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ANKARA: Caught Red-Handed

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  • ANKARA: Caught Red-Handed

    CAUGHT RED-HANDED
    EKREM DUMANLI

    Today's Zaman
    June 15 2009
    Turkey

    There is no need for hemming and hawing. This is simply a situation
    of being caught red-handed. This is exactly what happened, when those
    preparing the conspiracy of the era were at work, the lights turned
    on and their shadowy plans came to the surface.

    The Taraf daily reported a historic piece of news on Friday when
    it published a document which contains the Turkish Armed Forces'
    (TSK) plot to discredit the ruling Justice and Development Party
    (AK Party) and the Gulen movement, inspired by respected Islamic
    scholar Fethullah Gulen.

    What did Taraf's headline of the lead story say? It said exactly
    the following: "The plot to finish off the AK Party and Gulen
    movement." You cannot imagine what the document the Taraf daily
    published contained! "Agents who were placed in the AK Party will
    be mobilized, enabling the discovery of weapons, ammunition and
    documents at addresses of Gulen's followers as if they were members
    of a terrorist organization." The Gulen movement will be presented
    as having a link to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and a
    propaganda campaign will be launched to show Gulen followers as having
    relations with institutions such as the CIA and Mossad. Officers who
    are suspects in the ongoing trial into Ergenekon, a clandestine crime
    network which has alleged links within the state, will be defended
    and the media will be mobilized to this effect. News stories will be
    prepared about Greece and Armenia that will create reactions among
    the people and that will help expand the voter base of nationalist
    parties. ..."

    This is unbelievable!

    The sole explanation coming from the General Staff is a statement
    released halfheartedly about the launch of an investigation into the
    document. Unfortunately, the General Staff fails to meet the public's
    expectations for a full-fledged investigation on such issues. It does
    not deal with the essence of the charges or unfortunately leads to
    the formation of such an environment because it does not react to
    the content of the documents as much as it gets angry over those who
    leaked such documents. One should investigate those who leaked those
    documents, but one should first investigate the charges. Who dares
    prepare a document showing the TSK as a crime organization? First,
    the General Staff should give an account of this (or investigate it)
    so that everyone can understand the investigation of those leaking
    these documents. Then people may naturally ask the General Staff
    whether it is flawless regarding this issue.

    The name of Col. Dursun Cicek is under the TSK's "Action Plan to
    Fight against Reactionaryism." As we learned from the media, Cicek is
    commissioned in the Operations Command 3rd Support Unit, which replaced
    the Psychological Warfare Department. This means this plot was prepared
    in the center of the General Staff. Moreover, the document is dated
    April 2009, meaning it is very new. It was possible for the General
    Staff to deny the existence of this document at first. It is obvious
    who prepared it and when it was prepared. But the short and ambiguous
    explanations made by the General Staff raised suspicions further. The
    fact that some media outlets immediately began to defend the General
    Staff in the wake of the disclosure of the action plan does not cover
    the scandalous picture.

    A more terrible situation is in question than the situation regarding
    the coup diaries of a former general, which showed the preparations
    of some generals to stage a military coup in 2004. Chief of General
    Staff Gen. Ä°lker BaÅ~_bug dwelled on the importance of democracy
    and supremacy of law in all the speeches he delivered, so he raised
    the people's expectations from the General Staff to respect these
    values. What he does now with his staff that was caught red-handed will
    set an example. Things such as whether he will remove the colonel in
    question from his post "for the safety of the investigation" or whether
    he had knowledge about the document are being debated and will continue
    to be debated more. The General Staff failed to label the document
    prepared two months ago as "fake." After this silence and hesitation,
    the things it says no longer have any value. How unfortunate!

    In every one of his speeches, the chief of General Staff talks about
    democracy and the importance of remaining within the boundaries of
    law. I wonder whether some busybodies understood "remaining within
    the boundaries of law" as first inventing a crime, creating a criminal
    and trying civilians through military courts. I wonder whether this is
    the new way to fight against reactionaryism. There is no need to say
    more; this is called creating a conspiracy, slander and has nothing
    to do with remaining within the boundaries of law. With which reason,
    conscience and mind can it be explained for those who keep in mind the
    "presumption of innocence" when it comes to the Ergenekon suspects
    who were caught with their weapons, maps, action plans and bombs to
    invent crimes for innocent people and transfer them to military courts?

    Did the police plant the document?

    Those caught red-handed are not only wannabe coup plotters and
    conspirers that have infiltrated our military. In this incident, some
    media institutions have also been caught red-handed. Take newspapers
    from June 13 and you'll understand what I'm saying very clearly. A team
    plotting a coup that infiltrated the military is conspiring against the
    government and the nation, and only four newspapers are carrying this
    to their headlines. Is this your understanding of democracy? Is this
    your media responsibility? Is this your journalists' reflex in action?

    Worse, a military court tried to issue a ban on broadcasting
    the accusations. If the General Staff had not issued a statement
    announcing that it is starting an investigation, readers of some
    newspapers would go on with their lives without any knowledge of
    the conspiracy of the century. Particularly, two newspapers whose
    names I will have to mention or else I will have done a wrong to
    future researchers studying media history in Turkey, have acted
    this way openly. One is Posta. It is OK for a newspaper to market
    itself as "cheap," or "easy" or to even appear "cute" to some of its
    readers. But such irresponsibility is detachment from journalism,
    nothing else. Look at the headline they chose for the said news story:
    "Investigation into and Broadcasting Ban on Plan to End Religious
    Fundamentalism." This was the headline? As if there was a "plan to
    end religious fundamentalism" and an investigation was started into
    that. I don't think this was worthy of Posta.

    Even Haberturk, a daily which likes to challenge others by saying it
    has more courage to publish certain news stories than others, chose
    not to include any information about the Action Plan for Fighting
    Religious Fundamentalism. Normally we would expect them to show the
    courage and independence they have shown in energy issues. It is a
    confounding situation!

    The most perplexing situation, however, is, unfortunately, that of the
    Vatan daily. Using the subheading "Strange things are transpiring,"
    the daily took a whole new approach by completely twisting the
    subject. So what is it? Fethullah Gulen said on April 8 that "they
    will present Muslims as terrorists." And so what? What happens if
    he said that? They try to appear as if they are implying something
    using the curiousness inherent to journalism. If you are a journalist,
    you first have to talk about the document at hand; only then can you
    express things indirectly. Was it Mr. Gulen who told a colonel working
    as the commander of the operations command to create such a ridiculous
    document? Who and with what kind of audacity can put together such an
    action plan? It is really not difficult to attach meaning to Gulen's
    words. For in the past few years some armed organizations have been
    guising their units as "IÅ~_ık houses," keep Gulen's books in those
    houses and this situation has been most disturbing to both Gulen and
    those who love him. This is not a secret. This has been written about
    many times. It is also known that some organizations known to have
    suspicious relationships have been attempting to appear close to the
    Gulen movement, which is disturbed by these tactics. This being the
    case, is it right for a journalist to blame the victim? Is it OK for
    a human being to do that?

    Yesterday's Milliyet daily also slightly leaned toward Vatan's tactics
    and tried to raise question marks. What did it say? "It was trying
    to raise suspicion of whether it could be the police that planted
    the action plan in the suspect's office." Luckily, yesterday's issue
    of Star wrote down the process of how the action plan was seized,
    second by second, effectively refuting the argument that the police
    might have planted this document. According to the story in Star,
    the police and the lawyer of the Ergenekon suspect whose office was
    being searched entered the office at the same time, and every second
    of the search was recorded on video. This being the case, what is
    resorting to the claim that "the police planted it" but trying to
    water down the case? What's more, it goes without saying that after
    this point those who claim that the action plan was fake will have
    to confront scientific methods to prove their claim.

    Here is the gist of it: It is important not to hurt the reputation of
    our military, no doubt about it. However, apparently, a group within
    the TSK is still trying social engineering via illegal means. If
    some people have stepped the boundaries of their legal duties and
    attempted to conspire against the government, the average citizen
    and even against television series, this means that everyone has a
    duty. Politicians cannot get rid of this by staying silent. The TSK
    cannot overcome this incident just by investigating the source of
    the leak. The media cannot save themselves from being collaborators
    of propaganda by only producing conspiracy theories. The judiciary
    cannot simply overlook various crimes from "trying to overthrow
    the government" to slander because there is an obvious crime out
    there. What's more, those who were caught red-handed are simply
    standing there in front of our eyes.
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