APPLYING THE MILITARY SOLUTION

"It was not the PKK that did this. The soldiers did it. And the next day they burnt down our shops".
~ Survivor of the Lice Massacre, 1993.

At the end of the month, there will be major changes of command within TSK, as is customary for August. The Higher Military Council (YAŞ) met earlier this month and the changes have been made public. It's no surprise that Land Forces Commander İlker Başbuğ will succeed Büyükanıt as the Chief of General Staff. On the other hand, what is surprising is that YAŞ expelled no Islamist officers, as it had done in previous years. For more on that, see what pro-terrorism think tank Jamestown Foundation had to say about the matter one year ago:

In recent years the expulsion of officers suspected of Islamic activities has become a regular occurrence at YAS meetings. In addition to its regular meeting in August, YAS can also be convened at a time chosen by the chief of the Turkish General Staff (TGS), which has usually been in November or December. A total of 17 officers were expelled in August 2006 and another 35 in November 2006. In 2005 the totals for the two YAS meetings were 11 and four respectively.

Since the early 1990s, identifying Islamist sympathizers in the armed forces has become one of the primary objectives of Turkish military intelligence. Although the expelled officers are usually accused of Islamist “activities,” suspected intent rather than action is usually sufficient to ensure their expulsion. The expelled officers are rarely allowed access to the evidence gathered against them and, under Article 125 of the Turkish Constitution; there is no right of appeal against YAS decisions. Expelled officers automatically lose all their pension rights and frequently have difficulty finding alternative employment.

[ . . . ]

Until relatively recently, the TGS’s primary fear was infiltration by supporters of the Islamic preacher Fetullah Gulen, who is currently in exile in the United States. Gulen’s supporters in Turkey currently control a vast network of businesses, schools, charitable foundations, and media outlets. The movement was an outspoken supporter of the AK Party in the run up to the July 22 general election (Today’s Zaman, July 21).

Alas, no more, according to Akşam, which recently noted that this year's YAŞ appointments included no expulsions:

After a long period of time, TSK, in its Higher Military Council (YAŞ), did not expel any military member. Prior to the YAŞ assembly, there were speculations that TSK would expel military members who were involved with Ergenekon. However, there were no files of any military members regarding expulsion.

This is more evidence that the TSK is involved with a deal with AKP in order to cover up the identities of the true Deep Staters, while blaming Deep State crimes on those currently detained in the Ergenekon case, all of whom are retired and well-known embarassments to the Islamist regime in Ankara, and their lapdogs among the Turkish General Staff.

The Akşam article lists all of the new command appointees, confirming Başbuğ's rise as the new Turkish Chief of Staff at Büyükanıt's retirement at the end of the month. Isık Koşaner will replace Başbuğ as Land Forces Commander. Katil Erdoğan also met with Koşaner the day before his meeting with Başbuğ, according to Islamist Zaman:

Erdoğan, more than a month before the YAŞ meeting and a day before his contact with Gen. Başbuğ on June 24 -- when Başbuğ was the Turkish Land Forces commander -- also met with Gen. Işık Koşaner, when Koşaner was the chief of the Gendarmerie General Command, said informed sources.

The Islamist coup took place on 31 July, the day before YAŞ met to begin confirmations of the new TSK chain of command, when the Constitutional Court ruled on the AKP closure case:

Ten of the 11 judges found the AKP guilty of the charge of being “a centre of anti-secular activity”, Mr Kilic said. But only six voted to close it, one short of the number required to ban the party. Instead, the AKP faces a big cut in its state funding, a penalty that will be compensated for easily by its wealthy backers.

As for Başbuğ, no one should forget that he was one of the butchers of Lice in 1993. Hevallo has more on the Lice Massacre, including pictures, for those who are memory-challenged.

Münir Erten, who confirmed PKK's casualties from the December 2007 aerial bombing campaign, has also been retired.

In the meantime, as part of his preparation for retirement, Yaşar Paşa is getting ready to receive his brand new 1 million Euro armored car, courtesy of the AKP regime:

Yaşar Büyükanıt, who was rescued from the Şemdinli incident by the AKP, has been awarded with a brand new car for his retirement. However, this disturbs CHP. In addition to the YAŞ decision without expulsion of religious officers, the purchase of an Audi A8, worth 1 million Euros, by AKP for Büyükanıt, raised several questions. CHP group parliamentary deputy Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, referring to the Council decision without expulsion, and the purchase of a new car for Büyükanıt, mentioned that this incident raises suspicions of a deal between AKP and TSK. Right after CHP's suspicions [were made public], the General Staff released a severe statement. In the statement, it was mentioned that Büyükanıt survived four assassination attempts, thus it [the armored car] is a necessity.

Turkish president Gül, who, according to the constitution, is supposed to be neutral, also supported this purchase and criticized CHP for its suspicions.

[ . . . ]

In Necati Doğru's column in Vatan, he revealed the vehicle's picture, bill, the document for its export from Germany, the vehicle's price with and without armor, the document for entrance into Turkey, technical specifications, a document sent from the National Defense Ministry to the Customs Ministry to order the Customs Ministry not to charge duty on the import, and a document that shows the vehicle entered Turkey duty-free.

According to Doğru's source in the National Defense Ministry (MSB), the car was imported from Germany for 1 billion YTL. It's an ice-silver metallic color, 4-door, gasoline-burning, 12 cylinder, 6,000 motor engine, 2008 Audi A8 W12 luxury automobile. The vehicle will be for retired Büyükanıt's personal use and TSK claims that any deal between AKP and TSK is mere fantasy.

But the fantasy is unlikely. For example, the previous Chief of General Staff, Hilmi Özkök--widely believed to be Islamist--was so worried about assassination at the end of his tenure as TSK chief that he started bringing his own lunch from home in a lunch box. But there were no indications at the time of his retirement that he was going to get so much as an armored lunch box, much less an armored car for personal use.

When he does retire, Büyükanıt will be able to drive his new armored Audi A8 W12 to his new villa, which is almost complete, in a village near Kuşadası.

Since we're on the subject of armored cars, Turkey is also providing armor for five Toyota Landcruiser V8, four-wheel drive SUV's for the not-so-bright Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. Turkey is also armoring Saakashvili's official Mercedes.

Abdullah Gül, who along with Saakashvili, can clearly read the Russian writing on the wall in the Caucasus, has suddenly become an avid supporter of a New World Order. No doubt this also has to do with the Islamist Turkish regime's warm relationship with the Islamist Iranian regime, but Gül extends it to a so-called AKP "solution" for the Kurdish situation:

Gül repeatedly returned to the importance of Turkey's democratisation process. He said it would ultimately resolve all of the country's domestic problems, including the long-festering conflict with Kurdish nationalists in south-eastern provinces. "Some call it terror, some call it the south-east problem, some call it the Kurdish problem - whatever you call it, we will find a solution," he said.

But we all saw very clearly what the AKP's "solution" for the Kurdish situation was, in September last year, when Gül made his first visit as president to TSK installations in The Southeast. We also saw clearly what AKP's "solution" was last December, February, and in March, during Newroz.

As with Başbuğ's solution in Lice in 1993, so now AKP's solution is also the military solution.

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.

UNDER WHOSE CONTROL?

"While I am aware that the Turkish Prime Minister, Justice Minister and Interior Minister have expressed strong determination to uncover all dimensions of this incident and to expend every effort in bringing the perpetrators to justice, I would like to appeal to your Excellency’s Government to ensure that all deaths that occurred in connection with the Semdinli bookshop bombing are promptly, independently and thoroughly investigated in accordance with the Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions."
~ Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, UN General Assembly, Human Rights Council

There was something interesting from Monday's Milliyet, titled, "A strange speech in the file". In the file is a report by a chairman of the National Forces Association, Fikri Karadağ, one of the accused in the Ergenekon case. The report is a three-page document with the title: "Now Turkey is under our control". This document is the transcription of a conversation between the Turkish Prime Minister, R. Tayyip Erdoğan and the current Chief of the Turkish General Staff, Yaşar Büyükanıt. At the time, Büyükanıt was the TSK Land Forces Commander. The report is a documentation of a secret meeting between the two, and can be found in the annexes of the Ergenekon indictment.

Note that, given the information the document references about the Şemdinli bombing, the meeting probably took place sometime in 2006, before Büyükanıt became the Chief of the Turkish General Staff.

The dialog, as published in Milliyet, is as follows:

Büyükanıt: Mr. Prime Minister the evidence and intelligence that we received shows that TSK and your government is part of a cabal, and you cannot expect us the attitude that you have toward TSK and toward the set-up by foreign supporters against YAŞ (Higher Military Assemblage). If we, as the TSK, did not give any reaction to this, within the constitutional platforms and to your department, it's because we do not want to give support to anyone who wants to lead our country into chaos. Because then they would say, "TSK talked, and the economy collapsed." That is why we did not speak openly to the public. However, we cannot stand anymore for the moves of your party, with the support of foreigners, against TSK.

Erdoğan: My dear Pasha, please don't fear. There won't be any economic crisis in Turkey just because "TSK spoke". We have agreed with the world's most prominent financial institutions, and whatever is supposed to be investigated about you and TSK regarding the Şemdinli incident, this investigation will be done. Turkey is no longer under TSK's control. Turkey will be a country under the control of the people. And there won't be anything wrong with the economy if a paşa from the TSK talks. We are cooperating together with the world's richest groups, like Rockefeller.

Büyükanıt: Mr. Prime Minister, this tone of speech is not the kind of speech of Turkey's prime minister. Did you agree with the world's most prominent financial institutions in order to block TSK from fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities? Mr. Prime Minister, you are in a cabal against Turkey. Behind the Semdinli incident, there is the intelligence service of this foreign forces, who brought your party into power. Mr. Prime Minister, if TSK is investigated, TSK will be cleared. I will be cleared. But you will be the one who is blamed. The Chief of General Staff (Hilmi Özkök), by not seeing the necessity of investigating me, saved TSK's honor. However, if Şemdinli is investigated thoroughly, everyone will see you and your undersecretariat, and those foreign forces that supported you. You are forgetting that your government is representing the state of the Turkish Republic. Mr. Prime Minister, you are not the Turkish Republic's prime minister, but you are Rockefeller's prime minister.

Erdoğan: My dear Paşa, your intelligence is wrong. Behind the Şemdinli incident are the "TSK Warlords".

Büyükanıt: Those "Warlords" are among those who carried AKP to power. Behind you and your party are these "Warlords". Some of our allies are using you and your party as a Trojan horse. You are not the prime minister of the Turkish Republic, but you are the prime minister of the "Warlords". You set up the "bagging incident" against TSK in order to punish it, with the cooperation with those forces who carried you to power, among whom is the US. The English and Zionists set up the Şemdinli incident in order to keep you in power. You are a coward who does not trust the Turkish people, but who trusts Zionists. TSK, sooner or later, will reveal this fact.

Erdoğan: Turkey is under our control. TSK is also under my control. Whoever I want as a paşa, I can appoint him to the General Staff. We have agreed with the US. We are going to have a joint operation with Iraq, Iran, and Syria. We are a partner of the US in the Greater Middle East Project; the US also sees us as their partner. Dear Paşa, Turkey is no longer in TSK's hands.

Büyükanıt: I will have to report this conversation to the Chief of General Staff. You are not a genuine Muslim. You cannot be a citizen of the Turkish Republic. Your attitude is clearly treachery and your treachery will not go without punishment. The people suffered a lot from fake religionists, fake Atatürkists, fake nationalists, and fake democrats, but, at the end, all of them were punished.

Erdoğan: You are not capable of anything. Turkey has been passed to other hands, and is still passing. Everything is under our control, and my advice to you is to also join us.

Büyükanıt: Mr. Prime Minister, I cannot join in treachery with you.

Erdoğan: You misunderstood me (Meanwhile Paşa--Büyükanıt--is trying to leave the room; Erdoğan blocks him and says). . . We are going to punish the Şemdinli prosecutor in the Şemdinli incident. There are some groups that might be against TSK [and] the extension of those groups investigated the incident.

Büyükanıt: These attitudes and flattery are not good [qualities] in a prime minister and I am leaving this disgusting environment. This meeting is over.

At this, Büyükanıt goes and following incidents are written in the report in parenthesis, by saying that Erdoğan called a couple of places by phone. He is described as "very nervous, and, quoting Erdoğan, "Find someone to calm Paşa. We made a big mistake. Whoever said that Yaşar Büyükanıt is open to every kind of offer, mislead us. Find that name." Erdoğan's orders and condemnation followed in the phone conversation.

First of all, the appearance here is one of two gangsters bargaining over some trinket in the Kapalı Çarşı. Bear in mind that this bargaining eventually led to the Dolmabahçe Deal. Part of that deal was the recognition by TSK of Gül as president. In return, in September 2007, AKP permitted the Paşas to intensify their Dirty War in The Southeast. That, in turn, led to further cooperation in the Ergenekon investigation, which has only managed to arrest and indict the old, well-known members of Ergenekon.

Then we have the appearance of the documentation of a 2006 secret meeting between the soon-to-be Chief of Turkish General Staff, Büyükanıt, and Erdoğan, who was, indeed, brought to power by the Bush administration. This document forms part of the supporting documentation of the Ergenekon indictment. If it's a bogus file, why is it in the indictment? If it's bogus, and it's in the indictment anyway, then what about the credibility of the rest of the indictment and supporting documentation?

What then, does that say about AKP's alleged crusade against the Deep State? Remember that AKP has been claiming that the end of the Ergenekon investigation is the end of the Deep State. Yet the Prime Ministry is less than thrilled that this file is annexed to their own indictment and calls it bogus. If it's a bogus file, why is it in the indictment, especially since AKP has been trying to appear as pure as the driven snow throughout this investigation? If it's bogus, and it's in the indictment anyway, then what about the credibility of the rest of the indictment and supporting documentation? What does that say about AKP's public show against Ergenekon?

Above all, the show must go on. As for justice in the Şemdinli bombing . . . fuhgeddaboudit!