best to play down tensions, revelations of Uslu and others point to some sectors in the Gulen movement who are not so content to simply sit by sidelines.
The AKP has submitted a proposal to parliament to open a parliamentary investigation into the murder of Hrant Dink. Prosecutors involved in the Cage Action Plan, part of the larger Ergenekon investigation, have said that the Dink investigation is going nowhere and does not include all of the suspects involved. The Dink case emerged once more into the public conscience earlier this month when former Intelligence Unit Chief Sabri Uzun testified in the case of journalist Nedim Sener, who stands accused of " "identifying officials on anti-terrorist duties as targets." Uzun's testimony verified that intellgence officers involved in the case hid vital information about the murder before it happened and falsified reports. For more on Uzun's testimony in the context of the Sener case, see Bianet's report. In other Dink-related news, the 2nd Magistrate Criminal Court in Trabzon still refuses to merge the case of eight intelligence officers charged with negligence with the case currenty underway in Istanbul. For more on the Dink case, see past posts.
The lawyers of the family of murdered Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink filed a criminal complaint against Istanbul Deputy Governor Mustafa Güran because he refused to hand them a copy of attachments of the report regarding the murder. Dink, then editor-in-chief of the Armenian Agos newspaper, was shot in front of his office in Istanbul on 19 January 2007.
Joint attorney Fethiye Çetin said that they applied to the Istanbul Public Chief Prosecution for an investigation related to allegations of "misconduct in office," requesting a trial eventually be launched.
The coming hearing in the murder case will be held on 10 May. On the same day, the "Friends of Hrant" will come together once more at the Beşiktaş Pier in Istanbul to call for justice.
UPDATE II (5/11) -- The tenth hearing of the Hrant Dink trial that took place yesterday included testimony from a secret witness who confirmed that Ogun Samast did not act alone, but was accompanied by Yasin and Osman Hayal. For the story from Today's Zaman, click here.
UPDATE III (5/17) -- The Istanbul Public Prosecutor's Office has rejected Dink lawyer Fethiye Cetin's application for a special prosecutor to look into what Dink's attorneys assert was an unquestionably wide-reaching and organized assassination operation.
Özgür Mumcu (L), the son of slain journalist Uğur Mumcu; Rakel Dink (2nd from L), the widow of journalist Hrant Dink; Sezen Öz (2nd from R), the widow of prosecutor Doğan Öz; and Nukhet İpekçi (R), the daughter of the late journalist Abdi İpekçi, attended the 12th hearing of the Dink trial on Monday. PHOTO from Today's Zaman
The twelfth hearing of the Hrant Dink murder case is taking place in Istanbul this week, and the concealing of evidence continues. At the hearing, joint attorneys of the Dink family repeated requests that the security institutions indicated to have played a role in the murder be investigated. These include the National Intelligence Organization, the Istanbul Police Directorate, the Trabzon Police Directorate, the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command and the Intelligence Office Branch of the Police General Directorate. Past government investigations made at the behest of the family have cleared security services of any such role, but evidence that might indicate otherwise remains unavailable to prosecutors, classified as "state secrets" critical to national security. The court rejected requests that statements be taken from Head of Intelligence Department Ramazan Akyurek and Muhettin Zenit.
The Dink lawyers also requested that invetigations be made of persons who had concealed evidence, including just how footage from the AK Bank security camera documenting activity on the street where Dink was shot came to be deleted. Also requested was an investigation into a group that legally targeted Dink and might well have incited his murder. Members of this group have tried to disrupt past hearings, as well as harassed Dink's attorneys. Also significant were requests that the Dink investigation be looked into as possibly part of the Cage Plan (part of the Ergenekon investigation), which was allegedly devised by the Naval Forces Command and laid out plans to create disorder by assassinating members of Turkish minority groups.
This hearing had many of the same problems as previous hearings, including trouble attaining testimony from a secret witness to the murder. "Secret Witness #1" watched two men shoot Dink, one from in front (Ogun Samast) and one from behind (Yasin Hayal). The same witness saw Yasin's brother, Osman Hayal, at the murder scene. Osman is among twenty defendants, but is not being detained.
Rakel Dink, Hrant's widow, was joined by relatives of other political murder victims whose cases remain unsolved. Filiz Ali, daughter of prominent author Sabahattin Ali, who was assassinated in 1948, read out a joint press statement. It has been translated by Bianet. (I am not sure if the translation is of the entire statement, or simply contains excerpts. I suspect it is the latter, and so have used ellipses between what Bianet quotes.)
Most of our cases have already been closed since they reached the statute of limitation. As far as the Dink case is concerned, it is still in the process of being concealed. The crimes have not yet fallen under their statute of limitation.
. . . .
The state has still got the possibility to dissociate itself from the infiltrated and destructive focus in order to reveal the truth. Even with a murder as well concealed as this one, we still have the opportunity not to hand down this contempt of the state to the generations coming behind us, these affiliated crimes constituted after the murder.
. . . .
We are not here based on feelings of hatred, anger and revenge. We are here because of our responsibilities as citizens and because of our never-ending demand for justice. We are part of an ever growing family living in a country where people are getting killed constantly. We do not want the number of our family to increase any further. We hold all state institutions responsible for revealing the organizations behind the murders of our relatives. They will all remain guilty in our eyes until the truth will have been revealed. And they will convey the thought that they can easily commit this kind of crime any time.
. . . .
We came here to make our voices heard to the ones carrying the official capacity, addressing the ones in responsible positions. We are not addressing the people in despair who are sensitive about this issue. We came here to be together with Rakel Dink and our friends Arat, Delal and Sera. We are interveners in this trial as well and today we will follow up that the list of demands submitted by the lawyers will be taken into account by the court.
. . . .
We did not come here to have the pain and sorrow of our families depicted in the press but to pass on our demand for justice.
The next hearing is set for May 10.
UPDATE I (2/12) -- 19 representatives of the "Deep Families" are meeting with members of parliament to discuss a petition to establish a parliamentary investigate commission to look into their relatives' unsolved murders. Also, a bit of disturbing news: the website of Agos newspaper, of which Dink was editor-in-chief from its found in 1996 to his murder in 2007, was hacked by someone who posted a picture of Samast in praise of Dink's assassination. The hacker also made threats against supporters of the paper. Agos has long been subject to intimidation and illegal harassment, which lawyer for the paper and the Dink family, Fethiye Cetin, claims have and are not receiving the attention by the judiciary and police they deserve.
UPDATE II (2/12) -- The Greater Istanbul Municipal Assembly has rejected a proposal to officially change "Ergenekon Street" in Sisli to "Hrant Dink Street." (For history, see Jan. 23 post). The proposal was submitted by Ozgen Nama from the CHP, and had the support of most other (if not all) CHP representatives. However, a majority of the seats in the assembly are controlled by the AKP, and these representatives voted down the proposal. The name of "Ergenekon Street" will stay as it is. Today's Zaman's Orhan Kemal Cengiz has a column condeming the AKP assembly members for their vote. Why did these AKP assembly members, most of whom are undoubtedly supportive of the Ergenekon investigation, vote against the CHP proposal?
UPDATE III (2/20) -- Vatan journalist Kemal Goktas is facing five eyars in prison following the publication of an investigative book about Dink's assassination, including allegtions against Akyurek, who initiated the criminal charges against Goktas. At a hearing on Tuesday, Goktas' lawyer,Filiz Aydin, argued the case was not filed properly, exceeding a statute limiting the time frame in which charges may be brought. Goktas will have another hearing on May 11, at which time judges should rule on the merits of Aydin's argument. Goktas is on trial for publishing a classified document revealing information about Hayal passed between the Trabzon Police Directorate and the Istanbul Intelligence Branch Directorate.
In another case, Milliyet journalist Nedim Sener is facing at least 20 years in prison for charges stemming from his own investigative book into the murder. Samast, a juvenile at the time he was involved in the Dink assassination, faces a sentence of 18-24 years, though there are indications it might be less. Samast was recently married to a young woman from Trabzon at the F-type prison in Kocaeli where he is awaiting trial. Last summer, Samast threatened members of the Dink family, telling them to "wait five years." See this statement from PEN in regard to Sener.
Perhaps no issue is more revealing of the struggle for liberal democracy in Turkey than the assassination of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and the trial of members of a likely state-linked organization that gunned him down on Jan. 19, 2007.
Almost five years to the date of what was a very calculated murder, the Istanbul court hearing the case of 19 defendants accused of participating in the conspiracy to slay Dink ruled on Jan. 17 that there was indeed no organization, no conspiracy. Instead, the court portrayed the assassination as a random act of violence carried out by two ultra-nationalist youths acting alone. The court did not even touch the issue of links between state officials and the organization that have been revealed in the five years following the assassination. For more on the verdict from Reporters Without Borders, click here.
Not a Random Act of Violence
Dink presaged his murder, telling friends before his murder "that his heart was a 'timid pigeon' waiting for bad things to happen (see June 26, 2008 post). Dink had begun receiving threats from ultra-nationalists in 2004 following an article he wrote for the Turkish Armenian paper Agos, over which he presided as editor. In the article, Dink claimed that Sabiha Gokcen, Ataturk's much beloved adopted daughter, was an Armenian orphan. The article earned him the scorn of then Chief of General Staff Yasar Buyukanit, who denounced the article as a crime against national unity.
Before 2006, Dink had been subject to numerous court cases because of his questioning of an ethno-national conception of Turkish identity and his writing on the 1915 massacre of tens of thousands of Armenians. Throughout his work, Dink tried to bridge divides between Turks, Armenians, and Turkish Armenians, challenging both Turkish and Armenian identity, polarizing approaches to the genocide issue, and the general recalcitrance of the two sides. He did this as only a Turkish Armenian could, and his thinking challenged fellow Turkish citizens and ethnic Armenians alike. Most of all, Dink represented the expression of difference -- not just being different, but expressing it, and doing so always as an individual guided by free thought and its commensurate dignities. His writing, and that he attracted so many fans, Turkish and Armenians, is a testament to where Turkey has come since its founding and the longing for liberalism shared by so many of its citizens.
Yet not all were so content with Dink's ideas, his constant challenging of Turkish state and society. In 2004, Dink began receiving numerous death threats. The gravity of their danger to Dink's life prompted the deputy director of security in Istanbul to order police in Bakirkoy, where he lived, and Sisli, where he worked at Agos, to make provide for his protection.
In February 2006, intelligence of the murder conspiracy to which he would soon fall victim made their way from police in Trabzon to Istanbul. The memo from security officials in Trabzon stated, and quite simply, that Yasin Hayal, a known ultra-nationalist in the Black Sea province, was going to kill Dink. Less than one year later, Hayal, acting alongside 17-year-old gunman Ogun Samast, gunned down Dink outside Agos's offices.
Yet it seems the memo, ranked "low priority" by Trabzon police chief Ramazan Akyurek, was not paid much attention, if any, by Istanbul police, and little action was taken by either authority nor the gendarme in Trabzon, who were also watching the conspirators, to halt the assassination. Akyurek has since been promoted to head the Board of Inspectors in the General Directorate for Security. Dink knew his death was coming, and so did members of the Istanbul and Trabzon police, as well as the Trabzon gendarme. Meanwhile, Nedim Sener, one of the journalists who took the Dink investigation seriously and documented what the police knew before the murder, has been jailed on charges of being linked to the Ergenekon terrorist organization.
To offer further damning evidence of the neglect -- and quite possibly, involvement -- of elements within the Turkish security forces, one of Dink's assassins, young trigger-man Ogun Samast, posed with police officers in Samsun behind a Turkish flag just two days after the murder. While government officials have complimented themselves on apprehending Samast and other conspirators soon after the murder, adequate explanations for this photograph and the events before the murder have yet to come to the forefront, and according to many of Dink's supporters, have indeed been subject to a massive cover-up in which the state is complicit.
Where Does the Government Fit In?
Indeed, the more than four-year trial of Dink's conspirators has been hindered from the beginning due to an inability, and perhaps unwillingness, to procure evidence from state security offices, as well as government agencies such as the Telecommunications Board (TIB), which only last December turned over evidence documenting phone conversations and text message exchanges between the conspirators. TIB, citing a 2007 provision by the Justice Ministry related to the use of phone records in criminal investigations, had refused to turn over evidence for more than four years following the murder. Video footage of the street on which Dink was shot was erased from cameras soon after the incident, another fact that has led to accusations against the police ranging from neglect to complicity.
As Hurriyet columnist Sedat Ergin points out, efforts, or lack thereof, to hold state officials to account for their role in the murder have given way to serious misgivings on the part of the Turkish public. In 2008, and administrative court acquitted police of neglect while failing to really delve into the events in the days and months before the murder, and in 2009, another effort to investigate the role of security officials was blocked by the Interior Ministry, which at the time and just as today, was controlled by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The gendarme is the only state organ wherein an official has been found responsible for neglecting to prevent Dink's murder.
Though AKP government officials are always careful to point to the independence and integrity of judicial processes, the fact that the government now has firmer control of the judiciary has caused many critics, both of the government and the investigation into Dink's murder, to point their finger at the government. When the Dink investigation started in 2007, the government did not have the control over judicial organs, such as the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), that it currently wields. (Click here for a bit of insight as to how the AKP has gained more control through amending the constitution to give its elected representatives the ability to appoint members to this body and Turkey's high courts. See also this past post.) The HSYK is currently investigating the presiding judge in the case, Rustem Eryilmaz, as well as prosecutor Hikmet Usta, though on grounds that the two inappropriately spoke out publicly after the verdict rather than that they mishandled the case.
More cogent criticism centers on the government's relation to the police. As Milliyet columnist Metin Munir indicates (luckily, Hurriyet Daily News has translated this column into English, and so it can be read here), the real blame should be placed on the government's failure to prevent the police from hindering the investigation. According to Munir,
Nobody is blaming the government for not interfering with the judiciary; its guilt is in not intervening with the police, with the intelligence organization and in not demonstrating the necessary attention to bring out the truth. In Turkey, judges and prosecutors are not as strong and independent as, for example, in the United States, the United Kingdom or Italy.
While in the West the prosecutor commands the police, in Turkey the police command the prosecutor. This is the truth in practical terms, especially in politically sensitive cases.
The judges are also bound to prosecute whatever is in the indictments presented to them. The government does not command the courts and prosecutors. But it does command the security forces. For this reason, it has its share of responsibility in the verdict the court has ruled. It could have put pressure on the police to provide that a more comprehensive and a stronger file be handed over to the prosecutor. It did not.
The government is still boasting about catching the murderer in 32 hours. This is not a matter to be proud of; it a matter to be ashamed of. Who was going to kill Dink and when it was going to happen were known by security forces days before the murder. If the incident was stopped at that time and the murder was prevented, then yes, it could have been a matter of which to boast. But it is not hugely ingenious to identify the assassin and then catch the killer.
This is what the government has to explain: Why isn’t the entire organization, the one for which the killer acted as a hit man, foiled and punished even if it is five years that have passed since the murder? What is the reason for the systematic reluctance on this matter?
Mustafa Akyol, generally more sympathetic of the AKP, explains that this reluctance might be driven by the fact that many of the bureaucrats and police who neglected to properly investigate Dink's murder (and, my words, not his, but perhaps even cover up critical aspects of the killing) are now aligned with the AKP and have been appointed to key positions within the government. These include not only Akyurek, but also former Istanbul police chief Celalettin Cerrah, headed the Istanbul police at the time of Dink's murder. The government has never allowed Cerrah to be questioned in relation to the case, and in 2009, he was appointed a provincial governorship in Osmaniye. Similarly, the failure of the AKP to put pressure on TIB and the obstructive role of the Interior Ministry throughout the investigation give great cause for concern.
A Chance for Redemption?
Soon after the verdict, Dink family lawyer Fethiye Cetin declared that the effort to unveil the truth behind Dink's murder had only just begun, and it is quite possible this is the case. An indignant Cetin has already appealed to the Supreme Court, which will likely render a decision in one year's time. Hikmet Usta, the Istanbul prosecutor charged with the case, has also made an appeal, joining Cetin in denouncing the court's inability to find evidence that the crime was the premeditated work of a criminal organization as a complete oversight of the facts presented.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has found Turkey to have violated numerous human rights both before and after the assassination of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Dink was assassinated in January 2007 and the investigation that has followed has been tainted by a series of cover-ups and serious judicial mishandling. (For background, click here).
The Court found Turkey to have failed to protect Dink's right to life and freedom of expression, as well as to have fallen short of its obligations to provide for an effective investigation of his murder. In the weeks, months, and years after Dink's murder, numerous high-ranking state security officials and police have been implicated as either falling far short of their duties to protect Dink, at best, and at worst, actively conspiring with Dink's murderers.
During its defense at the ECHR, Turkey argued that Dink did not fear for his life or else would have asked for private police protection. A recent book by journalist Nedim Sener, who this year escaped criminal charges brought against him in relation to a book he published revealing details of the Dink murder and subsequent cover-up, alleges that security officials warned Dink of threats to his life before the assassination. Security officials have denied such knowledge.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has said it will not appeal the court's decision. It is yet to be seen whether Turkey will provide for a remedy to its previous failure to effectively investigate Dink's assassination.
Detentions of 10 military officers in conjunction with the Ergenekon investigation resulted in Gen. İlker Başbuğ, Chief of Turkey's General Staff, calling a meeting Wednesday that included the heads of each branch of Turkey's armed services. After the meeting, Başbuğ met with Prime Minister Erdoğan. The officers were arrested with 20 other individuals amidst doubt that the investigation into "deep state" forces -- long hidden away from public scrutiny -- would go much further. From Emrullah Uslu at EDM:
It appears that the TSK was expecting the operation. The Ankara Central Command reportedly told the security units of the military compounds where active and retired generals live not to allow police and prosecutors to enter the compounds, even with a search warrant, without the command's permission (Taraf, January 9).
As usual, the Ergenekon investigation has once again divided Turkish intellectuals into two camps. On the one hand, Kemalists and neo-nationalist intellectuals argue that it is politically motivated. They maintain that it is no coincidence that the government opposition is the target of the investigation. Some of the pro-Ergenekon intellectuals went so far as to call the arrests of such well-known people “state terror” (Hurriyet, January 8). Chairman of the Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) Deniz Baykal harshly criticized the investigation, claiming that it was an attempt to change the Turkish state regime. Baykal even saw parallels to the developments during the preparatory stages of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (Aksam, January 8).
On the other hand, some intellectuals say that the Ergenekon investigation is a well-organized investigation and a golden opportunity to punish those who plot against the civilian government (Sabah, Yeni Safak, January 9).
The police reportedly have video tapes of meetings where military plots against the AKP government were discussed (Taraf, December 19). Although these reports need confirmation; it is no secret that Tuncer Kilinc was the first person to advocate that Turkey leave the U.S. and EU camp and form a new pact with Russia and Iran (see EDM, December 2). The Ergenekon network believes that a military coup is the only way to control the government (Sabah January 9).
The recent arrests took place at a time when people had started asking whether the prosecutors could really go any deeper. The recent wave of arrests has shown just how serious the prosecutors are about investigating the Ergenekon network. The wave of arrests has triggered deep concern within the TSK leadership. After the long meeting with other commanders, it appears that Basbug wants to intervene in the due process of the Ergenekon investigation and trial. It will not be the first time that he has actively taken the side of Ergenekon suspects. The day of his appointment as Chief of the General Staff he sent a general to visit retired Generals Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur at the prison where they were being held awaiting trial.
The investigation known into Ergenekon is impenetrable for even the most expert in Turkish politics, and media coverage and information released by the government and police is heavily influenced by partisan politics. Both the New York Times and the Financial Times ran brief stories on the recent arrests. For a feel as to just how entangled the politics of Ergenekon are in terms of the government's relationship with the military, read this analysis by Bill Clark, a professor at King's College. The controversies surrounding Dağlica and Aktütün are both documented in this blog, as is the evolving relationship between AKP and the General Staff since the closure case.
Also, perhaps useful, though of course not free from bias, is a recent account by TDZ documenting the investigation from its beginnings last January.
UPDATE 1/10 -- A weapons cache was found in the home of İbrahim Şahin, a former head of the National Police Department’s Special Operations Unit and one of the total of 36 arrested on Wednesday. From TDZ:
The operation started when Şahin, whose phone conversations had been tapped by police for at least two months, recently gave the order to finalize plans to assassinate Armenian community members in the city of Sivas. Twelve others were detained in Sivas during Wednesday’s operation. Police also found evidence that the group was plotting to kill prominent figures including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Former Chief of General Staff Yaşar Büyükanıt, Police Department Intelligence Unit Chief Ramazan Akyürek, journalist Fehmi Koru, author Orhan Pamuk and some politicians, including members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP).
The fields brought to mind a large number of depots of NATO arms found buried during an investigation launched by Italian prosecutor Felice Casson, who discovered the existence of Operation Gladio, a NATO stay-behind paramilitary force left over from the Cold War. In a panel discussion he participated in in İstanbul last April, Casson said these weapons were found buried in cemeteries, under churches and even in caves. Ergenekon is also thought to be a remnant from the original Turkish Gladio, which was founded against a possible Soviet invasion during the Cold War, but later turned into an organization trying to cut off Turkey's ties with the West. The retired generals arrested in the Ergenekon investigation seem to have an anti-European Union and anti-NATO stance favoring a closer relationship between Turkey and Russia and Eurasian nations.
The article further speculates that the uncovered cache might be linked to violence in the Gölbaşı district of Ankara following the infamous Susurluk incident, the most significant happening since the 1980 coup to raise serious question about the existence of Turkey's deep state.
Also, see Gareth Jenkins' quote in the Guardian yesterday:
Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based expert on Turkish security affairs, said: "The army will have issued a stern warning to the government to back off and that this has to be the last of such arrests. Most of those arrested on Wednesday were not involved in the Ergenekon plot.
"It was just a political move, and has destroyed any hope that the probe will find the real culprits. The question is what happens next. What we are going to see is a power struggle between two fundamentally undemocratic forces using their influence in the judicial system."
In relation to his coverage of the Ergenekon investigation, Radikal journalist Ismail Saymaz faces 54 years in prison. From Bianet:
A total of six trials have been filed against Radikal newspaper reporter İsmail Saymaz on the grounds of his news about the interrogations of İlhan Cihaner, detained Chief Public Prosecutor of Erzincan (north-eastern Anatolia), and İbrahim Şahin, former Deputy Head of the Special Operations Department.
Both Cihaner and Şahin are part of the Eregekon investigation carried out in Erzurum. The clandestine ultra-national Ergenekon organisation, nested within the stated and the military, allegedly planned to create chaos in the country with murders and attacks and to overthrow the government.
The cases were opened on 8, 13, 15, 16 and 21 April at the 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance in Bakırköy, Istanbul. Journalist Saymaz is facing imprisonment of up to 54 years under charges of "attempting to influence a fair trial" and "violating the secrecy of an investigation" according to articles 285 and 288 respectively of the Turkish Criminal Code (TCK).
Saymaz will appear at court on 23 June related to the allegations based on the article entitled "What Prosecutor Cihaner was asked" published in Radikal newspaper on 18 February 2010. On 15 July, he will be at court for his news item "Assassination with a tick, coup of the tea vendors" from 12 February 2010; he is summoned to court for 21 July by reason of his articles "Cihaner: I do not know Çiçek, I did not see him - Ciçek: I do not know anybody in Erzincan" and "I do not know Çiçek, that is your set up" published on 20 February. For his article "Did you meet Dursun Çiçek?" from 22 February Saymaz will have to appear at court on 20 September.
Another reason for the prosecution of Saymaz was the article entitled "The most reckless state of Ergenekon is in Erzincan" related to the defence of former İliç Public Prosecutor Bayram Bozkurt which was sent to the Ministry of Justice. Bozkurt is tried at the Erzincan High Criminal Court under allegations of "misconduct in office".
Prosecutors Remzi Yaşar Kızılhan and Pircan Barut Emre prepared the indictments that make Saymaz a defendant. The journalist told bianet that another trial has been launched against him based on his article entitled "Is Berk the leader of the organization?" published on 1 March.
Saymaz, author of the book "The postmodern Jihad", concerned with the Erzurum-Erzincan connections of the Ergenekon investigation, received a letter from the Ministry of Justice about three weeks ago, in which he was asked to reveal his source.
If the government and the prosecutors involved in the Ergenekon investigation want to allay fears about the Ergenekon investigation and open up the process, going after journalists is certainly not the way to do it. See also the case of Milliyet journalist Nedim Sener, who is also on trial for his coverage of the Hrant Dink investigation.
PHOTO from Radikal Thousands of protestors organized this Saturday to mark the one-year anniversary of the detention of journalists Nedim Sener and Ahmet Şık. Both men have been in prison since March of last year on what appear to be trumped up terrorism charges (see past post), and are by no means alone. They are joined by more than 100 other journalists who are imprisoned on a variety of charges ranging from membership in a terrorist organization to spreading propaganda on behalf one. The overwhelming majority of these cases are against Kurdish nationalist journalists or journalists whom prosecutors have attempted to link to Ergenekon, the shadowy deep-state network thought to be continually plotting to overthrow the government.
Rather than repeat what I have written in past posts on the issue (click here), I would simply like to draw attention to a recent statement released by Reporters Without Borders calling for Turkey to live true to its internationally articulated position that freedom of expression is paramount in a democratic society. These remarks came in response to the recent effort in France to make it illegal to deny the 1915 crimes committed against Armenians as genocide.
In response to both the French National Assembly and Senate's passing of the law, Turkish diplomats joined press freedom advocates and liberals throughout Europe and the world to denounce the law as an unjust and dangerous restriction on the freedom of expression. For the most part taking the moral high ground, French liberals and Turkish diplomats won a major victory last week when the French Constitutional Council ruled that the law violated French constitutional provisions protecting freedom of expression. From RSF:
“We are pleased that freedom of expression has not been sacrificed to a cause, no matter how just the cause may be,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The dangerous breach opened by this law has been closed for the time being but it has already damaged the credibility of the democratic values defended by France and those who defend human rights and the Armenian cause in Turkey.
“We urge France’s politicians to renounce any intention of drafting an amended version of this law. Any thought of using legislation to establish an official history of past events should be ruled out for good after this precedent.
“The Turkish authorities must now face their responsibilities. In the name of free speech, they have for weeks been condemning the French parliament’s meddling in history. Now they must prove that their comments were not just tailored to the circumstances by allowing Turkish citizens to mention the Armenian genocide without fear of being prosecuted.
“Consistency requires that, at the very least, they immediately decriminalize two offences, insulting the Turkish nation (article 301 of the criminal code) and insulting the memory of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Law 5816 of 25 July1951).
“This decision does not exempt Turkey from finally confronting its own history; quite the contrary. Now that Ankara no longer has the excuse of ‘foreign meddling,’ it must remove the straightjacket of official history from the Turkish republic, open a debate about the fate of Turkey’s minorities and end the growing criminalization of journalistic activities.”
Yet the aforementioned restrictions remain, in addition to a host of other offenses that--vaguely interpreted--can be wielded against journalists, including, inter alia, accusing journalists of influencing judicial processes, discouraging citizens from military service, and inciting hated among the citizenry.
While these laws still exist on the books, most concerning, of course, is the use of anti-terrorism laws against journalists, a practice that has picked up under the helm of Ergenekon and KCK prosecutors and within the past three years. Using anti-terrorism laws against journalists is common practice in authoritarian countries ranging from Ethiopia to Venezuela, but it is Turkey who now rivals Iran and China in having the highest number of jailed journalists in any country in the world.
For the past report by the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commission Thomas Hammarberg (April 2011), click here. Since the reporting dates, both the KCK and Ergenekon investigations have continued, raising the number of jailed journalists even higher. In December, at least 29 journalists were detained in a wave of operations against the KCK. Prosecutors accused the journalists of relaying PKK messages to Kurdish nationalist protestors. Numerous other arrests, sometimes on a mass scale, took place throughout 2011.
For a detailed accounting, see Bianet's recently released 2011 Media Monitoring Report, released just last week. I am adding a link to it in the "Key Documents" column on the right-hand sidebar. Bianet reports there are over 104 journalists in prison, up from 30 at the end of 2010.
According to AKP officials, this number is inflated since these people merely happen to work as journalists. They are not in prison for their writing or for being journalists, but because they are members of terrorist organizations who happen to be journalists. Attempts to portray the issue in terms of press freedom are therefore insincere, and according to some, part of an international smear campaign devised by -- guess who? -- terrorist aligned with the ultra-nationalist deep state.
[For those based in Washington, the Center for International Media Assistance, an initiative of the National Endowment for Democracy, will be holding an event on press freedom in Turkey on Tuesday, March 13, at 2 p.m. The event is entitled, "The Big Chill: Press Freedom in Turkey," and you can RSVP here.]
The leader of the IP, Dogu Perincek, now an Ergenekon suspect, is a former Maoist, who advocates “Eurasianism” as opposed to Turkish membership in the EU and NATO. Despite having only marginal public support, he has become an important figure dominating public debates in recent years.
In one of his interviews Tuncay Guney claims that Dogu Perincek was the author of Ergenekon’s program. Guney says that the purpose of the Ergenekon program was to promote Turkey membership in the Shanghai Five (Bugun, September 11). The Shanghai Five, which consists of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan, emerged from demilitarization talks that the four former Soviet republics held with China in 1996 to counter U.S influence in Asia (Newsweek Korea, May 4, 2001).
Zekeriya Ozturk, another Ergenekon suspect who once worked for the IP’s TV network, also accused Perincek of being an agent working for the Russian and Chinese intelligence services; but Perincek denied the allegations (Radikal, March 30). Perincek’s close associate Adnan Akfirat, another Ergenekon suspect, is the chairman of the Turkish-Chinese business association (www.chinaembassy.org.tr, June 6, 2006). It should also be noted that Perincek was an early proponent of Turkish-China-Russia relations. His daughter is a journalist working for Chinese Public Radio’s Turkish Program (Yeni Safak, April 26); and his son, Mehmet Bora Perincek, is a researcher in Moscow and is establishing connections between the Turkish Worker’s Party and the Russian Eurasia party. In a meeting between the two parties it was declared:
The United States has always tried to beleaguer our particularly continental civilizations. Today this process is being continued under the patronage of American secret centers [promoting] the concept of pan-Turkism in Turkey and national chauvinism in Russia toward the Turkic nations. “The Eurasia” and “The Worker’s Party” representatives came to an understanding about the concerted consultations, conferences, and colloquiums in the sphere of Russian-Turkish geopolitical rapprochement. “The Worker’s Party” leadership has been interested in the unique means of solving interethnic conflicts developed by the experts for the Center of Geopolitical Examinations and “The Eurasia” party on the basis of the concept of “nations’ rights.” They proposed that “The Eurasia” take part in a conference of groups working on the solution of the Turkish-Greek conflict in Cyprus on the grounds of the geopolitical Eurasian methodology. “The Worker’s Party” responded willingly to the proposal of taking part in organizing the international Eurasian movement. These exciting ideas have been lined up by its intellectuals for a long time. We are also willing to begin a number of concerted projects in the sphere of TV broadcasting, publishing activities, [and] economic collaboration (http://www.evrazia.org, November 11, 2003).
As the meeting notes show, the Worker’s Party suddenly started advocating Turkish nationalist policies. Veli Kucuk, a retired general and a leading Ergenekon suspect, brought the younger Perincek, who participated in the 2003 meeting in Russia, together with Levent Temiz, another Ergenekon suspect, who was then the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)’s youth leader. In 2003 the two formed a youth alliance between the Maoists and Turkish Nationalists, who were once fiercely opposed to each other (Zaman, January 15, 2004).
As was planned at the meeting in Moscow, the Workers’ Party issued an invitation to Alexander Dugin to attend the International Eurasia conference in Ankara. Dugin, the leader of the Eurasian movement, was introduced as an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Former Turkish President Suleyman Demirel; former Turkish Cypriot President Rauf Denktas; the Iranian and Chinese ambassadors; former chairman of the National Security Council General Tuncer Kilinc, Ret.; former commander of the Gendarmes Sener Eruygur, now an Ergenekon suspect; and the leaders of the Workers Party attended the conference to discuss Turkey’s role in Eurasia (Ulusal Kanal, December 6, 2004).
In a live TV broadcast, Guney further accused Dogu Perincek as playing a vital role in bringing Turkey closer to Russia and China. Guney stated, “Dogu Perincek should reveal why Putin’s people provided economic and ideological support to the Eurasia Conference” (Taraf, November 2).
Given Tuncay Guney’s affiliation with the MIT, it seems very likely that the intelligence service used Guney to penetrate the Ergenekon network in order to detect activities aimed at shifting Turkey’s direction from the West to Eurasia.
Public Prosecutor Suleyman Aydin has called for an investigation into allegations of a 2004 plot to topple Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), according to a report in the Islamist daily Zaman (June 4).
In March 2007 the weekly news magazine Nokta published what it claimed were extracts from a diary by Admiral Ozden Ornek, the commander of the Turkish navy from 2003 to 2005. The diary appeared to detail the unsuccessful attempts by Ornek in 2004 to persuade other members of the Turkish high command to stage a coup, codenamed “Blonde Girl,” against the AKP, which had first come to power in the November 2002 general election. The writer of the diary clearly regarded the AKP as having a long-term radical Islamist agenda and severely criticized General Hilmi Ozkok, who served as chief of the Turkish General Staff (TGS) from 2002 to 2006, for not countering the perceived threat posed by the government to the principle of secularism enshrined in the Turkish constitution. The diaries also alleged that after the writer’s failure to secure enough support for “Blonde Girl,” the then Gendarmerie Commander Sener Eruygur came up with a coup plan of his own, codenamed “Moonlight” (Nokta, March 29-April 4, 2007).
The allegations were vigorously refuted by Ornek, who not only denied that he was the author of the diary published in Nokta but sued the magazine’s editor, Alper Gormus, for “insult and defamation.”
On April 5, 2007, as Turkey was swept by a series of mass public protests against the AKP’s plans to appoint one of its leading members to the presidency, Nokta published an article implying that the demonstrations were being coordinated by the TGS. The military prosecutor responded by issuing a search warrant for the Nokta offices in Istanbul. Over a period of three days, from April 13 to 15, 2007, all of the magazine’s archives and computer disks were examined and copied. On April 21, 2007, Gormus announced that Ayhan Durgun, the owner of Nokta, had decided to stop publishing the magazine. It has remained closed ever since.
On April 11 Gormus was acquitted by an Istanbul court of insulting and defaming Ornek, but the judge refused to allow the defense to present a report that they claimed had been prepared by the police. They claimed that this report would prove that the documents on which they had based the diary extracts published in March 2007 had been written on Ornek’s computer. The judge also dismissed as irrelevant an application to order a judicial investigation into whether members of the Turkish high command had been planning to stage a coup in 2004. “Attempting to stage a coup is a crime,” protested Gormus. “I want the right to prove my claim” (NTV, Radikal, April 12). But he now appears skeptical about whether Aydin will succeed in taking the case to the Turkish Supreme Court of Appeals (Today’s Zaman, June 5).
The allegations have been a major embarrassment to the TGS and a gift to its Islamist opponents, who have used the diary extracts to support their contention that the military as an institution is inherently anti-democratic and perpetually plotting to undermine the civilian administration and seize power
The European Parliament voted to approve its resolution on Turkey's progress toward accession this week. The resolution follows up on the annual progress report the European Commission issued in November, which documents how far Turkey has come over the past year in meeting EU requirements for membership (the 36 negotiating chapters of what is known as the EU acquis communitaire.
The resolution passed Wednesday is not an extraordinary measure, but an action taken by the Parliament every year that allows European MPs to comment on the progress report. The Parliament is routinely more stark in its criticisms than the progress report, and of course, is much more influenced by European politics -- in this case, European opposition to Turkish membership in some countries -- than the progress reports issued by the Commission.
The resolution this year was particularly strong, drawing attention to the recent arrests of journalists Ahmet Şık and Nedim Sener, whose case have drawn considerable international controversy and domestic criticism. The Parliament also noted concern with long arrest periods, an issue that has also attracted more attention in the Turkish press and among human rights groups. Parliamentarians also requested that Turkey lower its current 10% threshold, something the AKP has been reluctant to do since it would jeopardize the ruling party's ability to attain a parliamentary majority and thus more easily pass a new constitution. The whole resolution can be read here.
Prime Minister Erdogan responded strongly, arguing today that if Europeans do not want Turkey in the EU, they should just be honest about it. Instead of addressing the criticisms head-on and noting shortcomings on Turkey's part, the prime minister instead leveled his criticisms at European parliamentarians opposing Turkish membership. The deflection is a not at all a new tactic by the AKP, but the players have changed a bit.
Contrary to the nationalist era of CHP when the party was led by staunch Kemalist stalwart Deniz Baykal, Kemal Kilicdaroglu's CHP -- "the new CHP" as party officials are calling it -- has taken a more pro-European posture. CHP's office in Brussels, a development of the past two years, issued a statement criticizing the AKP for Turkey's stalled accession process and urging the government to take needed reforms. From Hurriyet Daily News:
“Despite the fact that the European Parliament and other EU institutions cannot analyze Turkey’s situation correctly, taking into consideration the whole of events and the cause-effect relationship, the scene painted by Brussels on the situation today is saddening,” Kader Sevinç, the Brussels representative of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in an interview.
Sevinç sent a written note to CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu briefing him about the content of the report.
“Unfortunately, the CHP’s reservations about the government-led constitutional amendments proved right: Those responsible for the Sept. 12 [1980] military coup cannot be tried, judge and prosecutor appointments have been politicized, authoritarian tendencies have grown stronger, pressure on the media has increased, freedoms are being limited and social polarization is deepening,” Sevinç told the Daily News.
“We see in the report that the importance of these issues is becoming better understood by the European Parliament, which is directly elected by the EU public,” she said.
The Brussels chief criticized the AKP for not doing enough to open the three EU accession-negotiation chapters – those on competition, social policy and public procurement – that carry no political baggage.
“The government remains unwilling to open the social policy and competition chapters because there is a need for reforms on state aid, the unregistered economy, gender equality at work and child labor,” said Sevinç.
. . . .
Sevinç said the CHP was closely following Turkey’s accession process and had established a “shadow CHP team monitoring EU negotiations.” The team, led by Sevinç, is following each and every negotiating chapter in the Turkish-EU talks and briefing Kılıçdaroğlu about the progress made.
Whereas before the CHP would stay quiet in face of the EU criticism, the party is now using such opportunities in its opposition politics against the AKP. The resolution did recognize the constitutional referendum as a qualified step toward accession, but yes, the shortcomings are duly noted and Sevinc is astute in arguing that the new constitution has not brought about a more liberal Turkey.
UPDATE I (3/15) -- EU Rapportuer on Turkey Ria Oomen Ruijten defends the resolution here, calling the report critical but balanced. Meanwhile, worth a considered reading is Turkey watcher Aengus Collins' thoughtfully sober blog post on the AKP's recent majoritarian turn, something I have written about here extensively. An excerpt:
In 2002, however, the AKP was a new political force which risked a backlash from Turkey’s establishment. It went out of its way to counter concerns about its religious roots by pushing forward with political and economic reforms. But that was then. Today, the AKP no longer needs to burnish its European credentials as a means of forestalling a backlash from the establishment, because in the meantime it has consolidated its own position as Turkey’s new establishment. It is not unrivalled in this role, but it is clearly dominant. Both in successive electoral contests and in murkier episodes such as the failed judicial attempt to close the party in 2008 or the conduct of the Ergenekon and similar cases, the AKP has repeatedly secured the upper hand over those who would challenge it.
Moreover, the AKP has managed to do all of this in the name of democratisation. With Machiavellian aplomb, the party has turned democracy’s weak roots in Turkey to its advantage by loudly defining the concept on terms that work in its favour. In essence, this amounts to a crude majoritarianism which holds that an elected leader can and should do as he sees fit. The stronger his mandate, the less tolerable are constraints of any sort on his power, whether these stem from the military, the judiciary, the media, international organisations, or anywhere else. As the Financial Times noted in a recent editorial, the AKP government’s executive powers are now “increasingly untrammelled.”
It is against this backdrop that Turkey will head to the polls in three months’ time. Testing times lie ahead.
General İlker Başbuğ is by all intents and purposes set to replace current head of the Turkish General Staff Yaşar Büyükanıt when the Supreme Military Council(YAS) meets in August to consider promotions and transfers. Although Erdoğan and Gül must approve his appointment, their objection would be quite unorthodox, and therefore, unexpected. Embroiled in the recent Ergenekon mess and the chaotic, sloppy media uproar surrounding the politicized investigation, Başbuğ has found himself in quite a difficult position. However, his cool handling of the situation suggests that he will be a much more apt political player than his hot-headed predecessor.
On July 2 General Ilker Basbug, the commander of the Turkish Land Forces, issued a public statement calling for calm in the wake of the unprecedented wave of detentions of hard-line secularists on July 1, in which a number of high-ranking retired military personnel were taken into custody (see EDM, July 1).
“Turkey is going through difficult days,” Basbug told reporters. “We must all show common sense, remain calm and behave coolly and responsibly” (Milliyet, Radikal, Hurriyet, Yeni Safak, July 3).
Basbug bluntly refuted media speculation that in a meeting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had warned him in advance that the police were planning to detain high-ranking military personnel, such as former gendarmerie commander General Sener Eruygur and former First Army commander General Hursit Tolon. “I want to be very clear about this. The issue was not raised in any form at the meeting,” said Basbug (Milliyet, Radikal, Hurriyet, Yeni Safak, July 3).
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Basbug is widely regarded within the military as one of the most able officers of his generation. After graduating from infantry school in 1963, he served in variety of positions both in Turkey and abroad, including two postings to NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Belgium. A fluent English speaker, he is renowned within the military for his calculated calmness even under intense pressure; unlike the more volatile Buyukanit, who during his two year command sometimes appears to have allowed his heart to rule his head and has issued emotional, poorly prepared public statements condemning the AKP. Like most senior members of the TGS, Basbug shares Buyukanit’s hard-line interpretation of secularism and has frequently expressed concern that the AKP is committed to its eventual erosion.
The detentions of July 1 have thus left Basbug in a dilemma. The vast majority of the members of the Turkish officer corps will have interpreted the detentions, and particularly the manner in which they were conducted, as a direct assault by the AKP-controlled Interior Ministry on the military as an institution. There was already a degree of restlessness among some hard-liners in the military at Buyukanit’s failure to combat the AKP, particularly after the failure of his attempt in 2007 to prevent AKP foreign minister from being appointed President of Turkey. Consequently, Basbug would have been expected to issue a public statement condemning the July 1 detentions, but if the statement were too harsh, he could have presented the AKP with an excuse to veto his appointment as chief of the TGS in August.
Even before the July 1 detentions, AKP supporters had already launched a defamation campaign against Basbug (see EDM, June 18); as they also did in 2006 to try to prevent Buyukanit from being appointed chief of staff. It is an alarming indication of the continuing depth of anti-Semitism in Turkey that in each case the most damning calumny they could level at the generals was to imply that they were Jewish. Neither is.
Basbug’s statement of July 2 was a typically measured response at a time when emotions would have been running extremely high in the TGS: he combined a call for calm with a concise rebuttal of rumors being spread by the Islamist media, while avoiding saying anything inflammatory that could give the AKP grounds to veto his appointment. The statement was also a further indication that if he is formally appointed in August, Basbug will prove, from the perspective of the AKP, a considerably more formidable opponent than his predecessor.
In commemoration of World Press Freedom Day, I have decided to take the time to briefly reflect on the state of media freedom in Turkey, an issue about which I have written about repeatedly (click here).
In October, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Turkey 138th of 175 countries assessed in its recent survey of press freedom in countries around the world. According to RSF, 47 members of the Turkish press are under arrest and waiting trial. Most of these work for Kurdish news outlets, and are being prosecuted under Turkey's Anti-Terrorism Law, which makes it illegal to make or disseminate what the law vaguely refers to as "terrorist propaganda." Since then, a record number of journalists have been arrested in conjunction with the Ergenekon investigation, including, most recently, Ahmet Şık and Nedim Sener, who the International Press Institute (IPI) honored last year with the World Press Freedom Hero Award.
In addition to the prosecution of journalists, Turkey is a world leader when it comes to its restrictions on the Internet. Though not China or Burma, Turkey's Internet policy borders on authoritarian and is getting worse. The government is planning a wide-scale Internet filtering system that will create user categories for all Turkish citizens and allow the government to better track their usage. Most disturbingly, under the new provisions, which are set to go into effect this August, the government will be able to censor content without users even knowing their government stands between them and the World Wide Web (see last Friday's post). And, if Internet was not enough, neither radio nor television have not escaped the Turkish government's heavy hand. Television broadcasts are routinely censored for being "morally objectionable," and a new law on broadcast media passed this February gives the government even more power to intervene.
Though many are focused on democracy in the Arab world at the moment, the rapidly declining state of media freedom in Turkey should make the world pay heed to the questionable state of Turkish democracy, what I have referred to here as a rising electoral authoritarianism that is polarizing the country in new ways and, if not curbed, has the potential of bringing the tremendous democratic gains of the past twelve years. While it is true Turkey chose a democratic trajectory after its application for EU membership was granted in Helsinki in 1999, since then Turkey's EU-driven democratization process has considerably slowed and many of the liberals that helped bring the AKP government to power in 2002 have fallen away from the party. If press freedom is any indicator of liberal democracy, liberalism is in a period of rapid decline. For more reflections on liberal democracy and the Turkish government's need to go beyond its current majoritarian understanding, click here.
For World Press Freedom Day events that have occurred in Washington this week, click here.
Turkey is in a state of flux. Founded in 1923 amidst the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and very much a product of modern nation-state ideology, the emergence of Turkey is one of the great stories of the last century.
Although the Turkish state is still quite strong, an increasingly globalized, albeit incipient, civil society has come to challenge its hegemony and singular notions of "Turkishness." Growing numbers of Turks are demanding human rights reform and a more democratic society. At the same time, politics remains a largely elite affair, minority and cultural rights go largely unrecognized, nationalism remains a potently virulent force, and political stability is still a matter of concern. Unrest in the Kurdish southeast, anti-democratic maneuverings to curb civil liberties and close political parties, repression of political dissent, and a questionable human rights regime raise real concerns for the future of Turkish democracy.
A candidate for accession into the European Union, Turkey stands at a crossroads—will it move toward the postmodernity of Europe, or will it forge an ultimately separate path? Will Turkey provide one of the amazing political stories of the twenty-first century, and what does its political development and changing geopolitics have to say about the future of world politics?
Ragan Updegraff has closely followed Turkish politics for over six years, working as a political consultant, journalist, and analyst along the way. His work has appeared in the Journal of Democracy and the Jerusalem Post, among various other publications, and he has been interviewed by Voice of America, The Guardian, and The Telegraph. In 2009-2010, he was a United States Fulbright Research Fellow and studied the impact that Turkish legal reforms undertaken as part of Turkey's European accession process were having in transforming Turkey's relations with minority groups, in particular its nationalist Kurdish population. He also studied EU assistance to Turkish NGOs working on minority right issues. He continues to closely monitor events in Turkey from Washington, D.C.
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