Turkey's trial of the century

As I reported for Prospect in June, Turkish justice has never known anything quite like the trial that is now underway in a high-security prison outside Istanbul. The indictment sheet includes so many codenames it reads like a Grand National line-up: Blondie, Moonshine, Sea Glitter, Velvet Glove. The scandal that is gripping Turkey first erupted in March 2007, with the publication of diaries allegedly written late in 2003 by Ozden Ornek, then commander of Turkey's navy. The diaries detail how Ornek and like-minded officers, convinced the Islamic-rooted ruling AKP party wanted to impose sharia law on the country, plotted to unseat the government by depicting its Cyprus policy as a betrayal of national interests. It appears that the conspiracy (mysteriously codenamed “Blondie”) had been blocked by Turkey's commander-in-chief, and most of the plotters' dabbling with illegality ended there. But some, it now seems, were prepared to go much further. In June 2007, police uncovered an arms cache in the suburban Istanbul house of a retired military petty-officer, triggering the beginning of the criminal investigation into a group dubbed “Ergenekon” (after a legend about the Turks' Central Asian origins). In October 2008, 86 alleged Ergenekon members were put on trial for “attempting to overthrow the government by force.” Fifty-six others, including the two highest-ranking military officers ever charged in six decades of Turkish multiparty democracy, appeared in court on 20th July 2009. A third indictment was made public on 5th August. The heart of the case, prosecutors say, is a plot involving military and police officers, prominent journalists, academics and mafiosi to stir up civil unrest and force an army coup. At its head is Sener Eruygur, a former military police chief whose hawkish stance seems alternately to have exasperated and frightened his erstwhile co-conspirators in "Blondie." At times, the Ergenekon transcript reads like a pastiche mafia film. But prosecutors believe the group went well beyond bullying gangsterism. The third indictment details plots to assassinate Turkey's Armenian patriarch and leaders of the country's Alevi community, a 10-million strong heterodox Shi'a Muslim group. Investigators believe that the group actually made use of the huge arms caches that they have found across Turkey over the past few years: in May 2006 there were grenade attacks on a secularist newspaper, and a fortnight later, a lawyer walked into another pillar of Turkey's secular establishment, the Council of State, and gunned down a judge. Blamed at first on Islamists, the attacks triggered a popular secular uprising against the AKP government. At the judge's funeral, cabinet ministers were attacked by angry crowds. Within months, millions had taken to the streets to hear speakers hand-picked by an NGO run by the now retired General Eruygur call for the army to step in. In April 2007, the military issued a statement hinting that it might do just that, triggering early elections. If the aim of the killing was to convince Turks that the country was falling into the hands of violent Islamists, it seemed to be working. In December 2008, however, Turkey's Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that the murderer, who had been sentenced to life by another court, should be retried as part of the Ergenekon conspiracy to destabilise the government. He made his first appearance in court with other alleged Ergenekon members in early August. Divided over the issue of Islam since the early 1990s, Turkey has been polarised by Ergenekon. Many Turks remain adamant that the whole investigation was dreamed up by the AKP to undermine its ideological rivals, starting with the army. The sweeping liberal reforms that the AKP passed immediately after it came to power in 2002 were a means of ensuring western support, these people say. With that now in the bag, the party has begun to show its true authoritarian face. State institutions are now so packed with AKP cronies, one leading investigative journalist says, that "leaks have... dried up." Tax inspectors slap massive fines on opposition media groups.

Other analysts see parallels between Ergenekon investigations and the hounding from power after 1997 of an Islamist government that included many of today's AKP leaders. Back then, the secular media ran a campaign of scurrilous innuendo. Today, it is the pro-government media's turn, and there is a whiff of revenge in the air. "They are acting as judge, jury and executioner," says journalist Rusen Cakir. Sometimes almost literally: on one show on a religious TV channel which fictionalises the Day of Judgement, a figure representing an Islamic St Peter sends characters identifiable as leading secularists to burn in hellfire. But the fact that the Ergenekon trial—which is expected to last for two years—has happened at all is a sign of more fundamental change: that the power of the elite that has puppet-mastered Turkish politics for over half a century is ebbing. Abetted by prototypes of the academics and journalists now in the dock, soldiers have removed elected governments from power four times since 1960. While South American countries tried their juntas, Turks still name primary schools after the leaders of theirs.

"What we are living through today are the birth pangs of a new regime—the death of 60 years of 'guarded' democracy, the birth of a Turkey that has the full democracy it deserves," argues Alper Gormus, editor of the magazine Nokta, that revealed the original coup plots in 2007 and was closed down for its pains. Nowhere is this progress more evident than in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, where hundreds of civilians were killed by state-backed death squads at the height of an uprising that began in 1984. Heartened by the sight of formerly untouchable military men whom they accuse of “disappearing” their relatives being arrested in connection with Ergenekon, scores of families have applied for suspected mass graves to be excavated. Digging began in March. By April, police were beginning to round up suspected killers. Ergenekon is widely viewed as a power struggle between AKP and the army, but in fact the military top-brass has supported investigations. Filling military jails with politicians may have been all right in the days of the cold war, when the west looked to Turkey to police Nato's eastern borders and turned a blind eye to human rights abuses. But today, with EU membership on the cards, old-school generals like Sener Eruygur damage the army's reputation both domestically and internationally. That said, there have been signs in recent weeks that the tacit cooperation between government and military is wearing thin. When a newspaper published a document in June that appeared to be a blueprint for yet another alleged plot by army officers against the government, army chief Ilker Basbug dismissed it as "a piece of paper." There is an "organised smear campaign" against the military, he said angrily. (The AKP responded by hustling a law allowing civil courts to try military personnel through parliament.) Fearing that the Ergenekon investigation will only dissolve already limited public trust in state institutions, pro-democracy analysts remain divided over what needs to be done. Some say the AKP needs to attack the roots of the mentality that permitted Ergenekon-style groups to flourish for decades. Other realists urge caution, arguing that change can only be pushed through in collaboration with Turkey’s unelected elites. Whatever happens, the onus lies on the government. The more it can convince Turks of all stripes of its democratic credentials, the more painless the radical transformation Turkey is living through will be. It has its work cut out.