Tag: Recep Tayyip Erdogan

12th president of Turkey

Abandoning Ataturk

Soner Cagaptay
Newsweek
September 19, 2009

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottoman Empire, having suffered military defeats at the hands of Europe, realized it could match its rivals only by becoming a European society itself. So it embarked on a program of intense reforms. In 1863, Sultan Abdulaziz established Darussafaka, the empire’s first high school with a secular Western curriculum in Turkish. In the early 20th century, Kemal Ataturk followed through on the sultan’s dreams, making Turkey a staunchly secular state. Institutions such as Darussafaka, my alma mater, thrived.

Not now. Last month, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) decided to start a training academy for imams in Darussafaka’s iconic, 130-year-old former campus, abandoned by Darussafaka for a new facility in 1994. Such a step would have been unfathomable even two years ago. But it’s a sign of how the era of Ataturk and Abdulaziz is coming to an end.

Since coming to power in 2002, the Islamist AKP has transformed Turkey. Bureaucrats in Ankara now feel compelled to attend prayers lest they be bypassed for promotions. Religious observance has become a necessity for those seeking government appointments or lucrative state contracts. The AKP firmly controls the country’s executive and legislative branches and is extending its power by appointing sympathetic judges, university presidents, and the heads of major civil organizations. The party has used legal loopholes to raise the share of Turkey’s media held by pro-AKP businessmen from 20 percent to about 50 percent.

The increasingly marginalized secular elite is largely to blame for its own downfall. After 1946, when Turkey became a multiparty democracy, the country ran on autopilot. Turkey’s secular establishment grew fatigued and stopped doing what it takes to maintain popular support. After the collapse of communism, Turkey’s working and lower-middle classes largely abandoned the left. Rather than cultivate them, secular parties waited for the masses to come to them. The AKP, by contrast, went to the people, establishing a vast, Tammany Hall-style network to distribute jobs and benefits while preaching traditional Islamist values. The result was its historic 2002 victory.

Ataturk’s followers also neglected key institutions. Consider Darus-safaka. After the school moved to a new campus in the suburbs in 1994, the elite let the handsome, 19th-century buildings with a Bosporus view lay fallow for 15 years. Not one secular business, NGO, or university took interest in them.

And consider the media. While nonreligious and liberal Turks continue to rely on newspapers — the old media — to get their message out, the Islamists have taken over the new. They now dominate the Internet, using a proliferating number of sites to spin news with an anti-Western and pro-AKP twist. This helps shape ordinary Turks’ attitudes. When the global economy collapsed in 2008, for example, these Web sites placed blame for the crisis on a supposed transfer by Lehman Brothers of $40 billion to Israel. Islamist Web sites have also played a major role in shaping the debate around the Ergenekon case, branding liberal and secular opposition figures as “terrorists” for allegedly supporting a coup plot against the AKP government and intimidating some into submission.

Not only do Turkey’s secular forces seem to regard politics as a 9-to-5 job, they also lack a positive vision. The AKP, on the other hand, works around the clock. And while they may seek to undermine Ataturk’s reforms, no one can accuse the Islamists of lacking vision.

This doesn’t mean that secular Turks should give up the game. Instead, they need to learn from their opponents. This means reengaging in retail politics, from grassroots activism to canvassing to voter drives. Secular Turks also need to assert a positive vision for their country’s future. In years past, the sultans, and then Ataturk, used Europe as their model. Secular Turks must update this vision today, defining a liberal, 21st-century Turkey. And they must make that vision more appealing than the AKP’s; otherwise, the people will choose the Islamists. And who can blame them?

Soner Cagaptay is a senior fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.

View this op-ed on our website.

September 21, 2009

ERGENEKON – Dangerous Intrigues in Istanbul

Eric Margolis

Veteran journalist and Author

Posted: September 15, 2009 03:28 PM

Read More: Ataturk, Ergenekon, European Union, Istanbul, Istanbul-Floods, Turkey, Turkey Floods, Turkey Trial, Turkish Muslisms, World News

The name “Ergenekon” may not be familiar to non-Turks, but this murky political affaire has riveted Turkey’s 70 million people.

Thirty-three members of a neo-fascist group called Ergenekon have been on trial, accused of murder, terrorism, and trying to overthrow the elected government. The trial was temporarily suspended after the courthouse was flooded out during torrential rains that inundated Istanbul last week, leaving 31 dead.

This fascinating trial has been exposing the workings of the `deep state,’ a powerful cabal of retired and active military officers, security forces, gangsters, government officials, judges, and business oligarchs that has long been the real power in this complex nation.

Turkey’s military vigorously denies any links to the Ergenekon.

The `deep state’ advocates extreme Turkish nationalism and revived Pan-Turkism, or Turanism, the unification of all Turkic peoples from Turkey to the Great Wall of China.

Its extreme right-wing members are bitterly anti-Islamic, and violently oppose any admission of guilt for the mass killing during World War I of many of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenians. Most Turks insist the killings occurred in the chaos of war and insurrection. Armenians call it the 20th century’s first genocide.

Turkey’s hard right also opposes improving relations with neighbors Armenia and Greece, or making any more concessions to Turkey’s sizable Kurdish minority.

Ergenekon’s plotters stand accused of plans to assassinate officials of PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Part(AKP), a democratic, modernizing movement advocating Islamic principles of fairer wealth distribution and social welfare.

While AKP is a moderate, centrist party, Turkey’s secularists, without any serious evidence, claim it is the spearhead of a radical Islamic movement. The real issue is as much about the secularist’s right to protect their long-enjoyed economic and social privileges as it is about religion.

The plotters reportedly hired hit men to kill leading liberal intellectuals, including acclaimed writer, Orhan Pamuk, and may have murdered a prominent Armenian-Turkish journalist and three Christians. They also oppose Turkey’s entry into the EU as a threat to `Turkishness.’

What makes this case particularly interesting is that Ergenekon may well be linked to Gladio, a secret, far right underground group created in the 1950s by the US and NATO during the Cold War as a `stay behind’ guerrillas to resist Soviet invasion or Communist takeovers. Gladio had a network of agents and caches of arms across Europe with secret links to NATO intelligence services.

Gladio staged numerous bombing attacks and assassinations during the 1970s and ’80s in a effort to promote far right coups in Italy, Belgium, and Turkey, where it remains active.
A cell was even recently uncovered in Switzerland.

In Italy, Gladio members played a key role in the P2 Masonic Lodge’s plot to overthrow the government. The Vatican’s Banco Ambrosiano, its head, Roberto Calvi, and Italian military intelligence, were also involved this intrigue.

The Ergenekon plot is one facet of the intense struggle between Erdogan’s Islamist-lite reformists and Turkey’s 510,000-man armed forces which sees itself as defender of the anti-religious, westernized secular state created in the 1930’s by Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey.

Turkey’s generals are closely allied to the deeply entrenched secularist oligarchy of business barons, judges, university rectors, media groups, and the security services that has made Ataturk’s memory and anti-religious values into a state philosophy.

Turkey’s right-wing generals have overthrown three governments and ousted a fourth. The Turkish military establishment is traditionally close to the US and Israel, with whom it’s had extensive military, arms and intelligence dealings.

Until PM Erdogan’s election, the military was Turkey’s real government behind a thin façade of squabbling elected politicians, a fact lost on western observers who used to urge Turkey’s “democratic” political model on the Muslim world.

An intensifying struggle is under way between the two camps. On the surface, it’s “secularism versus Islamic government.” But that’s just shorthand for the fierce rivalry between the military-industrial-security complex and Erdogan’s supporters, many of whom are recent immigrants to the big cities from rural areas, where Islam remains vital in spite of eight decades of government efforts to stamp it out or tightly control it.

Right-wing forces recently got allies in the Appeals Court to lay spurious corruption charges against Turkey’s respected President, Abdullah Gul. The Erdogan government struck back by levying a US $2.5 billion tax fine on the powerful Dogan media conglomerate that has been a fierce critic and enemy of the prime minister. Both foolish acts injure Turkey’s image as a modern democracy.

Erdogan has been Turkey’s best, most popular prime minister. He has enacted important political, social, legal and economic reforms, and has drawn Turks closer to Europe’s laws and values. He stabilized Turkey’s formerly wild finances and brought a spirit of real democracy to Turkey. The EU keeps warning Turkey’s growling generals to keep out of politics.

After 50 years of trying, Turkey still can’t get into the European Union. Europe clearly wants an obedient Turkey to protect its eastern flank and fend off more troublesome Muslims, but not an equal partner and certainly not a new member, even though Turkey is as qualified for the EU as Bulgaria or Romania.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s Nicholas Sarkozy, both leaders of Europe’s anti-Muslim right, keep saying no to the Turks. The EU wants no more farmers – and productive, lower cost ones at that – and no more Muslims.

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Istanbul: Flash Floods Kill At Least 20 After Worst Rain In Decades

ISTANBUL — The heaviest rainfall in at least eight decades sent flash floods barreling across a major highway and into busy business districts in Turkey’s…

September 16, 2009

Erdogan Puts Turkey on the Move

Whether it’s handling the Kurdish question, trade with Iraq, internal security, or other issues, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is working hard in many arenas, offering Turkey’s leadership in the region, and enhancing life for the Turks, notes Patrick Seale.

After a long and bitter stalemate, broken only by bloody clashes, the Turkish government and the Kurdish Revolutionary Workers party (PKK) seem at last to be moving towards a political settlement.

This month, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and the PKK leader Abdallah Ocalan, now serving a life-sentence in an island prison ever since his arrest in 1999, have both spoken of the need for a negotiated end to the conflict — a conflict which has claimed more than 40,000 lives since the PKK launched an armed rebellion against the Turkish state 25 years ago.

On both sides, this indicates a striking change of tone, as well as a willingness to breach long-standing taboos. Indeed, both Erdogan and Ocalan have announced their intention shortly to publish suggestions about how reconciliation can be achieved. There seems even to be some sort of competition between them over who will first come up with a credible peace plan.

Earlier this month, Erdogan held a four-hour meeting with key ministers to discuss the Kurdish questions. Interior Minister Besit Atalay said that “If it can solve this problem, Turkey will free itself from shackles.” Erdogan has also sought the views of the United States and Iraq.

Meanwhile, conciliatory remarks have also been made by Murat Karayilan, who took over the PKK leadership from the jailed Ocalan. In an interview with the French daily Le Monde (16-17 August), conducted in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq, Karayilan declared: “The two sides must lay down their arms…We have not been separatists for more than ten years.

“The solution lies within the actual borders [of Turkey], but only if Turkey adopts the norms of European democracies… What is required is recognition of Kurdish identity, and of cultural and political rights… For the moment, however, the State only lists what it will not do: no freedom for Ocalan, no education in the Kurdish language, no autonomy. Why cannot Kurds be educated in their own language?”

Several factors account for the more promising climate between Turkey and PKK, a hard-line Marxist movement, which until recently did not hesitate to resort to terror. The anticipated departure of U.S. forces from Iraq is creating a new situation for all the interested parties — for the Iraq Government in Baghdad, for the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil, and for the PKK in their mountain camps.

Soon to be deprived of U.S. protection, Masud Barzani’s KRG is in need of good relations with both Ankara and Baghdad. It knows that it will eventually have to reach an amicable agreement with Baghdad over the future of Kirkuk, an oil-rich province it covets — or risk a war in which it may not come off best against the well-trained and re-equipped Iraqi army.

The PKK, in turn, fears that it will be sacrificed on the altar of Turkish-KRG relations, which are improving by the day, fuelled by booming cross border trade. Ankara is evidently wooing the KRG, having decided that Masud Barzani’s administration in Erbil is a potential ally against the wild men of the PKK. There are plans to open Turkish consulates in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Turkey’s leaders, for their part, are well aware that if their country is to play its ambitious role as an energy hub between Central Asia and the Caucasus on the one hand and Western Europe on the other, peace in Kurdish-inhabited eastern Anatolia is a must.

An important factor in the equation is Prime Minister Erdogan’s gradual demilitarisation of Turkey’s political system. Step by step, he has managed to tame the once all-powerful Turkish armed services which, since the creation of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal in 1923, have carried out several coups d’etat and often acted like a state within the state.

A recent reform, much encouraged by the European Union, was the adoption of a law under which members of the armed services, accused of grave crimes, can be tried by civil rather than by military courts. The military’s influence in politics has also been reduced by the appointment of a civilian to head the National Security Council.

Needless to say, the armed service chiefs are the fiercest opponents of reconciliation with the PKK, a movement against which they have waged a pitiless struggle for a quarter of a century. Thus, Erdogan has had to curtail the independent political power of the military to allow his opening to the PKK to have a chance of success.

A significant development has been the arrest since 2007 of dozens of retired military officers, businessmen, academics, and other secular opponents of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AP). They have been accused of membership of a shadowy organisation of extreme nationalist views, known as the Ergenekon network. At a series of trial this summer, some of the alleged members, including two senior general, Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur, have been accused of seeking to destabilise the government by planning violent attacks.

Prime Minister Erdogan and his close colleague President Abdallah Gul — who shares his Islamic background — have pioneered a revolution in relations with Turkey’s immediate neighbours, Iran, Iraq and Syria, as well as with the Arab states of the Gulf. Turkey is seeking a greatly expanded role in Middle East affairs — as a trading partner, a peace broker and a bridge to Europe.

According to Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Turkish-Iraqi trade was worth $7bn dollars in 2008 and is due to soar to $20bn by the end of 2010. A clue to the new warmth is Turkey’s decision to release more Euphrates water to both Syria and Iraq, which have faced severe droughts. Iraq is in its fourth consecutive year of drought and has recorded its lowest harvest in a decade.

This has occurred at a time when the Erdogan government’s relations with Israel have cooled. A large majority of Turks — and Erdogan himself — were outraged by Israel’s brutal war on Gaza at the beginning of the year, and by its continued oppression of the Palestinians. In contrast, the Turkish army has long had close ties with Israel, buys Israeli defence equipment, and allows the Israel Air Force to exercise in Turkish airspace.

Meanwhile, the Emir of Qatar, Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani — who has himself pioneered an activist foreign policy in the region and beyond — paid a two-day visit to Turkey this week. Two hundred Turkish companies will be exhibiting their products at the Qatar International Exhibition Center next October. Turkey’s trade with Qatar grew from $132m in 2005 to $1.32bn in 2008.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

Copyright © 2009 Patrick Seale

Source: www.middle-east-online.com, 21.08.2009

August 22, 2009
Turkey and Russia Conclude Energy Deals

By SEBNEM ARSU

Published: August 6, 2009

ISTANBUL — Russia and Turkey concluded energy agreements on Thursday that will support Turkey’s drive to become a regional hub for fuel transshipments while helping Moscow maintain its monopoly on natural gas shipments from Asia to Europe.

Turkey granted the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom use of its territorial waters in the Black Sea, under which the company wants to route its so-called South Stream pipeline to gas markets in Eastern and Southern Europe.

In return, a Russian oil pipeline operator agreed to join a consortium to build a pipeline across the Anatolian Peninsula, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and Gazprom affirmed a commitment to expand an existing Black Sea gas pipeline for possible transshipment across Turkey to Cyprus or Israel.

Energy companies in both countries agreed to a joint venture to build conventional electric power plants, and the Interfax news agency in Russia reported that Prime MinisterVladimir V. Putin offered to reopen talks on Russian assistance to Turkey in building nuclear power reactors.

The agreements were signed in Ankara, the Turkish capital, in meetings between Mr. Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who has joined Mr. Putin on several energy projects, attended the ceremony. The Italian company Eni broke ground on the trans-Anatolian oil pipeline this year.

While the offer of specific pipeline deals and nuclear cooperation represented a new tactic by Mr. Putin, the wider struggle for dominance of the Eurasian pipelines is a long-running chess match in which he has often excelled.

As he has in the past, Mr. Putin traveled to Turkey with his basket of tempting strategic and economic benefits immediately after a similar mission by his opponents. A month ago, European governments signed an agreement in Turkey to support the Western-backed Nabucco pipeline, which would compete directly with the South Stream project.

By skirting Russian territory, the Nabucco pipeline would undercut Moscow’s monopoly on European natural gas shipments and the pricing power and political clout that come with it. That may explain why Nabucco, which cannot go forward without Turkey’s support, has encountered a variety of obstacles thrown up by the Russian government, including efforts to deny it vital gas supplies in the East and a customer base in the West.

Turkey and other countries in the path of Nabucco have been eager players in this geopolitical drama, entertaining offers from both sides. Turkish authorities have even tried, without much success, to leverage the pipeline negotiations to further Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, while keeping options with Russia open, too.

“These countries are more than happy to sign agreements with both parties,” Ana Jelenkovic, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said in a telephone interview from London. “There’s no political benefit to shutting out or ceasing energy relations with Russia.”

Under the deal Mr. Putin obtained Thursday, Gazprom will be allowed to proceed with seismic and environmental tests in Turkey’s exclusive economic zone, necessary preliminary steps for laying the South Stream pipe, Prime Minister Erdogan said at a news conference.

After the meeting, Mr. Putin said, “We agreed on every issue.”

The trans-Anatolian oil pipeline also marginally improves Russia’s position in the region. The pipeline is one of two so-called Bosporus bypass systems circumventing the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, which are operating at capacity in tanker traffic.

The preferred Western route is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which allows companies to ship Caspian Basin crude oil to the West without crossing Russian territory; the pipeline instead crosses the former Soviet republic of Georgia and avoids the crowded straits by cutting across Turkey to the Mediterranean.

Russia prefers northbound pipelines out of the Caspian region that terminate at tanker terminals on the Black Sea. The success of this plan depends, in turn, on creating additional capacity in the Bosporus bypass routes. Russia is backing two such pipelines.

Mr. Putin’s offer to move ahead with a Russian-built nuclear power plant in Turkey suggests a sweetening of the overall Russian offer on energy deals with Turkey, while both Western and Russian proposals are on the table.

The nuclear aspect of the deal drew protests. About a dozen Greenpeace protesters were surrounded by at least 200 armored police officers in central Ankara on Thursday.

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow.

The New York Times

August 7, 2009
Is Turkey preparing for peace?

Simon Tisdall guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 July 2009 16.30 BST

There is much speculation about the government’s ‘Kurdish initiative’ and if it will be enough to end the long-running conflicT

Recep Tayyip Erdogan may be about to deliver the biggest blow yet to the fraying ultra-nationalist legacy of Turkey’s founding father and first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. But ironically given recent controversies, the prime minister’s anticipated demarche is not about advancing his supposed Islamist agenda. Instead it concerns the rights of Turkey’s 12 million-strong ethnic Kurd minority, which Ataturk did more than most to suppress.

Erdogan’s confirmation last week that his government was working on a “Kurdish initiative” to finally resolve a conflict that has claimed 40,000 lives since 1984 has prompted furious speculation about what is in store. It followed similar comments earlier this year by Erdogan’s ally, President Abdullah Gul, who spoke of a “historic opportunity”, and by army chief Ilker Basbug, who characterised the Kurdish problem as a test of Turkey’s modernisation.

Reports in Hurriyet and other Turkish media suggest the plan could include a general amnesty for Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) fighters, enhanced political, economic, language and educational rights, and the reinstatement of banned Kurdish names in south-eastern Anatolian towns. Article 5 of the anti-terror law, which has been used to imprison children for stone-throwing, is also said to be under review.

Erdogan did not say when he would unveil his new strategy. But it is likely to come before 15 August, the date on which the jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, has promised to launch his own “road map” for peace. The PKK has renounced its former aim of of an independent Kurdish state and recently extended a unilateral ceasefire until September. Ocalan, held in solitary confinement for the past 10 years on Imrali island in the sea of Marmara, is expected to offer suggestions on disarmament, political reintegration of PKK members, increased local government autonomy and the creation of a national “dialogue period”.

Ocalan’s road map would present “a solid solution”, Hasip Kaplan of the Kurdish Democratic Society party (DTP) told Hurriyet. “The dialogue period should be initiated … The DTP is ready to contribute to the resolution of this problem,” he said. For his part, Erdogan has an uneven, stop-start record on the Kurdish issue. Although he appears committed, it remains unclear just how far he is prepared to go.

Erdogan’s hesitancy is undoubtedly due in part to the fierce resistance emanating from the same conservative, secular opponents, civilian and military, who accuse him and his Islam-based Justice and Development party of secretly pursuing a religious agenda. “The prime minister has become a very serious risk for Turkey … as he prepares to divide Turkey under the guidance of the butcher of Imrali [Ocalan],” said Devlet Bahceli of the far-right Nationalist Movement party. Deniz Baykal of the Republican People’s party said Erdogan was bowing to EU and US pressure arising from human rights concerns and the stability of northern Iraq.

These persistent internal tensions, illustrated by this month’s trial of two army generals allegedly linked to the “Ergenekon” coup ring and by last year’s uproar over lifting a university headscarf ban, have potential to derail Erdogan’s Kurdish initiative. Equally, if a peace process does take root, it will be seen in some quarters as undermining Ataturk’s ideal of a common people with a common language under a common flag.

But times are changing and even Turkish statist diehards may have to change, too. As historian Andrew Mango points out in a new book published by Haus Publishing, From the Sultan to Ataturk, Ataturk was an authoritarian radical, wedded to a contemporary concept of the nation state and determined to raise his vision of a modern, secular Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman empire. “His objective was to fashion a united Turkish nation out of the disparate Muslim groups inhabiting the country … until they joined the mainstream of the one existing human civilisation which happened to have its centre in the west.” Ataturk had no time for religion, Mango said, nor for separatists and minorities in any shape or form. In 1925, a Kurdish rebellion was brutally crushed and Ataturk’s cultural revolution accelerated.

Eighty-six years after the Treaty of Lausanne, which brought Turkey into being, pressure grows inexorably for a loosening of the Ataturk straitjacket. “There is no doubt that identity policies adopted in the founding period of the Republic of Turkey reflect a notion of modernity that has caused much conflict and suffering and is today entirely out of touch with the spirit of the times,” said Sahin Alpay, writing in Today’s Zaman. “It is high time that Turkey adapt its identity policies to the age of human rights, democracy and respect for diversity.”

July 30, 2009
Turkey Puts Generals on Trial as Erdogan Curbs Army (Update2)

By Ben Holland

July 20 (Bloomberg) — Two of Turkey’s most senior retired generals went on trial today in a case that may determine whether Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan succeeds in reining in the political power of his country’s military.

Sener Eruygur and Hursit Tolon, along with 54 other suspects including journalists, academics and business leaders, are accused of belonging to a group prosecutors say tried to undermine Erdogan by destabilizing the country with armed attacks. Tolon appeared at the court outside Istanbul while Eruygur didn’t attend, the official Anatolia News Agency said. The court set a date of Aug. 6 for the next hearing.

The case is a sign that Erdogan is gaining the upper hand in a six-year power struggle with an army suspicious of his Islamist background. It may strengthen the prime minister’s push to get Turkey into the European Union, which requires civilian control over the military.

“Turkey is coming to a historic crossroads and there’s a determination to confront the army,” said Akin Birdal, an opposition lawmaker and human-rights activist who was jailed by the military when it seized power in a 1980 coup. “Other NATO countries cleaned up their security forces after the Cold War, and Turkey needs to follow this through.”

The first Islamic country President Barack Obama visited, Turkey is NATO’s only Muslim member and a contributor to the alliance’s force in Afghanistan battling the Taliban.

New Law

The trial is a turnaround from two years ago, when the army initially blocked Erdogan’s presidential nominee, Abdullah Gul, 58, roiling markets. It also comes two weeks after Gul approved legislation allowing civil courts to try active military officers. While that law may not affect the case against Ergenekon, the group at the center of the trial, it could mean more civil scrutiny of the military in the future.

Birdal, of the Democratic Society Party, was one of the first people to make use of the new law. He filed charges on July 14 against Cevik Bir, a former deputy chief of general staff, accusing him of inciting nationalist gunmen who shot and severely injured Birdal in his office at the rights association in 1998. Bir hasn’t yet responded to the charges.

At stake, says Erdogan, is who runs a country that in the past half-century has suffered three coups by an army that sees itself as the guardian of Turkey’s secular system.

“Turkey isn’t a police state, it’s not an army state, it’s a democratic and secular state under the rule of law,” the prime minister said at a police graduation ceremony on July 7.

More Arrests

Not everyone accepts Erdogan’s interpretation of the case. Main opposition leader Deniz Baykal of the Republican People’s Party accuses the government of using the investigation to intimidate critics rather than to strengthen Turkey’s democracy.

“The more arrests we’ve seen, the more people whose only crime was opposition to the government were targeted,” said Soner Cagaptay, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “And they’re not reforming in other EU areas: press freedom, gender equality, religious freedoms.”

Erdogan, 55, has chipped away at the military’s powers since coming to power in 2003. He ended army control over the National Security Council in 2003 and ignored objections that same year from the generals to his plan for pursuing the reunification of Cyprus.

The premier refused to back down when the army opposed Gul’s presidential nomination. He called an election and won with 47 percent of the vote, then successfully named Gul again for the post.

Markets Plunge

The dispute caused the benchmark ISE-100 stock index to plunge 7 percent in two days. Since Erdogan’s re-election, the index has lost 56 percent of its value, matching the 57 percent decline of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. After average annual gross domestic product growth of about 7 percent in Erdogan’s first term of office, the economy expanded 1.1 percent in 2008. It will probably contract 5.1 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Erdogan has been negotiating with the fund since May 2008 over lending for the country of 72 million. Foreign direct investment in the first five months of the year fell 52 percent from a year earlier to $3.6 billion, central bank data show.

“Differences between the army and government remain the major political risk” for investors in Turkey, said Nurhan Toguc, chief economist at Ata Invest in Istanbul.

The probe of Ergenekon began in 2007 and culminated 12 months ago with the arrest of Tolon and Eruygur, who were initially jailed and then released pending trial. All suspects deny the charges. Prosecutors filed an indictment against another 52 people today, the Anatolia agency said, without identifying any of them.

Suicide Threat

Opposition parties say Erdogan should change the army- designed 1982 constitution to allow trial of the generals who seized power in 1980. The 92-year-old Kenan Evren, the coup’s leader, told reporters he would commit suicide if brought to trial.

Though the Ergenekon case has been under way since last year, Tolon and Eruygur were indicted later and hadn’t been included in the trial until today. The hearing is taking place in a custom-built courtroom, the country’s largest, at Silivri in the outskirts of Istanbul.

It was constructed after judges were forced to delay the first trial session in October, because the hundreds of suspects, witnesses, lawyers and reporters couldn’t fit into the court.

To contact the reporter on this story; Ben Holland in Istanbul at [email protected].

Last Updated: July 20, 2009 11:43 EDT
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics?pid=newsarchive&sid=a9Sle48If4.U

July 22, 2009