I may be the first person who listened to them in their entirety. I am sure even those who attended that seminar did not have the patience to listen to those boring speeches in full.
This is also the impression I get when I read articles appearing in the media about the seminar. Given the state of the indictment, this also applies to the prosecutors.
However, you don’t need a criminal laboratory in the US or an expert report from Microsoft or professorship from Harvard University to realize that what you hear on those voice recordings is criminal. Merely a pair of ears would suffice.
Moreover, there is no need to fabricate or forge any document, as any document picked at random from the archives of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), which was working as a political party and a bodyguard of the regime in 2003, would very likely be enough to launch a lawsuit resulting in life imprisonment in any normal democratic country governed by the rule of law.
Let us pick a Microsoft-approved, indisputable document with an authentic signature from the indictment:
Two “Situation Assessment” reports by Land Forces Command dated December-February 2003. These two reports were sent to the Operations Department with an introductory letter undersigned by 1st Army Intelligence Department head of staff Col. İzzet Ocak and bearing the classification “confidential” on March 4, 2003, i.e., one day before the seminar. “For the assessment of the land forces commander, to be read by officers at the level of department head, planning and planning training branch head, with the priority placed on those who will attend the plan seminar.”
Playing a ‘war game’
In other words, this report is part of the compulsory reading to be done by those attending the plan seminar, during which, some claim, a war game was played. The report starts with the observation “They are trying to lift the ban on [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan,” continues with a discussion of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) favoritism in appointments to public positions and ends with stories of headscarved girls attending courses and pilgrims who removed bikini ads at airports. Let us read one of the most crucial paragraphs:
“That the AKP will secure the support of the US and its allies by allowing, via voting in Parliament, the US to modernize its bases in Turkey to be used in a possible operation against Iraq, a Muslim country, as it needs this because it does not feel secure, particularly after the Refahyol incident, and it believes it needs to cooperate with the West in order to overcome the TSK obstacle in domestic politics.”
What happens if the military officers who wrote or read this failed to plan the overthrow of the government? Isn’t it already a crime punishable with life imprisonment for an active duty military officer to write, distribute or read such a report?
Those who say “no” should lend an ear to the speech Çetin Doğan gave during the opening of the seminar:
“In this seminar, we prioritize an internal threat which is for the first time treated with an army-wide approach, unlike previous plan studies, which we tend to put into the background, although it deserves to be treated with priority given current developments.”
What is this internal threat? Let us look at Doğan’s closing speech:
“Dear colleagues, I guess you all have realized that I have organized this planning seminar in order to make clear what we should focus on in the context of, first, conjuncture developments. Of course, the Greek matter here is of secondary importance. … Everything you say and every step you take should always be intended to protect and secure the secular democratic republic. In the current state, there is no more dangerous a threat than the one that is against the secular democratic republic.”
Yes, but what can be done against this colossal threat? Let us listen to Doğan’s voice at the seminar:
“Yes, our colleagues have brought to the agenda the question of how to ensure internal unity and integrity. The national unity and integrity can be secured only with a government that can persuasively work to create national unity. A mentality that places emphasis on religion or the unity of a worldwide religious community [ummah] will never secure our national unity. People have diverse religious beliefs. In the past, during the Ottoman era, there were wars waged in the name of religion or conquests done for the promotion of religion. In the old times, nations engaged in wars that lasted seven years, 40 years or 100 years. But now, due to our national interests and because we are a nation-state, our national unity is first glorified in [Mustafa Kemal] Atatürk’s words.
Taking the ‘necessary’ measures
“To this end, first of all, to make the government and Parliament come to their senses, I will tell the chief of General Staff and force command to give an ultimatum to warn Parliament and the government to stop this course of affairs. If need be, summon them and tell them: ‘If you go on like this, you will end up in sh*t. Take the necessary measures in this regard.’ First of all, we must ensure national unity, and we need a persuasive national consensus; this is what I wrote here. To establish a national consensus government, that will be endorsed by the general public and that will be impartial and independent, to form a government that will take the country to elections after so many troubles is first and foremost [incomprehensible] this is of course a solution I imagine within the envisaged scenario. Therefore, I don’t suggest you do this or that now; don’t misunderstand me. There are proposals we have made. I don’t want to share those proposals with you at the moment.”
You should have understood the very reason why this planning seminar was held in the first place.
For those who are still not convinced, let us hearken to the voices from the seminar which have so far gone unnoticed by the public. Just have a look at the following dialogue which was ignored even by the prosecutors:
Doğan: “Well, in this case, we need to control the police with respect of street skirmishes. They have new weapons, vehicles and equipment. Have you formulated plans or measures for controlling or neutralizing the police, I mean the divided police, or exerting our influence on some groups within the police?”
Commander (name unknown): “Sir, we are planning to use them under the supervision of the gendarmerie and keep them under tight control.”
Second commander (name unknown): “We can get 4,000 police officers under control, sir. But I have personal concerns about how the police officers from the intelligence, narcotics and other branches will act.”
Third commander (name unknown): “They tend not to support us. While using them, i.e., the police, under the pretext of martial law, we cannot make use of the hierarchy which we use under the EMASYA [Protocol on Cooperation for Security and Public Order].”
Doğan: “For instance, I see it when I occasionally go on a ride with my official banner in Ankara — sorry, in İstanbul. Some police officers turn their, pardon me, *sses to me. This is so obvious, that they are loyal to the armed forces, with their *sses only.”
Fourth commander (name unknown): “When I was serving in Ankara years ago, I was staying in the same apartment block as Mehmet Aydın, Fehim Adak, Hasan Aksay and Necmettin Erbakan. When these guys came to power, they started to send police officers for their protection to our block. All of them were the people who would perform ritual prayers on tables and wear clogs and live in the same block. Sir, after the elections, there was a tiny piece of information in the papers. I don’t known if any of our colleagues read it. But I read it. The news was that there were many police officers who rushed to congratulate Tayyip [Erdoğan].”
Let us continue. Here is another dialogue:
Col. Memiş (23rd Infantry Regiment commander): “37th slide. Sir, in the third phase of the operation, those people identified as engaging in reactionary activities in the past will be detained. Those detained and arrested will be gathered first in the Burhan Felek Sports Facilities in Üsküdar, in the Netaş Guesthouse in Ümraniye and the Fenerbahçe stadium in Kadıköy. They will then be taken to Ümraniye Prison to be questioned by gendarmerie and police interrogation teams.”
Doğan: “Kadıköy İmam-Hatip High School director — what was his name? Why won’t we take him in as well?”
Memiş: “Sir, the responsibility of Kadıköy had been given to me at a later stage. As I couldn’t obtain his name in full, I didn’t write his name here. He will be arrested as well, sir, as is the case in Üsküdar and Ümraniye.”
A presentation from the seminar
Let us listen to one of the presentations made during this seminar:
Brig. Gen. Varol (2nd Armored Brigade commander): “The area of responsibility of the brigade comprises the Maltepe, Kartal, Pendik, Tuzla and Sultanbeyli districts. Tuzla Maj. İdris Güllüce and Sultanbeyli Mayor Yahya Karakaya will be replaced with the previously identified people.”
Apparently, everyone was a bit annoyed during the planning seminar, and 5th Army Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Şükrü Sarıışık, who later served as the National Security Council (MGK) secretary-general, seemed to have forgotten that they were playing a game:
“Any failure in this regard will lead to the pacification of the [TSK], which, in return, will turn the Republic of Turkey, which is built upon the principles of Atatürk, into a country dominated by the fanaticism of the Middle Ages. Based on our intelligence reports and assessments, it is estimated that a total of 240,000-250,000 people, including 200,000-210,000 in İstanbul, 21,000 in İzmit and 12,000 in Adapazarı, may lend support to reactionary and separatist groups. In particular, if, just as Israel does, we do not take swift and harsh measures concerning the incidents in İstanbul and southeast Anatolia, the reactionary incidents in particular may spread to the whole country. Just as what was done during the War of Independence, necessary measures must be taken, and those who sympathize with reactionary groups must be assimilated.”
The name of the most forthright commander is not known. He let the cat out of the bag, as if to say, “I don’t want to say it openly, but you fail to understand it”:
“Now, what will the true patriots in this country do? If a group of people are armed and, as in the past, an operation is conducted against them, a new initiative will emerge eventually. Will the armed forces promote it or take action against it? When you take a look at the overall situation, you will see that 80 percent of the people hold fundamentalist tendencies. In other words, if they organize, an operation against the fundamentalist elements should not be discounted. Remarks by the command of the 1st brigade underlined that 50 people died every day before [the Sept. 12, 1980 coup]. Left-wingers and right-wingers were clashing. But the Sept. 12 coup removed the problem. It fixed everything. There is no need for much effort to remove such a threat. To me, the best thing is to hold an operation, to stage a Sept. 12-like operation. Of course I did not want to say that, but in the end I am trying to stress this. Take this into consideration in the other speeches as well.”
The “Tayyip” who was intimately mentioned in the seminar in the discussion around anti-fundamentalist and reactionary measures after the AKP coming to power in 2003 must be one of the classmates of the commanders.
But for Sedat Ergin, declared an expert on the Balyoz investigation, this is about a series of problems. And for Doğan’s Harvard professor son-in-law and daughter, who is an academic in the US, these are “disturbing statements that go beyond patterns of liberal-democrat thinking,” but they are not criminal statements.
It is not surprising that these statements and speeches do not disturb a famous journalist serving as the Ankara representative in Turkey in times of military guardianship. I suppose you don’t have to be a Harvard professor to predict what would have happened if a group of generals had held a planning seminar after the election of President Barack Obama in 2008 at the Pentagon to discuss gathering 200,000 Democrats at Yankee Stadium, forming a government of national consensus that would not include leftists and blacks and said, “The FBI cannot be trusted; they paid a visit to Barack to congratulate him.”
By the way, it is good that Kenan Evren did not have a son-in-law from Harvard. Otherwise, we would be making the argument around Sept. 12 that the instruments of torture were invented after 1985.
I am not saying this as one of the three persons who drafted the Balyoz report, because I find the arguments and claims as to whether the documents are authentic worthless. These claims should be reviewed more carefully during the appeal process, and outstanding questions must be addressed. In particular, a fair assessment should be made of the people who did not attend the seminar but whose names were included in the relevant documents and papers. (For the case law suggesting that order and command claims are not sufficient for innocence, see the Nuremberg Trials.)
But all this does not change the facts that we hear. Let us assume that we have all been conned and that the documents are fake. Even if only this planning seminar were admitted as evidence, a crime has been committed that would suffice for the conviction of Doğan and his friends.
Let us consider this example: A man who has been convicted of rape five times in the past is accused of committing the same crime for the sixth time. Let us assume that some defend him, arguing that at the time of the crime the belt thought to have been used in the offence was not invented. Is this an admissible excuse?
It seems that this favor could not be done for a father, let alone a former Kemalist friend or a father-in-law.
*Yıldıray Oğur is a columnist and managing editor at the Taraf daily, where this piece was originally published on Sept. 23.
