Who's Muzzling the Turkish Press?

Journalist Andrew Finkel, who was fired a few weeks ago by Today's Zaman because of a critical column he wrote, has a powerful opinion piece in today's International Herald Tribune about some of the recent troubling trends in the Turkish press. From his column:

Sadly, the most effective censor in Turkey today is the press itself. To adopt a stance critical of current policies is to position oneself in opposition to the government — and editors only do so as a calculated risk. Columns exposing corruption or criticizing the government’s sprawl-inducing environmental policies are simply spiked.

When Turkish newspapers try to speak their mind, they often discover their advertisers dropping out, explaining apologetically that they have “come under pressure.”

The full piece can be found here. A previous post about Finkel's firing and it's implications is here.

[UPDATE -- CNN's Ivan Watson has a new piece out about press issues in Turkey, which can be viewed here.]

Inconvenient Truths

The recent firing by the Today's Zaman newspaper of one of its top columnists, Andrew Finkel, for doing his job -- which is to write smart, questioning pieces that push forward the conversation on important and difficult issues -- should be cause for great concern for anyone who cares about the development of an independent and democratic press in Turkey.

Finkel is one of the smartest observers of Turkish politics, reporting on Turkey long enough to have an insider's deep understanding of what makes the country tick, while at the same time maintaining his outsider's critical distance. It's a combination that provided for frequently memorable and essential columns during his his three-year stint at Today's Zaman -- and which also got him into trouble before. In 1999, Finkel was charged with "insulting state institutions" after writing about some inconvenient truths regarding the Turkish military, which then led to his being fired by his employer, the Sabah newspaper, at the insistence of the country's National Security Council (MGK) .

Although the military wasn't involved this time around, it's clear that Finkel again got canned for writing (or trying to write) about another inconvenient truth. Today's Zaman is supported by the Fethullah Gulen movement, which is currently in the middle of another press-related controversy in Turkey, having to do with the arrest of a journalist who was preparing to publish a book that accuses the movement of having infiltrated the country's security forces. Following the arrest of the journalist, Ahmet Sik, on charges that his book is connected to the Ergenekon coup plot, prosecutors went on an aggressive campaign to confiscate any unpublished versions of the book and even indicated it would be a crime for individuals to be in possession of the manuscript.

Finkel wrote a column in response to these developments, but Today's Zaman refused to run it and then let the columnist go. In the column, which was printed instead in yesterday's Hurriyet Daily News, Finkel takes his (now former) employer and the Gulen movement to task for their response to recent events. From his column:

It was a bit over three years ago that I was recruited to write this column for this newspaper (Today’s Zaman). I remember the conversation well. The editor-in-chief anticipated that I might be hesitant to associate myself with a press group whose prejudices and principles might not always coincide with my own. He explained what I knew already, that the Zaman Group supported and was supported by the Fetullah Gülen Community and that I would have to take that on board. However, he explained the paper's mission was to fight for the democratization of Turkish society – that Turkey was no longer a country which should be ruled by military fiat. He also impressed upon me that he was committed to liberal values and to free discussion. And then, of course, he flattered me by saying that mine was a voice which the target audience of Today’s Zaman would want to hear. What helped me to make up my mind was the presence of columnists whose reputations I respected and whose standard of integrity had got them into trouble in other “corners” of the Turkish media....

....I have already expressed my concern that the fight against anti-democratic forces in Turkey has resorted to self-defeating anti-democratic methods. This in turn has led to a polarization in Turkey. If your side loses power then the natural fear is that they will use your methods against you. In case this sounds like I am speaking in riddles, I am referring to the aggressive prosecution of people who write books. These may be bad books, they may be books which are written with ulterior motives, they may be books which contain assertions which are not true. But at the end of the day, they are books – and there are libel courts – not criminal courts – designed to protect individuals from malicious falsehood. In short, writing a book offensive to the Gülen community is not a crime.

It may be in bad taste, it might be off beam. It might every bit as nonsensical as the conspiracy theories that fill the shelves of Turkish book stores. But it might not. And until we actually read it we cannot know. More to the point, we can only question the motives of those who don’t want us to read it. It blackens the names of the censors, increases the credibility of a book which no one has even read. It’s also extremely foolish because in an age of Internet, you can’t actually stop people from whispering your backs. The point about the ostrich with its head in the sand is that it only fools itself.

However, I write this in the interests of defending the good name of this newspaper, with whom I have been associated since the first copy appeared on the stands. Having started the dialogue, it cannot stop.

(The full column can be found here. And some thoughts from Jenny White here.)

Finkel's firing strikes me as a very bad omen for which direction the political discussion in Turkey may be heading and for the health of the Turkish press. It's also a troubling development for Today's Zaman (and its Turkish-language sister paper, Zaman), which has become an increasingly blunt instrument in recent months, frequently resorting to the the same questionable journalistic tactics that it had long criticized its rivals for using. As one of two English-language papers in Turkey and because many of its writers represent a Gulen perspective, the newspaper remains a valuable resource and an important read. But after Finkel's firing, it is a much diminished publication. Finkel in many ways embodied Today's Zaman's mandate, and was then fired for fulfilling that mandate. The question, then, is: has the paper's mandate changed?

"I do not doubt that the current Turkish government, like those that preceded it, uses both carrot and baseball bat to get the media on its side," Finkel wrote in a September, 2009 column on press issues that seems particularly relevant today. "Yet even were the elected government to value a free and vital press (and there are days when this appears to be the case), the question remains whether the press itself is prepared for the role."

[UPDATE -- Today's Zaman editor-in-chief Bulent Kenes has penned a column explaining why his paper let Finkel go. While Finkel was one of the first journalists that he thought about hiring when he launched the paper, Kenes says that something (or, as he sees it, someone) has now "changed."

"So what is it that has changed?" he writes. "What has changed is that some of our writers have come under the influence of the strong and dark propaganda that is at play and have started to stagger. Unfortunately I feel the same way about Finkel, who I know does not have ill intentions in any way."

That certainly seems to clear things up, doesn't it?]

Turkey's "Bloodless Civil War"

The Wall Street Journal's Istanbul correspondent, Marc Champion, has a terrific piece in today's paper about an ongoing court case that really goes to the heart of the current political battles that are raging in Turkey.

The case has to do with Ilhan Cihaner, until recently the respected chief prosecutor in the eastern Turkish city of Erzincan and currently under arrest and on trial for working to destabilize and perhaps overthrow Turkey's government. The case is deeply intertwined with all the big issues of day in Turkey -- Ergenekon, judicial and constitutional reform, the role of Islamic groups in political life -- with each side in the country's political divide seeing the case of proof of the correctness of their position. Ironically, from opposing perspectives both supporters of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and its secularist critics see the Cihaner case as one rife with judicial interference, prosecutorial zealotry and illegal doings.

The case is a complicated one, with -- like other Ergenekon-related cases -- many bizarre twists and turns and plenty of alleged intrigue and skullduggery. Champion does a great job in unpacking some of what's behind the case. You can find the article here -- highly recommended reading.

General Malaise

Ilter Turan, a respected professor of International Relations at Istanbul's Bilgi University, has written a briefing for the German Marshall Fund looking at the recent arrest of dozens of high-ranking Turkish military officers – among them the former heads of the Navy and Air Force – as part of an investigation into an alleged plot to overthrow Turkey’s AKP government.

The arrests in the investigation into the Balyoz ("Sledgehammer") plot have been rightly hailed as a milestone in Turkey's continuing struggle to increase civilian oversight over the powerful and historically meddlesome military. The arrests have also been described as an important step in Turkey's democratization. Turan makes the point that the deep political divisions in Turkey and some of the AKP's (or, more specifically, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's) illiberal and anti-democratic tendencies pose a challenge for Ankara to turn the Balyoz developments into an opportunity for consolidating democracy. From Turan's piece:

It is clear that the military has lost its political clout while the probability of a military intervention has all but disappeared. The courts, on the other hand, are no longer as uniformed on what defending the interests of the state means. Such changes do not, however, confirm that Turkish democracy is deepening. Checks on the government’s exercise of power have been weakening. The prime minister has been growing more authoritarian in word and deed, while the government has began to behave increasingly partisan in its daily conduct of business. The country is deeply polarized and faces an impasse. An election 18 months away may or may not offer a way out. Turkish politics is in need of a grand compromise to consolidate democracy. Political will, however, seems currently to be sorely lacking.

Turan's briefing also gives some interesting background about the political atmosphere that surrounded Turkey's previous coups. You can read it here (pdf).

An Unsettling Blast From the Past

I have a story up on the Eurasianet website about the release from prison of Mehmet Ali Agca, Pope John Paul II's failed assassin, and the dark memories his release is stirring up in Turkey. From my article:

When he shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 in St. Peter’s Square, would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Agca was, for most of the world, a mysterious and enigmatic figure, one who seemed to come out of nowhere.

In Turkey, though, Agca was already a known commodity, arrested in 1979 for the murder of Abdi Ipekci, a prominent left-leaning journalist, only to escape from jail while on trial and then resurface on that fateful day in Rome.

Ipekci’s killing took place during a time of extreme political turbulence in Turkey, marked by daily, violent clashes between leftist and rightist groups. The disorder ultimately led to a military coup in 1980.

Agca emerged a free man on January 18, after serving 19 years in an Italian jail for shooting the pope and then another 10 years in a Turkish prison for Ipekci’s murder. In Turkey, Agca’s release has been met with a certain sense of trepidation -- his reappearance a reminder of both the violent period he first emerged in, and of how much the shadow of that period still hangs over the country. "His release is a reminder of a dark time, one of the darkest of our history. It’s something that we dread," said Mehmet Ali Birand, a veteran Turkish journalist who interviewed Agca while he was in prison in Italy.

As he exited prison, the 52-year-old Agca was met by a small group of relatives and well-wishers who greeted him with drums and pipes, a traditional way to celebrate a prisoner’s release in Turkey. The media was less welcoming, though. "Abdi Ipekci Murdered Again," was the headline on the front page of Milliyet, the newspaper that the slain journalist was the editor of at the time of his killing. "That Murderer Is Among Us Now," was the headline of Sabah, another daily.

Many commentators pointed out that Agca’s release came only a day before the third anniversary of the murder of Hrant Dink, an outspoken Armenian journalist shot in front of his Istanbul office by a young man who, like Agca, was linked to ultranationalist forces. Like Agca’s release, Dink’s murder also stoked memories of the turbulent 70’s and 80’s, when journalists and intellectuals were frequently the victims of ideologically inspired violence.

The Dink murder trial has been going on for three years, but - as with Ipekci’s killing - many circumstances surrounding the case, particularly its links to the "Deep State," a phrase used to describe a shadowy zone where state interests intersect with lawless and corrupt elements of the bureaucracy, military and the security establishment, remain untouched. "No distance has been covered regarding these murders. The tip of the iceberg has been broken, that is it. This is the dark face of Turkey," columnist Ali Bayramoglu wrote in the Turkish daily Yeni Safak following Agca’s release.

You can read the full piece here.

The fact that Ipekci's murderer was released the day before the anniversary of Dink's killing does seem like a very cruel twist of fate, considering that, though 30 years apart, there are so many disturbing parallels between the two murders.

I didn't get a chance to write about the Dink case, but a line from a column by Soli Ozel in the Haber Turk newspaper caught my attention and seems to sum up the case's significance. "This case is a test of what kind of society we are and what kind of society we would like to be," Ozel wrote. "Every day that passes without a resolution in the Dink case should embarrass the state and the government."

(photo -- Mehmet Ali Agca on the day of his release, in Ankara)

Ergenekon's New Clothes?

Gareth Jenkins, a veteran Turkey analyst and an expert on the country's military and security affairs, has a new report out that takes a comprehensive look at the complicated Ergenekon coup plot trial and investigation. Although Jenkins has been a consistent critic of various aspects of the Ergenekon case, the report -- published by the Silk Road Studies Program at Johns Hopkins -- strikes me as fair and objective. Still, after reading the report, it's easy to see what Jenkins's verdict on Ergenekon is: the case has very few legs to stand on, and even those are rather shaky. What I found particularly interesting about the report, which also provides very good background about the history of the "Deep State" in Turkey and of the Ergenekon story itself, is its look at how Turkey's predilection towards conspiracy theories might be tainting the Ergenekon case.

From the report (pdf), entitled "Between Fact and Fantasy: Turkey's Ergenekon Investigation":

Whether among those formally indicted as part of the Ergenekon investigation or those detained in the police raids and subsequently released without charge, many appear to have been guilty of nothing more than opposition to the AKP. In fact, there is no proof that the Ergenekon organization as described in the indictments exists or has ever existed.

Indeed, the indictments are so full of contradictions, rumors, speculation, misinformation, illogicalities, absurdities and untruths that they are not even internally consistent or coherent.
This is not to say that the Ergenekon investigation is simply a politically motivated fabrication. There is no reason to doubt that most of those involved in prosecuting the case sincerely believe in the organization’s existence and are unable or unwilling to see the contradictions and irrationalities that are endemic in the indictments. The indictments themselves appear to be the products of “projective” rather than deductive reasoning, working backwards from the premise that the organization exists to weave unrelated individuals, statements and acts into a single massive conspiracy. The more elusive the concrete evidence for Ergenekon’s existence is, the more desperate the attempts to discover it become. Rather than convincing the investigators that what they are looking for does not exist, this elusiveness appears merely to make the organization more fearsome and powerful in their minds; and further fuel their desperation to uncover and eradicate it.

A predilection for conspiracy theories is nothing new in Turkey and can be found across the political spectrum. Both a large proportion of AKP supporters and many of those in law enforcement genuinely believe that a malicious conspiratorial cabal – which most associate with the Deep State – has been not only manipulating the political process but supporting or guiding a large proportion of the political violence in the country. Amongst
AKP supporters, attention tends to focus particularly on violence carried out in the name of Islam; where their sincere horror at the carnage that is sometimes perpetrated in the name of their religion has created a culture of denial, and a refusal to believe that their fellow Muslims could be responsible.

The report takes a good look at some of the problems with the evidence, indictments and judicial procedures in the case. About the case's first indictment (there have been three released so far, and a fourth is expected), Jenkins writes:

The indictment was also marred not only by repeated examples of flawed reasoning but numerous absurdities and contradictions. Most remarkably, despite its extraordinary length, the indictment produced no evidence that the Ergenekon organization it described even existed, much less that the accused were all members and engaged in a coordinated terrorist campaign to overthrow the government.

Indeed, rather than being based on deductive reasoning, the indictment appeared to project onto a collection of disparate events and individuals – not all of whom are necessarily innocent of any wrongdoing – a conspiracy theorist’s template of a ubiquitous, and almost omnipotent, centrally controlled organization which had not only penetrated every sphere of public life but been responsible for virtually every act of politically-motivated violence and terrorism in modern Turkish history….

…. some of the claims in the indictment about Ergenekon’s deeds and ambitions extended beyond the bounds of credibility. For example, the indictment claimed that the organization had met with the then U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney to discuss toppling the AKP government and replacing it with a more acceptable alternative. Even more absurdly, the indictment maintained that investigators had uncovered evidence that the “Ergenekon Terrorist Organization” planned to “manufacture chemical and biological weapons and then, with the high revenue it earned from selling them, to finance and control every terrorist organization not just in Turkey but in the entire world.”

In the end, Jenkins calls the Ergenekon case a "wasted" opportunity:

From a broader perspective, the public debate triggered by the discovery of the crate of grenades in Ümraniye in June 2007 could have provided an opportunity for the establishment of an independent truth commission which could perhaps have enabled Turks – including both secular nationalists and Islamists – to come to terms with the realities of recent Turkish history. But, in the short-term, a more pressing concern is not the wasted opportunity for Turkey to confront its past but what the Ergenekon investigation might be saying about its future, and the disturbing questions it raises about the prospects for democracy and the rule of law in the country.

Clearly, there are other views out there about the merits and the strength of the evidence of the Ergenekon case, but Jenkins's report is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in this complex story.

Ergenekon's Side Effects

As the historic trial and investigation of an alleged coup plot – known as “Ergenekon” – continues to grow in Turkey, the whole process is also have some very interesting side effects in the country. (For some background on the Ergenekon case, take a look at this article I wrote for the Christian Science Monitor.)

The case itself has been, at times, too complicated – and occasionally downright bizarre – to easily explain to audiences outside Turkey. But what I’ve found particularly interesting about the case is how the investigation of the alleged coup plotters – some of them current and former military officials – is helping shed light on some other dark chapters in Turkey’s recent past. This is particularly true in the predominantly-Kurdish southeast, where the Ergenekon case has given new life to the issue of the people who went missing during the 1980’s and 90’s, when Turkish security forces were locked in a bloody battle with the guerillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Human rights groups estimate that some 5,000 extrajudicial killings were committed during this period and that some 1,500 went missing, mostly at the hands of state elements.

“The Ergenekon investigation has allowed people to talk about their feelings and ask for their rights, especially if they have missing relatives. It has encouraged people to talk about the past. People feel safer to talk about what happened,” Tahir Elci, a lawyer in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, which was also the scene of extreme violence during the 1980’s and 90’s, told me during a recent visit there. “Kurdish society knows very well the people who are now in jail. We know what they did. Now the rest of Turkish society is going to learn.”

In recent months, excavations of suspected mass graves and at cemeteries holding what had initially been ruled unidentified bodies have been conducted in several locations in the southeast, with the digs yielding bones that are now undergoing DNA testing. At the same time, numerous families have asked Turkish prosecutors to reopen their relatives’ dormant cases in the hope of finally resolving the question of what happened to them.

Outside the town of Cizre, near Turkey’s border with Syria and Iraq, I met Ata Ergul. His brother Hasan went missing on April 23, 1995, when plainclothes policemen picked him up while he was riding his tractor home. This past April, following information given in testimony by a former member of JITEM, a police unit believed to be behind many of the disappearances and unexplained killings in the southeast, the Ergul family started looking at old files of unclaimed bodies found in the region. In one of the files, they found pictures of a body that resembled the missing Hasan. Since then, they were able to convince a local court to have the body, buried in a potter’s field, exhumed and sent for DNA testing, which proved positive. This past June, Ergul’s family was finally able to give their relative a proper burial.

“Before, we were scared to say anything, but because of [the Ergenekon] investigation we saw other people asking about their missing relatives. We realized we were not alone,” the 41-year-old Ata told me, sitting in the courtyard of his missing brother’s house, shaded by a massive grapevine.

“It’s unbelievable that these people are in jail,” Mr. Ergul continued, talking about some of the military and police figures now in jail as pat of the Ergenekon case. “These people were the gods of this region. We’re not surprised by the names of those arrested, but that they’re in jail is unbelievable. It’s like a dream.”

“We hope that all those who are responsible for the killings stand before a judge,” he added. “Our pain and sadness are very deep.”

Back in Cizre, I met with Nusirevan Elci, director of the local bar association in, who these days finds himself more and more dealing with families now ready to look for their missing. Last December, sensing a change, Elci’s office decided to start writing petitions to local prosecutors to reopen the files of the missing. Since then, some 120 families have come asking for help. The bar association has also pushed investigators to start excavations at several suspected mass graves, with more to come.

“We tried to do these investigations before, but the empire of fear was still very strong here. We had to force families to talk about who they lost. They were not only afraid, but they were also hopeless about getting any results,” Elci said.

“Ergenekon is a big opportunity for Turkey. The state needs to look at its past and come to terms with it,” he added.

If the Ergenekon trial allows Turkey to actually do that is questionable. But as the new search for the missing in the southeast shows, the case is already unraveling much more than just the coup plot that it initially set out to investigate.

Where There's No Smoke, There's Fire

This past Sunday was a fairly historic day for Turkey. Despite centuries of being known as a land of smokers, Turkey is now officially smoke free, after a new law banning smoking inside restaurants, cafes and other public places went into effect. (Bianet has a good rundown of the new law's extent.) But how to view the new ban? A question of public health? An issue that touches on individual freedom? If only. With the political polarization in Turkey continuing to grow, the new smoking ban is clearly about something much more sinister, at least according to some of Turkey's newspaper columnists.

In the Hurriyet Daily News, Yusuf Kanli says the new smoking ban (a "pogrom," as he calls it) is yet another indication of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's attempt to fashion himself as a "neo-Sultan" and of his government's desire to create smoke- and drink-free "red zones" in Turkey's cities. From Kanli's piece:

Apparently, the “cloudless air space” pogrom of smokers was a “personal issue” for Prime Minister Erdoğan. After all it is an issue very much related to communal health. Yet, was it really a must to have such a strict and wholesome smoking ban? Could not Turkey follow the examples of Spain, Greece or Germany where smokers were given some rights, though very much restricted? But, the Sultan Recep the First wanted it so. Now, some allegiant media outlets are exploding in anger because the across the board smoking ban was likened in some Western media outlets as the success of Murat the Fourth, the Ottoman sultan who had banned alcohol, coffee and smoking as part of an effort to prevent people coming together and criticizing the edicts of his highness. Without thinking for one second why those Western media outlets were drawing such a comparison between Erdoğan and Murat the Fourth, the allegiant media has started complaining again of “Western hypocrisy....”

....What is indeed the intention of the government of Sultan Recep the First? Is it....aimed at confining Turks to their homes? Are we leaving through a process of advancing red zones in the cities? Or, is it as Le Monde or some other Western media outlets implied in their reports, an effort by the neo-sultan in the footprints of Murat the Fourth aimed at avoiding Turks coming together and criticizing his all benevolent and all capable government?

You can read the full column here.

Meanwhile, over at Today's Zaman, the HDN's pro-government rival, columnist Mumtazer Turkone sees through the smoke to find, I kid you not, the connection between those who defend the right to light up and the Ergenekon coup plot case. Writes Turkone:

There's no difference between the defense of the freedom to smoke cigarettes and the support of the Ergenekon terrorist organization in the name of the nation-state's interest. Neither of these are freedoms because both of them constitute major attacks upon the most basic right, the right to life. There is no such right as “the right to smoke....”

....There's no difference between saying that the acts committed by Ergenekon were for the good of the state and the people and listing the benefits of cigarettes. Both are harmful, very harmful....

....A society that has long been suffocated by cigarette smoke is finally being freed. It's akin to the freeing of a society unable to exhibit any of its talents under the military tutelage, imprisoned by a machine that's harmful to the intellect. The crises in Turkey's military-civilian relations are the forerunners of a freer and more diverse society -- just as the ban which began yesterday is the start of a healthier and more civilized society....

....This could be a good opportunity to try to see cigarettes in the same light as Ergenekon's weapons, and to get rid of them for good.

You can read the full (and strangely fascinating) column here.

It looks like even this new smoking ban will be another opportunity for Turkey's battling power centers to go at it. There may be less cigarette smoke floating around in Turkey now, but the air is certainly not any clearer.

A Genuine Fake?

To follow up on yesterday's post, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) have announced that a document that outlines an alleged military plan to undermine the government and the Gulen movement is not the genuine article (Hurriyet story here, Today's Zaman here). According to a military investigation, the document in question -- first exposed by the Taraf newspaper -- did not originate in the military. Furthermore, it seems like nobody seems to have an original copy of the explosive document. So far, the only version anyone has seen is a (much easier to forge) photocopied version.

So what's going on? The military investigation could be a whitewash. The document could turn out to be a forgery. Who really knows at this point? The TSK has announced that top general Ilker Basbug will give a press conference tomorrow, where he is expected to talk about the document affair, which might give some more clues about the whole thing (at least in terms of how the military intends to move this thing forward). At this point, I get the sense that rather than being on the defensive, the military is going on the offensive, which is probably not the position those who leaked the document were expecting the generals to be at this point.

More tomorrow.

Another Day, Another Coup Plot?

I have a briefing up on the World Politics Review website about the latest political crisis to grip Turkey, this one surrounding a document -- allegedly written by the military -- which puts forward a plan to discredit and destabilize the government (as well as the pro-government Gulen movement, Turkey's most influential Islamic brotherhood).

From the piece:

Allegations that elements of the Turkish military may have been hatching a plot to discredit or even topple the government of the liberal Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) are threatening to raise military-civilian tensions in Turkey and further widen the country's deep political divide. At the same time, the allegations are also raising questions about how the plot against the AKP fits into an ongoing investigation into another coup attempt, known as Ergenekon.

This latest Turkish political crisis was sparked when Taraf -- a hard-hitting liberal daily that has been severely critical of the military in the past -- published a document on June 12 entitled, "Plan to Combat Islamic Fundamentalism." The four-page document, allegedly signed by a colonel in the military's psychological warfare unit, outlined ways in which the AKP government could be weakened. Among them, the document suggested "mobilizing" moles within the party and stoking anti-Armenian and anti-Greek sentiments in order to strengthen the nationalist opposition.

The plan also called for discrediting the pro-government Gulen movement, Turkey's largest and most powerful Islamic brotherhood, by planting weapons and ammunition in its members' homes and even linking it to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)….


…The possibility of the leaked document being a forgery has not been discounted, at least not among members of the secularist press and Turkey's political opposition. Some observers have suggested that what's really being played out here is not a confrontation between the military and the AKP, but rather one between the generals and the influential Gulen movement. Media outlets affiliated with the movement have been among the quickest to accuse the military of being up to no good in this current crisis.

"Let's push aside whether the document is real and get into the deep," Ismet Berkan, editor of Radikal, a liberal daily owned by the pro-secularist Dogan Group, recently wrote in a column. "Everything we witness is in fact a psychological war. The Turkish Armed Forces, or TSK, is on one side, and the Gulen movement on the other."

Ultimately, regardless of who actually wrote the contested document, the affair is another reminder of how deeply polarized Turkish politics and society are right now. Opponents and supporters of the AKP are unable to find common ground on most issues, with each side quick to accuse the other of wrongdoing. As an example, several pro-government papers recently reported that investigators were almost completely certain that the document in question is genuine. Some pro-secularist papers, meanwhile, reported that investigators were almost completely certain the same document is a fake. Ultimately, this kind of split does not bode well for Turkey's political stability.

You can read the full briefing here.

The Deep State's Deep Roots

The Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, has a lengthy new report out about Ergenekon, the sensational coup plot case that has been dominating Turkish politics and headlines for the last few years. (For some quick background on the case, take a look at this article of mine from the Christian Science Monitor.) The report, written by H. Akin Unver, a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, takes a close look at the Ergenekon case and its ties to Turkey's "Deep State," the name given to a phrase used to describe a shadowy zone where state interests intersect with lawless and corrupt elements of the bureaucracy, military, and the security establishment.

What I found interesting about the report was some of the background Unver gives about the Ottoman and Cold War roots of the Deep State in Turkey. From the report:

The bipolar system of the Cold War was seemingly simple. On the one hand, there was the Iron Curtain, which covered a massive area stretching across Asia and Eastern Europe, and on the other hand there was NATO, which represented the “free world.” Along clearly defined borders and possible flashpoints, both sides remained on alert and ready for a major field war, in addition to building and stocking a nuclear arsenal that would act as a deterrent or means of retaliation. Yet, there was also a less visible preparation in the NATO countries: the establishment and organization of secret paramilitary networks — what Daniele Ganser had dubbed “NATO’s Secret Armies”15 — which would act the same way against the Soviet occupation, as the Allied Resistance had acted against the Nazi invasions during the Second World War. Throughout much of the Cold War, “special units” from NATO countries participated in a silent mobilization and organization directed by the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service against possible invasions by the Soviet Union. They were trained to be ready to perform espionage, sabotage, and assassination missions. Such operations were generally termed as “stay behind operations” and included sub-operations or regional agencies….

…. Turkey was one of the first of the countries to join NATO’s stay-behind networks, as an initial recipient of the Marshall Fund in 1950, and remained the only country where this network remained unpurged until very recently. The first institutional extension of the Turkish branch of the European stay-behind operations was Seferberlik Taktik Kurulu [Tactical Mobilization Committee]. It was founded in 1952 and later tied to the Office of Special Operations [Özel Harp Dairesi] under the General Staff. Similar to Gladio’s extra-judicial mass killings that took place in Italy, there have been numerous such acts in Turkey attributed to the Counter-guerrilla Branch and the Ergenekon.

You can read the whole Ergenkon report (pdf) at the MEI's website.

The Deep State Talks

Over at the Kamil Pasha blog, Jenny White points out that Bianet has just published an English translation of a recent interview in the Taraf newspaper with Abdulkadir Aygan, a former PKK member who then went to work for JITEM, a clandestine intelligence agency believed to be behind thousands of extrajudicial killings in Turkey's southeast during the 1980's and 90's. Aygan is currently living in Sweden. (Follow this link for the interview in English.)

From the interview conducted by Taraf's Nese Duzel and originally published on Jan. 27:

How many activities did you take part in when you worked for JITEM?

They called them “operations." For instance, a criminal was identified. Normally what happens? The security forces catch this person on demand of the prosecution and the prosecution takes that person to court. The person, depending on the crime, goes to prison or not. But JITEM operations were not like that. There were local agents and informants among the people. They told JITEM about those providing the PKK with provisions or having contact with the organisation. Then JITEM did its job.

What does “do its job” mean in JITEM speak? Killing?

“Doing its job” means “illegally taking a person to JITEM, questioning them, killing them and getting rid of the bodies by burning or burying them.” The importance of the operation depended on the importance of the person to be killed. The JITEM commander sometimes informed the Gendarmerie Public Security Gendarmerie Command, and they sometimes informed the Emergency State Governor’s Office, and sometimes they were not informed.

JITEM's existence had long been denied by the Turkish state, although the recent Ergenekon coup-plot investigation has started to shed some serious light on its work. One complaint made by some critics of the Ergenekon investigation is that while the government is busy going after the alleged coup plotters -- many of them hard-core critics of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) -- as a way of dismantling Turkey's "Deep State," little was being done to look into the thousands of state-sanctioned murders that took place in the Southeast as part of the fight against the PKK. If you want to see the real work of the "Deep State," look there, the critics say. Aygan's confession may force investigators to start doing just that.

The Deep State in Deep Trouble?

News about Ergenekon, the name given to an alleged plot by secularist ultranationalists to topple the Turkish government, has been keeping Turks spellbound since the summer of 2007, when an investigation into the conspiracy began.

Reporting on Ergenekon (the name refers to place found in Turkish mythology) has proven to be a challenge, at least if trying to write for an audience outside of Turkey. Taking a "just the facts" approach doesn't suffice, since the facts are frequently quite murky and – there is no other way to put – simply strange, almost unexplainable outside of the Turkish context. In today’s edition of the English-language Today’s Zaman, the paper criticizes the western media’s coverage of the case in an article headlined: “Foreign media simplifies labyrinthic Ergenekon as a way out.” Perhaps. Ergenekon certainly is a labyrinth.

At the same time, it’s not hard to criticize some of the reporting that’s been done on Ergenekon by some of the Turkish papers, especially the pro-government ones (such as Today’s Zaman and it’s Turkish-language counterpart, Zaman). Often times, it’s been credulous and breathless, quick to attach to Ergenekon every unexplained political and criminal misdeed that has taken place in Turkey over the last few decades. Columnist Andrew Finkel, a wry observer of Turkish politics for Today’s Zaman, gave one of his recent pieces the title: “Ergenekon Ate My Homework.” The case, regardless of its merits, is also becoming part of the bitter struggle here between the liberal Islamic AKP government and the secularist establishment, further muddying the facts.

But it would be dangerous to caricature the case just because it is complicated and confusing. Some 100 people have been arrested as part of the investigation, among them some real nasty figures who had been previously linked to extrajudicial killings and other crimes. And, at the heart of the Ergenekon case lies the question of the Deep State, a phrase used to describe a shadowy zone where state interests intersect with lawless and corrupt elements of the bureaucracy, military and the security establishment. Ergenekon may not be the Deep State itself – perhaps something more like its bastard child – but many believe that going after its plotters would be an important step in dismantling the influence of unelected powers in Turkey.

I provide some background about the Ergenekon debate in an article in today’s Christian Science Monitor. Bianet offers a quick history of the case here.