Major Operation Possibly Founded by CIA 60 Years Ago Busted In Turkey?

In the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in setting up secret insurgency cells in some European countries to resist a future Warsaw Pact invasion. Many of these groups were rumored to wealthy individuals, organized crime networks, and remnants of the defeated fascist organizations. In Italy and Turkey there has been suggestion that such groups have been behind bombings and political assassinations leading up to the present day.'

It appears that the Turkish government has put the leadership of this network, known in Turkey as "Ergenekon", on trial, on the grounds that they were planning a coup against the ruling party, which is hated by hardcore secularists because it has abandoned some of the anti-religious policies of the modern Turkish state such as the ban on headscarves in universities. This group is rumored to have been involved in many attacks in the past, including the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. The Wikipedia page is full of wacky stuff. This could be one of the biggest conspiracy theory bonanzas of modern times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/world/europe/21turkey.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

86 on Trial in Turkish Coup Case

Murad Sezer/Associated Press

A demonstration outside the prison in Silivri, Turkey, on Monday as the trial of 86 people accused of conspiring to overthrow the government began.

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and SEBNEM ARSU

Published: October 20, 2008

SILIVRI, Turkey — One of the most sensational public trials in Turkish history began on Monday when a court started hearing a case against 86 people, among them retired army generals, journalists, and common criminals, charged with crimes including assassinations and bomb attacks in a plot to topple the government.

The main focus of the case is an illegal ultranationalist network, known as Ergenekon — the name is a reference to a central Asian Turkic legend. Prosecutors claim that the organization’s members used violence to try to manufacture chaos in society and weaken support for the government to pave the way for the fifth coup in the history of modern Turkey.

The charges against the group, unveiled this summer in a 2,455-page indictment, include the murders of a judge, a priest, a journalist, three workers of a Christian publishing house, and the bombing of a newspaper. The group is also charged with plotting to kill public figures, including Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist who won the Nobel Prize. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the governing Justice and Development party has been accused of using the case to silence critics who say his party has an Islamist agenda that undermines the secularism enshrined in Turkey’s founding as a democracy in 1923. The party, known by its Turkish abbreviation AKP, insists that it has moved past its Islamic roots and has a modernizing agenda that includes greater freedom of religious expression.

A powerful elite of military officers, judges and senior bureaucrats has steered the country from behind the scenes since its inception, and has overthrown the government four times. That group’s violent fringe was in effect on trial here Monday, in what appears to be the first major effort for a public accounting of state-sponsored crime.

There are other issues besides the suspected coup involved in the case — including political assassinations, other murder plots and possible attacks on NATO sites — that make it appear broader than a struggle between the elite and the governing party, and one of the accused is a member of the governing party: Turhan Comez, a Parliament member who has fled Turkey.

The case has shocked Turkish society. Criticism of the military, even of former officers, is extremely rare, and the fact that Turkey is holding the trial at all is seen by some as victory for open society here.

The indictment states that network “turned our country into a mafia and terror heaven.”

The investigation started last year, when the police, following a telephone tip, raided an apartment in a working-class neighborhood in Istanbul and found a cache of hand grenades. The grenades had the same identifying number as those used in a bomb attack on the offices of a newspaper supporting the elite, Cumhuriyet.

The Turkish police later arrested several suspects, including Veli Kucuk, a retired army general, and Dogu Perincek, a political leader believed to have ties to a Kurdish separatist group that the military has been fighting for years. The police also confiscated documents that prosecutors say outlined in a power point presentation how to restructure the state.

During a raid of a nationalist group in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, the police found a document on one of the suspect’s laptops that outlined an action plan to be taken if anyone from the governing party were to win the presidency. But there was no violence after a party member, Abdullah Gul, was elected president in August 2007.

Actions included what the indictment described as “shock assassinations” of the Greek and Armenian religious leaders in Turkey, as well as a prominent Jewish businessman, Ashak Alaton.

The Justice and Development Party and Mr. Erdogan, its leader, were clearly an important focus for the plotters.

One of the suspects, Tuncay Ozkan, a journalist and the founder of a television network, Kanalturk, was a principal organizer of anti-government rallies that drew hundreds of thousands onto the streets last year.

On Monday, a large, noisy crowd of the suspects’ supporters waved flags and hurled insults outside the court, which is located on the grounds of a prison.