THE HUDSON INSTITUTE, ERGENEKON, AND THE ISLAMIST COUP IN TURKEY

"Our boys did it!"
~ Paul Henze, former CIA station chief, Ankara, referring to the 12 September coup.

Info-Turk posted a very interesting article about Ergenekon roots in DC. The original article is in French, but with a little help from Google, we have access to a fairly good translation, which is provided below.

One of the main characters in the article is Zeyno Baran of the Hudson Institute. Regular readers of Rastî will remember that back in June 2007, just before the last Turkish elections, there was a scandal from the Hudson Institute about various "war games" about Turkey that were under discussion there. If you need some background on that scandal, Hevallo also wrote some items on it, so do a search at his place for more info.

That should set you up nicely to understand all that's going on in the article from Info-Turk. I tried to straighten up a bit of the English below, but refer to the original French, at the link in the first paragraph, if something seems wildly off the mark.

Some rear bases network Ergenekon are in Washington

The investigation into the puppeteers behind the destabilization of Turkey revealed the involvement of a number of "temples" of the neo-conservative thought the USA, including the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Center for Security Policy of Frank Gaffney.

These think tanks have played a key role in the campaign to denigrate the party in power in Turkey since 2002, the Party of Justice and Development (AKP or Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi).

They served as a rear base for the network Ergenekon, a network of the extreme right involving the "Grey Wolves" currently being dismantled by Turkish authorities as suspected of plotting a military coup, according to a new "strategy of tension "in the wake of well-known stay-behind network, Gladio.

At the centre of this operation is a certain Zeyno Baran, American citizen of Turkish origin at the Hudson Institute, where there is also David Wurmser and neo-con "frenchy" Laurent Murawiec.

On 2 August, Ms. Baran has almost openly defended Ergenekon in an article published by the Wall Street Journal under the title "Turkish Islamists inspire a new climate of fear".

Disappointed that the USA and the EU have welcomed the decision of the Constitutional Court not to declare the AKP anti-constitutional, it describes the investigation by the Justice Turkish campaign of harassment against opposition.

It is not surprising that she was outraged that the name of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has been mentioned in this context.

"The most important newspaper of the opposition Turkish Cumhuyiyet seems to be a key target. The telephone lines of those editors were placed under listening, and some conversations supposedly against the AKP party were revealed by the press" (this is a lie, because the press discovered them in a report on the investigation made public.) -- Including a transcript of a private conversation between the American newspaper correspondent of a Turkish journal and members of Dick Cheney's staff."

Ms. Baran then complains that Ilhan Selcuk, a major newspaper columnist, has been indicted as a suspect in the Ergenekon case.

Ms. Baran is the wife of Matthew J. Bryza, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs since June 2005. A career diplomat, Bryza spent his life between Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and dealing with hot spots like South Ossetia, Abkhazia and gas pipelines that have caused so much tension since the collapse of the USSR. It will not be surprised that Mr. Bryza is frequently invited as a speaker at the Hudson Institute.

It should be noted here that General Suka Tanyeri, director general of the Strategic Research and Study Center [SAREM, the Turkish General Staff's Strategic Research and Study Center] of the American major state, has been retired.

The American press suggests that one reason for this decision may come from his presence at special sessions, held behind closed doors by the Hudson Institute in June 2007, where delirious scenarios on a possible destabilization of Turkey were discussed.

At the time, this conference, which Baran had attended, had created some noise because it took place during the elections. One of the scenarios studied considering the explosion of two bombs, including one in the greatest city in the country Istanbul, killing some fifty people who would be assigned to the actions of extremist Kurdish PKK and serve to justify an invasion of Iraq.

Is it not surprising that today, [when there is] a full judicial inquiry into Ergenekon, and just when the Constitutional Court examined the legality of the AKP, two bombs have exploded? A bomb exploded in Istanbul and the other the next day in Kirkuk, a city in northern Iraq. Experts see it as a manipulation designed to poison relations which had recently improved.

(LPAC - http://www.solidariteetprogres.org/article4398.html, 7 August 2008)

Well, here's a newsflash for Zeyno Baran and everyone else: there has been another coup in Turkey, and it took place when the Constitutional Court, with a vote that was short only by one to close AKP, decided merely to fine AKP for its anti-secularism. The authors of the French article didn't bother to note how the votes in the court fell. Seven votes were needed for closure but there were only six votes out of eleven in that direction. There were ten votes out of eleven to charge AKP as a source of anti-secularism. Doesn't seem there was too much debate about that fact.

The reality is that now the regime in Ankara is truly Islamist and secularism was sold out by George W. Bush when he put R. Tayyip Erdoğan into power. The paşas, thus abandoned, had no choice but to cut a deal in Dolmabahçe in May 2007.