SPEAKING OF INJUSTICE

"Injustice boils in men's hearts as does steel in its cauldron, ready to pour forth, white hot, in the fullness of time."
~ Mother Jones.

Ahmet Türk had a few things to say today about the Ergenekon gang and the AKP closure case, from Zaman:

At a parliamentary group meeting yesterday, Türk pointed out that there have been many gangs in the history of Turkey. “We know that since the establishment of the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa [an Ottoman intelligence agency] in 1915-1917, state assassins have been used in certain killings,” Türk said.

He added that the activities of gangs intensify when the Kurdish question is on the agenda.

“Ergenekon and similar gangs are holding the society like an octopus. We want these gangs to be uncovered completely, but the investigation is not going in this direction. We are seeing a power struggle, not a struggle for a transparent and democratic state,” he said.

This follows additional Ergenekon arrests over the last weekend, which included: Doğu Perinçek, chairman of Turkey's Worker's Party (İşçi Partisi--a hardline nationalist party); İlhan Selcuk, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper; and Kemal Alemdaroğlu, former rector of Istanbul University. The main battle here appears to be between AKP and the secularists, particularly CHP, with CHP chairman Deniz Baykal accusing AKP of "trying to build its own 'deep state'" and Erdoğan responding with "If there is a deep state in this country, you (Baykal) would be one to know it best. You are the architecture of the deep state."

Thus the poo-flinging rages fast and furious in this power struggle. Of course, all of this leads people to suspect that the Ergenekon investigation has now become a tool for AKP to use against its enemies, who brought a closure case against it.

That brings us to Ahmet Türk's comments on AKP's closure:

"The government did not show any reaction when the court case opened against us, but today they are seeking formulas to save themselves. Bring the new constitution to Parliament and, if you don’t have a majority, submit it to the public. But you are only out to save yourself."

Certainly AKP is only out to save itself; it's not the "democratic" party that ignoramuses in the West would have us believe. On that, check the points of failure enumerated by Cengiz Çandar at TDN:

If you stop halfway and push the decision with some other calculations in mind to dig out anti-democratic structures within the state structure and seek reconciliation, then the "Ergenekon boomerang" will come back and hit you through the closure indictment.

If you do not adopt a decent and determined approach to the closure of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) and needlessly impose in parliamentary sessions and say "I will not speak with you until you name the PKK terrorists," then you suddenly share the same fate with it.

Instead of undertaking the responsibility to do your best as the executive party in the Dink murder investigation, but rather adopt a different attitude and say "the issue has been transferred to the judiciary," making excuses about Article 301 and any anti-democratic provisions in the legal system yet say "Let's see the implementations," you would be "transferred to the judiciary" all of a sudden.

How can the AKP have a right to object to the closure case, if there is inconsistency in its own acts?

The AKP's wrongdoings are innumerable. You name it; from putting the draft constitution on hold and focusing on the headscarf issue, which unnecessarily turned the political agenda upside down, to not touching the Political Parties Law as one of the by-products of the 1983 Constitution in its fifth year in the government.

The case against the AKP finds legal ground with the current Political Parties Law.

The Political Parties Law, forumlated by the MGK (National Security Council) in 1983, "which was intended to regulate the formation of political parties in advance of the November 1983 National Assembly elections, stipulates that political organizations cannot be based on class, religion, race, or language distinctions . . . Political parties are prohibited from criticizing the military intervention of September 1980 or the actions or decisions of the NSC. The Political Parties Law empowers the NSC and its successor, the Presidential Council, to investigate all party members and candidates for office and to declare any unsuitable."

Ahmet Türk had some words about state-sponsored Newroz violence:

Türk said that before Nevruz they had met with Interior Minister Beşir Atalay and asked him to give the DTP permission to hold celebrations at its own discretion. He said Atalay told them the decision had to be made by the individual governorates.

“We warned them. If we had been allowed to celebrate as a party according to our own schedule, we would have been able to establish discipline. But we witnessed terrible events that we wish we hadn’t had to see,” Türk said.

Apparently, DTP has additional video of the violence which it will submit to Erdoğan and Gül. If no results come from that--and the real shocker would be if results did, in fact, come from the AKP--then DTP plans on releasing the video to the international public to "pass judgement on the videos."

But there's an easy explanation for the failure which is AKP, and that explanation is widely known and is not limited to the Ergenekon case:

But the “Justice and Development Party” is not concerned with justice, but with control, no matter which means, which compromises, which approval were needed for this control…The AKP’s control is guaranteed by the “mutual agreement in Dolmabahce Palace” which Prime Minister Erdogan and Chief of General Staff Büyükanit made, and it is thus naïve to think that justice will be handed out to anyone at a higher level than retired general Veli Kücük. The fact that the AKP has formed a single-party government has made it easy to remain committed to this agreement. On the other hand, this agreement gives the AKP a free hand to deal with the “extra-parliamentarian” pursuits which do not clash with the protected zones of the General Staff.

Ain't that the truth?