A COUP ATTEMPT OR A POLITICAL SHOW?

Until last year, rank-and-file Turks associated the word Ergenekon with the mythical homeland of Turkic peoples which served as shelter for a group of fighters who had survived a bloody battle. It is believed that they laid the foundations of the nation and then joined the world under the leadership of a grey wolf.

However, after the media reported the existence of an underground extremist organization under the same name 13 month ago, the situation drastically changed. The matter is not about the existence of such a group of people, but about their goal, i.e. a coup d'etat. Having experienced two coup attempts (27 May 1960 and 12 September 1980), the Turks remember very well what a high price they had to pay for returning to democratic values.

All this gave a start to the largest criminal investigation in the history of the country. The Turkish Interior Ministry reported that members of Ergenekon were planning to organize a series of terrorist attacks, kidnappings and rallies in order to carry out a coup on 7 July 2008. According to the plotters' plan, left-wing non-government organizations were supposed to stage mass rallies in major cities of the country on that day, and the government of Erdogan would be overthrown after clashes with the police and the following atmosphere of chaos. The preparations were kept top secret, and as it always happens, the secret was disclosed by sheer luck - after an ordinary raid by the Istanbul police. On 12 June 2007, 27 hand grenades were seized in a house in Istanbul's Umraniye district. The suspect was the retired captain Oktay Yildirim. During a search in his flat, the police also found a secret dossier that served as a basis for arrests of Ergenekon members.

The events continued on 22 January this year as the police arrested 33 well-known persons of the country, including the retired general Veli Kucuk. The operation to detain Ergenekon members was carried out simultaneously in 24 places in six provinces.

According to the investigation, members of the organization did not shun anything to achieve their goals, including cooperation with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party and the left-wing extremist DHKP-C. The plotters planned to physically eliminate all "pro-Islamist elements" - members of the ruling party and supporters of the leader of the Nurcu religious movement Fethullah Gulen - within four or five days. The investigation officially announced that Ergenekon members were preparing a number of assassination attempts, including on the life of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who was supposed to be "blown up" while crossing an Ankara bridge. The backbone of Ergenekon was the ultra-left Workers' Party, and its leader Dogu Perincek authored a manifesto that was supposed to be announced on the coup day.

All assassination attempts were supposed to be carried out by terrorists, which is, to be honest, hard to believe. If we follow the logic of the investigation, Ergenekon was led by retired generals - people who have dedicated years of their life to the fight against terrorists. This shows a clear discrepancy in the goals of the organization - on the one hand, they planned to defend the values of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and secularism, and on the other, cooperated with terrorists.

Month after month, the police carried out operations to detain activists of the organization -retired servicemen, politicians, journalists, businessmen and university teachers who are regarded as opponents of Prime Minister Erdogan. The sixth and largest operation to detain Ergenekon members was carried out quite recently - on 1 July 2008. Twenty-two prominent figures were arrested in various parts of the country, including the former commander of the first field army and retired army general, Hursit Tolon; Brigadier General Sener Eruygun; the head of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, Sinan Aygun; and the head of the Ankara bureau of Cumhuriyet newspaper, Mustafa Balbay. In total, the number of people arrested in this case was 58. Two retired generals - Tolon and Eruygun - who the investigation believes led the organization have already been officially charged with terrorism. Incidentally, Turkey's Penal Code (Articles 312 and 314) provides for life imprisonment without the right to pardoning for any coup attempt.

It is notable that the Turkish general staff, which is regarded as the main defender of the secular foundations of the state, immediately distanced itself from any link to the plotters. The commander of the country's ground forces, General Ilker Basbug, who is expected to be elected new army chief of staff on 31 August, flatly denied the media reports about coordinated actions between retired generals and admirals who were members of Ergenekon, and the army command.

Although reports about the preparation of coup attempts penetrated the Turkish media in 2003-2004 (the public learnt about coup plans codenamed Sarikiz and Ayisigi at the time), this information was denied subsequently. For the sake of fairness, we have to say that this time the investigation found out about the unbelievable involvement in the case of the retired general Veli Kucuk from the general staff itself.

The number of pages in the Ergenekon criminal case has already exceeded 2,500, though none of those arrested has pleaded guilty. On the contrary, they all said that the charges were fabricated and that the Erdogan government organized a "political show". The detainees were supported by the opposition led by the chairman of the Republican People's Party, Deniz Baykal, who also accused the ruling party of "playing the biggest scam in the history of Turkey". According to Baykal, there is no organization called Ergenekon. "This is the government's invention in order to eliminate its opponents," the main opponent of the current Turkish prime minister said.

The court will decide how substantiated are these serious accusations against people attributed to the Ergenekon organization. However, it is interesting that the absolute majority of politicians and experts, both in Turkey and abroad, stress the "ideological" aspect of this case. Parallels between the suit on banning the ruling party and Operation Ergenekon have become an everyday occurrence in the Turkish media.

The Turkish Constitutional Court is expected to deliver its final verdict this month. If the suit of the country's Prosecutor-General Abdurrahman Yancinkaya is accepted, not only the ruling party will be banned, but also its top officials, led by the prime minister, will be barred from political activity for five years. It must be remembered that based on the principle that "it is unacceptable to undermine the secular foundations of the country", the Constitutional Court has earlier banned the activity of political parties four times. They were all led by the former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan who is regarded as the political teacher of the current Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan.

Thus, the Turkish opposition, which has lost its influence on the parliament, has resorted to the only effective tool of pressure on the government and parliament - the Constitutional Court. The opposition appeals to the Court almost against every law adopted by the Turkish parliament in recent years, and in some cases, the suits of the ruling party's opponents were accepted. As a result, having ensured that these tactics are effective, the opposition continues to put pressure on the government.

Erdogan's party also received the most tangible blow of recent years from the Constitutional Court which cancelled the constitutional changes that lifted the ban on the hijab at Turkish universities. In this way, Erdogan failed to keep his main campaign promise.

Many expected counter-measures from the ruling party, but they were substituted by arrests of Ergenekon members. However fiercely the ruling party is trying to deny the link between the suit on the closure of the JDP and the Ergenekon case, the leading Turkish print and electronic media have started heated debates on this issue. Not only Prime Minister Erdogan, who said that the "plotters acted not just against the ruling party, but also against the people", but also President Abdullah Gul, who called on everyone "to wait for the results of the investigation in cold blood", were forced to intervene in the situation.

In this regard, political emotions in the country are running high as the stakes are too great. It is clear that the Justice and Development Party (JDP) whose imaged is based mainly on the rating of one person, will no longer be able to make up lost ground. The party will collapse, which will be followed by another parliamentary election and a coalition government. However, the coalition is unlikely to be able to continue the reforms initiated by the JDP, which will deal a blow to the country's economy. The Turkish economy lost $11 billion in just one day - 1 July when mass arrests of Ergenekon members were made, and that's not the limit. There is a dangerous atmosphere of uncertainty, and "no light can be seen at the end of the tunnel". As a result, international investors are fleeing Turkey, while the country's image is declining. The destabilization of the situation in Turkey is of no benefit to the USA and Europe as they might lose "a reliable political and military ally". Ankara's "firm shoulder" means a lot in such a restless region as the Middle East. For this reason, both Washington and Brussels have made similar statements in recent days: "Ergenekon is an internal affair of Turkey".

There is no doubt that a possible ban on the activities of the Turkish ruling party will become a dangerous signal that may toughen the position of conflicting sides ahead of the 2009 municipal elections.

It is also clear that Erdogan's defeat and the further radical replacement of the higher government echelons will hardly keep Ergenekon members in jail. Many of them will be amnestied under various pretexts as has always been the case with prominent figures in Turkey.