Turkish court announces Ergenekon verdicts, ex-army chief gets life

[MooshMoosh]

A Turkish court passed judgment on Monday on nearly 300 defendants accused of plotting to topple the government in a battleground case in the decade-long conflict between Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkey's secularist establishment.
The court sentenced suspects former military chief Gen. İlker Başbuğ, journalist Tuncay Özkan, retired Col. Dursun Çiçek, lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, Workers' Party leader Doğu Perinçek, retired Col. Fuat Selvi, Hasan Ataman Yıldırım, retired generals Hurşit Tolon, Nusret Taşdeler, Hasan Iğsız and Şener Eruygur to aggravated life imprisonment. Retired Brig. Gen. Veli Küçük, Capt. Muzaffer Tekin and Council of State attacker Alparslan Arslan got consecutive life sentences in the trial.

Among some of the verdicts are as follows:

- The court acquitted 21 suspects

- The court separated the cases of two fugitive suspects, Turan Çömez and Bedrettin Dalan.

- Former legal counsel of the General Staff, retired Gen. Hıfzı Çubuklu sentenced to 9 years in prison.

- Well-known gang leader Sedat Peker sentenced to 10 years in prison.

- Lt. Gen. İsmail Hakkı Pekin gets 7 years six months imprisonment.

- Former police chief Adil Serdar Saçan gets 14 years six months.

- Ferda Paksüt gets two years six months.

- The court sentences Vice Adm. Mehmet Otuzbiroğlu to 20 years six months in prison.

-Osman Yıldırım, who was among the suspects of the 2007 Council of State attack, gets 8 years 9 months.

- Retired Col. Arif Doğan, who recently admitted to establishing JİTEM -- a clandestine and illicit unit within the gendarmerie, gets 47 years.

- Ali Yasak, a well-known gangster linked to the figures in the Susurluk incident, gets six years three months.

- Mafia boss Semih Tufan Gülaltay gets 12 years.

- Workers' Party Secretary-General Ferit İlsever gets 15 years.

- Writer Ergun Poyraz gets 29 years and nine months.

- Retired Gen. Veli Küçük, who is a key suspect in the trial, gets life sentence.

- Former Higher Education Board (YÖK) President Kemal Gürüz gets 13 years eleven months.

- Workers’ Party (İP) leader Doğu Perinçek gets 117 years.

- Workers' Party Press Secretary Hikmet Çiçek gets 21 years nine months.

- Key suspect Professor Yalçın Küçük gets 22 years six months.

- Journalist Tuncay Özkan sentenced to life imprisonment.

- Former army commander Hurşit Tolon gets life sentence.

- Retired Maj. Fikret Emek gets 41 years four months.

- Retired Lt. Col. Mustafa Dönmez sentenced to 49 years 2 months.

- Bedirhan Şinal, a suspect of the attack on the Cumhuriyet daily, sentenced to 18 years eight months in prison.

- Emcet Olcayto, lawyer for the Workers' Party, gets 13 years two months.

- Retired NCO Oktay Yıldırım gets 33 years 10 months.

- Drug lord Sami Hoştan sentenced to 10 years.

- Former National Security Council (MGK) Secretary-General Tuncer Kılınç sentenced to 13 years.

- Lt. Col. Mustafa Dönmez gets 49 years two months.

- Journalist Mustafa Balbay gets 34 years eight months.

- Former Ankara Chamber of Commerce President Sinan Aygün gets 13 years six months.

- Former Başkent University Rector Mehmet Haberal gets 12 years six months.



Security forces set up barricades around the courthouse in the Silivri jail complex, west of İstanbul, to tighten security after the defendants' supporters vowed to hold a demonstration against the five-year trial that has exposed deep divisions in Turkish society.

Prosecutors say an alleged network of secular arch-nationalists, code-named Ergenekon, pursued extra-judicial killings and bombings in order to trigger a military coup, an example of the anti-democratic forces which Erdoğan says his Islamist-rooted AK Party has fought to stamp out.

Critics, including the main opposition party, have said the charges are trumped up, aimed at stifling opposition and taming the secularist establishment which has long dominated Turkey. It says the judiciary has been subject to political influence in hearing the case.

Ahead of the verdict, state authorities banned protests at the court, and police on Saturday raided offices of a secularist association, political party and television channel, detaining 20 people for calling for demonstrations.

Police sealed off the main road to the courthouse with fencing topped with razor wire and concrete blocks and around 100 people chanted anti-government slogans.

"The day will come when the AKP will pay the price," some chanted on the approach road to Silivri, where hundreds of riot police were on duty, backed by water cannon vehicles.

Among the 275 defendants accused in the case are retired armed forces commander İlker Basbug and other military officers, politicians, academics and journalists. They deny the charges.

The threat of a coup is not far-fetched: the secularist military staged three coups in Turkey between 1960 and 1980 and pushed the first Islamist-led government out of office in 1997.

But Erdoğan has gradually chipped away at the army's influence since his AK Party first came to power in 2002, including in the courts with the Ergenekon case and the separate "Sledgehammer" plot.

Last September, the court in Silivri sentenced more than 300 military officers to jail on charges of plotting to overthrow Erdoğan a decade ago in "Sledgehammer".

The government's control over NATO's second largest army was clearly illustrated on Saturday when Ankara appointed new military commanders in an overhaul of its top ranks, forcing the retirement of a senior general regarded as a government critic.

The Turkish public initially widely welcomed the trial on the grounds it would bring to account the country's "Deep State" - an undefined network of secularists long believed to have been pulling the strings of power in Turkey.

As the trial has advanced criticism has grown, however. The European Commission has also expressed concern.

The court is expected to begin reading the Ergenekon judgment on Monday morning but the exact timing was uncertain.

Prosecutors have demanded life sentences for 64 of the defendants. Any defendants found guilty were expected to appeal.

Turkish court announces Ergenekon verdicts, ex-army chief gets life - Today's Zaman, your gateway to Turkish daily news

 

[flamer84]

They sure hurried with the verdict after what happened in Egypt...Turkey is now firmly in the hands of Erdogan,unfortunately.

 

[olcayto]

They sure hurried with the verdict after what happened in Egypt...Turkey is now firmly in the hands of Erdogan,unfortunately.

A trial of 5 years and they hurried?

A military should not have political power in a country. The country is in no ones hand.
İf we don't like him we vote him out.

 

[MooshMoosh]

Kemalist miss the army

ANKARA: The anti-government demos sweeping Turkey have sent thousands of angry protesters into the streets, facing off against tear-gas firing riot police. It's the worst unrest to rock Turkey in years, but the country's once all-powerful army is nowhere to be seen.

In fact, it marks the first time in Turkey's modern history that the military, responsible for four coups in the last 50 years, has not intervened in a major political crisis.

Observers say the deafening silence from the army is actually a sign of Turkey's growing democratic maturity. So is the fact that police have been firing rubber bullets, not real bullets to quell protests against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted government, seen as increasingly authoritarian.

"In my parents' time, none of this would have been possible," said history teacher Mehmet, 28, at a protest in Istanbul. "Turkey has changed and the army doesn't interfere anymore. Now, we no longer risk being shot at, and we're making the most of it."

The military, the self-declared defenders of the secular state founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923, has a bloody track record of acting against governments it felt had lost control or were threatening the country's laical values.

But the once all-mighty generals have been steadily sidelined since Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002.

The combative premier, who protesters say is forcing Islamic conservative reforms on the country, has used the courts to silence military critics, with hundreds of officers jailed for plotting to overthrow the government, observers say.

So when tens of thousands of anti-Erdogan protesters fought running battles with police in Istanbul's Taksim Square this week in one of the biggest clashes yet in the demos, soldiers stayed in their barracks.

"That the police is now handling the crisis in Taksim (Square), not the army, is the result of the political de-legitimisation of the military undertaken by the AKP," said Jean-Francois Perouse, director of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies (IFEA) in Istanbul.
"The strategy to penetrate the police with conservatives began well before 2002," he added.
The Turkish army overthrew governments in 1960, 1971 and in 1980, when general Kenan Evren rewrote the constitution to make it a legal right of the army to overthrow a government.

In 1997, the military pressured an Islamic-leaning prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, into stepping down. Erbakan was Erdogan's mentor.

With the army firmly in control, Erdogan, Istanbul mayor at the time, was sentenced to four months in prison for quoting a poem during a party rally which included the line: "The mosques are our barracks, the minarets our bayonets, the domes our helmets and the believers our soldiers".

The experience hardened his aversion for the pro-secular military and he wasted no time diluting its influence when he became premier, analysts say.

He encouraged the appointments of AKP-friendly generals, while scores of military figures were put on trial.

In one high-profile trial, now in its fourth year, 275 suspects -- including top military figures, lawyers, academics and journalists -- stand accused of instigating an uprising against the AKP.

They are said to be linked to a shadowy network of ultranationalists trying to seize control in Turkey, known as "Ergenekon".

In another case, more than 300 active and retired army officers, including three former generals, received prison sentences of up to 20 years last year after a court ruled that a military exercise dubbed "Sledgehammer" in 2003 was an undercover coup plot.
Pro-government groups see the trials as steps toward democracy that will end a tradition of political interference in Turkey.

But supporters of Ataturk's secular legacy say the cases are a "revenge" on circles opposing Erdogan's Islamic-leaning government.

Erdogan himself has compared the current political turmoil to the crisis he faced in April 2007, when the army publicly condemned his plans to have longtime ally Abdullah Gul, who co-founded the AKP along with Erdogan, run for president.

Then, tens of thousands of supporters of Ataturk's secular principles took to the streets to protest and Erdogan's government was expected, like other administrations before it, to bend to the will of the generals.

But Erdogan staved off the challenge and Gul was elected president.
"Today we are in the same situation as April 27, 2007," a defiant Erdogan told AKP supporters last week, suggesting he would stare down this challenge too.

www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-Ea...ey-protests-army-is-conspicuously-absent.ashx

 

[T-123456]

If i were Erdogan i would tighten my security now.
You think they are just going to accept this?
Im sure there is a backup plan somewhere to be implemented.

 

[TheThreePashas]

Normally obviously the civilian government should be in control over the army. But this isn't asserting authority, it's a witch hunt.

They can kiss your ***, İlker Paşa

 

[LegionnairE]

Wait for it, ex army-chief İlker Başbuğ was sentenced for being a terror organization leader. He was actually on the front lines back then we actually fought PKK he was commanding operations against them.

ex-hero, now terrorist. Welcome to Turkey where you'll be branded as a terrorist if you have some balls and the AKP is afraid of you

 

[Ahiska]

Such a shame.........

 

[Neptune]

Like three pashas did. I do recommed everybody to take a pic of our generals as avatar today to protest the case.

 

[damm1t]

Wait for it, ex army-chief İlker Başbuğ was sentenced for being a terror organization leader. He was actually on the front lines back then we actually fought PKK he was commanding operations against them.

ex-hero, now terrorist. Welcome to Turkey where you'll be branded as a terrorist if you have some balls and the AKP is afraid of you

Fighting against PKK is surely his duty that's why he were sitting on the top chair of the army but trying to intervene into politics and to manage it with conspiracies is another story. Ok he fought against PKK let him do whatever he wants come onn he's an "ex-hero"!? Hell yeah noone is untouchable and everyone should know their place. A good step in name of democrasy. By the way @flamer84, why you are so worried mate?

 

[LegionnairE]

Fighting against PKK is surely his duty that's why he were sitting on the top chair of the army but trying to intervene into politics and to manage it with conspiracies is another story. Ok he fought against PKK let him do whatever he wants come onn he's an "ex-hero"!? Hell yeah noone is untouchable and everyone should know their place. A good step in name of democrasy. By the way @flamer84, why you are so worried mate?

Yeah none's untouchable except the Parliament members who has immunity

I'm sorry I guess it's because I don't watch televison or something I've missed thw whole incident. I had no idea Hurşit Tolon and İlker Başbuğ established a terror organization and been fighting against the state for years, gosh I've had a huge blackout

I have one question though, do you believe in your own bvllshit?

 

[Neptune]

Once upon a time in Turkey...Erdogan the magnificant claimed that Turkish Admirals/Generals are terrorists. But they're not as terrorist as PKK that he could negotiate(!). Whatta irony.

 

[flamer84]

By the way @flamer84, why you are so worried mate?

Turkey is a neighbour,NATO ally and important economic partner,i'll hate to see it going down the crapper,you know the catchphrase :"There goes the neighborhood!"
@olcayto I've meant the decision came quick after Egypt.With the current pressure Erdogan has on the media,opposition i have my doubts about future honest elections,'course this is my 2 cents.

 

[olcayto]

Turkey is a neighbour,NATO ally and important economic partner,i'll hate to see it going down the crapper,you know the catchphrase :"There goes the neighborhood!"
@olcayto I've meant the decision came quick after Egypt.With the current pressure Erdogan has on the media,opposition i have my doubts about future honest elections,'course this is my 2 cents.

Well off course you can criticize Erdogan as much as you want.

But can İ ask you a question.

How would you like it if the romanian armed forces had political power in Romania, constantly threatening the government with a coup thus undermining democracy?
A armed force that all ready had certain plans in 2003 to commit a coup by bombing churches and creating a false flag against Bulgaria by downing their own fighter plane?

 

[flamer84]

Well off course you can criticize Erdogan as much as you want.

But can İ ask you a question.

How would you like it if the romanian armed forces had political power in Romania, constantly threatening the government with a coup thus undermining democracy?
A armed force that all ready had certain plans in 2003 to commit a coup by bombing churches and creating a false flag against Bulgaria by downing their own fighter plane?

Ofcourse i'll not like it but we are talking context here.Romania is in no danger of dictatorship,i'm worried that Turkey is,I feel Erdogan will establish an authoritarian rule,undermine democracy and wage war on the opposition but as i've said it's just my opinion,i owill not presume that is the correct one since,there's no shame in admitting it,i don't live in Turkey and I don't have all the facts.