To some, this week's trial represents a revolution in attitudes. Others are more cynical, writes NICHOLAS BIRCH in Istanbul
IS IT the start of a Turkish perestroika, the end of years of manufactured instability and military intervention? Or is it just a mirage dreamed up by Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government to discredit secular rivals, a counter- revolution aimed at ushering in a Turkish Ayatollah Khomeini?
As 56 Turks including two top retired generals appeared in a high-security court outside Istanbul yesterday charged with trying to topple the government, it was a question at the back of many Turks’ minds.
Named after a myth of the origins of the Turkish people, the Ergenekon investigation has gripped this country since June 2007. Eight-six suspects have been on trial since last October charged in connection with the group, and another 50 are named in an indictment prosecutors are giving to an Istanbul court today.
But the crux of the investigation is this week’s trial, where half a dozen generals, including the two most senior officers arrested in 60 years of Turkish multiparty democracy, are charged with “leading a terrorist group” that aimed to “incite armed rebellion” against the government.
Made public in March, the 1,900-page indictment reads at times like a mafia pastiche.
“The chief is upset by what you said,” a senior military police intelligence officer now on trial told Turkey’s third-biggest media mogul in 2003, referring to Ergenekon’s alleged leader, former military police chief Gen Sener Eruygur. “This is someone who shared your difficulties for several years, who gave you his trust. Now he wants payback.”
If prosecutors are right, though, these are more than cardboard- cutout gangsters. Allergic to the religious-minded government and disturbed by the way the reforms it pushed through to start Turkey’s EU accession process were undermining the army’s political dominance, the suspects were allegedly willing to stop at nothing to get it out of power.
“Democracy is going to get us nowhere,” the indictment quotes one university rector now on trial as saying. “Only a revolution will do it. And it must be a national revolution.”
When direct military intervention in 2003 failed, prosecutors allege, Ergenekon conspirators resorted to murder to incite the public against the government. A May 2006 grenade attack on a prominent secular daily failed to get a response, so they ordered the killing of a judge.
Originally blamed on Islamists, the murder triggered public outcry, huge secular street protests and, in April 2007, veiled threats of military intervention.
Eruygur’s lawyer calls the charges “malicious lies”. The lawyer for the other army chief accused of leading the group describes them as “laughable”.
There have been four military interventions in Turkish history, though, each of them preceded by a suspicious wave of political murders and instability.
Unsurprisingly, opinion polls since the start of Ergenekon investigation have shown a majority of Turks support it.
“We have been puppets in the hands of people like this for years,” said Bekir Eroglu, one of roughly 5,000 people who joined an anti-Ergenekon march in Istanbul on Saturday. “Enough is enough.”
In many ways the product of changing balances of power in Turkey since its EU accession bid started in 1999, this week’s trial could not have happened without the tacit support of military top brass determined to wean the army away from its old interventionist habits. But the entente between the government and army chiefs is beginning to look ragged. Following the June 26th publication of a document outlining another alleged military plot against the government, Turkey’s reformist chief of staff complained of an “organised smear campaign” against the army.
Yesterday, as judges began reading through the Ergenekon indictment, rumours were swirling in Ankara that heads of the country’s judiciary were trying to spike investigations by removing prosecutors in charge of the Ergenekon case.
Among supporters of the Ergenekon investigation, some argue that the fact the trial has started at all is evidence of a revolution in mentalities.
As frictions between Turkish state institutions grow, others say it has disintegrated into an unseemly tug-of-war between factions united only by a dubious attachment to democracy.
In court yesterday, the same cynicism was in plentiful supply. Asked by the judge to state his profession, one suspect, a former mayor, replied sardonically: “Professional criminal, your honour.”