Military arrests raise political tensions

Turkish premier accused of using investigation of alleged right-wing plot as an excuse for silencing his government's secular critics.

Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, leaves his seat to address members of parliament in Ankara.

ISTANBUL // The high-profile arrest of several serving military officers and retired generals in a suspected right-wing plot to bring down the government has raised political tensions in Turkey, fuelled by opposition accusations that the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is using the judicial investigation against the plotters to silence his secular critics. Rusen Cakir, a columnist with Vatan, a daily newspaper, called last week's raids the "most important wave" of arrests yet in the so-called Ergenekon investigation. The arrests targeted more than 30 people in several Turkish provinces, including the army officers and former generals as well as a former high-ranking police chief who is accused of having planned political murders. It is highly unusual for the Turkish police to arrest active or retired military officers. Yesterday, a judge in Istanbul charged a nationalist author, Yalcin Kucuk, and Mustafa Levent Goktas, a retired colonel, with "membership in a terrorist organisation", the Anatolia news agency reported. Both were among the 33 people arrested last week. With yesterday's charges, the number of people taken into custody after the latest raid rose to 15. For the first time in the current investigation, police also arrested several serving military officers, four of whom were taken into custody. Investigators suspect them of involvement in a plot by a right-wing group called Ergenekon, which takes its name from the mythical home of the Turks in Central Asia and is said to have prepared assassinations and attacks to provoke a military coup against Mr Erdogan's government. Dozens of suspected Ergenekon members have been on trial in Istanbul since last autumn. After the latest raids, police put dozens of handguns, automatic rifles and hand grenades on public display. The Ergenekon investigation has also turned into a major battleground in a political power struggle between Mr Erdogan and his secular critics, who accuse the prime minister and his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, of pursuing an Islamist agenda and of trying to silence critics. "The AKP has declared war on the republic by using the judiciary," said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a leading member of the Republican People's Party, or CHP, a secular party and the main opposition group in Ankara. The CHP leader, Deniz Baykal, said the AKP was creating an "empire of fear" with the Ergenekon investigation. Coming 18 months after law enforcement authorities in Istanbul unearthed a weapons cache in Istanbul, an event that marked the beginning of the Ergenekon case, the investigation reached its highest level last week with the arrest of Gen Tuncer Kilinc, a retired army general and a former general secretary of the powerful National Security Council in Ankara, a key institution used by the military to influence Turkish politics. Gen Kilinc and two other former generals were released and another retired soldier was taken into custody, awaiting trial. One of the ex-generals, Gen Erdal Sener, was told not to leave the country. Shortly after the arrests, Turkey's general chief of staff, Gen Ilker Basbug, met Mr Erdogan to voice his unease about the way Gen Kilinc and the other former generals had been treated, press reports said. Such warnings by the military leadership set off alarm bells in a country where the military has ousted four governments since 1960. At the same time that Gen Kilinc and the other soldiers were arrested, investigators picked up Ibrahim Sahin, the former deputy head of a special operations unit of the police, who had been convicted several years ago for involvement in a scandal involving the police and right-wing organised gangs. The media reported that police found a list of assassination targets alleged to have belonged to Mr Sahin. It included the brother of the writer and Nobel laureate, Orhan Pamuk, a hate figure for Turkish nationalists, and the patriarch of the Armenian Church, Mesrob Mutafyan. Mr Sahin, who was taken into custody last weekend, denied the charges, news reports said. But newspapers also reported that associates of Mr Sahin were accused of a plot to kill a member of the small Armenian community in the Anatolian town of Sivas. Mr Baykal and other critics concede that accusations against some of the Ergenekon suspects may turn out to be significant. "It is cowardice not to put Ibrahim Sahin, people like that, the gangs, on trial," Mr Baykal told Milliyet, a daily newspaper. But he added that so far every wave of arrests in the Ergenekon case had also targeted honourable citizens who happen to be critics of the government, in an apparent effort to create a connection between these two groups. "[T]his is a matter of political planning." During the arrests last week, investigators also searched the house of Sabih Kanadoglu, a retired prosecutor general and a leading legal expert of Turkish secularists, though he was not arrested, while Kemal Guruz, a former president of Turkey's higher education board and a prominent opponent of the government, was arrested, then released. "This is a psychological operation," Mr Baykal said. [e-mail]