WHY THE DEEP STATE TARGETS CHRISTIANS

[Yervant1]

WHY THE DEEP STATE TARGETS CHRISTIANS

By Orhan Kemal Cengiz

 

Zaman

23 May 2009, Saturday

 

Some central suspects in the Ergenekon trial were also implicated in

the Malatya massacre and the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist

Hrant Dink on Jan. 19, 2008.

 

Father Andrea Santoro, a Catholic priest, was killed in Trabzon

in 2006. No one realized then that this was the beginning of a

pattern. The militant nationalist who killed Santoro was just 17

years old. The Santoro case was completed with lightning speed.

 

The youngster was sentenced, but nothing was revealed. Then, in 2007,

Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian and a liberal journalist, was shot

dead in front his newspaper, Agos, by another militant nationalist,

who was again a 17-year-old boy from Trabzon. Three months after Dink's

murder, three missionaries were brutally killed in Malatya. After the

Malatya massacre there were many other attacks and murder attempts

targeting Christians once again. A Catholic priest was stabbed in the

stomach during a service at a Catholic church in Ä°zmir. In Samsun,

Diyarbakır and Antalya, other murder attempts were prevented by

successful operations by the police.

 

In all these "successful" or attempted attacks, the perpetrators

had traits in common. They were all very young, mostly under 18 and

no older than 19. They all were ultranationalists with very obvious

ties to well-known ultranationalist groups. Some good questions to

ask would be: Are all these murders and attacks connected? Were these

youngsters directed from one single center? And, most importantly, were

these murders somehow linked to the illegal apparatus within the state?

 

The Ergenekon connection

 

As a lawyer closely watching the Hrant Dink and Malatya massacre cases

(and being directly involved in the latter), I can say that all signs

point to the Ergenekon gang. Some central suspects in the Ergenekon

trial were also indicated in Malatya massacre and Dink cases. Some

suspects had either direct or indirect contacts with Gen. Veli Kucuk,

the retired gendarmerie commander whose name was always involved in

extrajudicial killings (also known as "unsolved murders") carried out

against Kurdish activists in southeastern Turkey. In both cases other

gendarmerie officers were summoned as either suspects or as witnesses.

 

But if these two incidents, the murder and the massacre, were planned

and orchestrated by the Ergenekon gang, what could the purpose or

motivation behind them be? Without having an insight into the mental

framework of Ergenekon, we can not possibly answer this question.

 

Ergenekon and past atrocities

 

Today we have such strong propaganda against the Ergenekon case

(in order to whitewash its suspects) that it is almost impossible

not to lose the sense of direction. The case is presented as if it

were just a fabrication by the government in order20to silence its

political opponents. This is absolutely not the case.

 

I cannot go into all details about the Ergenekon case here, so I will

just focus on its connection to the attacks against Christians in

Turkey. Even if we just focus on this topic, we can see the "depth"

of the organization.

 

There are many documents in the Ergenekon file produced by the members

of this organization. One of these documents defines the "Special

Forces" (Ozel Kuvvetler) as "the eye of Ergenekon." The Special Forces,

a military unit, is the successor of the Special Warfare Center

(Ozel Harp Dairesi -- OHD), another unit in the Turkish military.

 

According to a retired commander of the OHD, Sabri YirmibeÅ~_oglu,

the pogroms against Ä°stanbul's non-Muslims on Sept. 5-6, 1955 "were

the fantastic work of the Special Warfare Center."

 

Ergenekon and anti-Christian activities

 

This "fantastic" tradition continues under Ergenekon. Let us start

with one of the organization's meeting places: the "Turkish Orthodox

Patriarchate" (TOP). TOP was established in the early '20s with the

financial support of Turkish state to fight against the Greek Orthodox

Church. It is a church with no congregation. Since its inception TOP's

only work was to fight against Christians in Turkey. Recently though,

the main focus of TOP has been to fight against missionary activity. =0

D Sevgi Erenol, who is the spokesperson of TOP and who is in prison

now in connection with the Ergenekon case, regularly gave briefings

to top officials about the "missionary threat" in Turkey.

 

Kemal Kerincsiz, an ultranationalist lawyer who was suing liberal

intellectuals for "insulting Turkishness" and who provoked public

opinion against Hrant Dink, has also brought cases against missionaries

before the domestic courts. Ergun Poyraz, who is apparently responsible

for Ergenekon's propaganda war and who wrote many books about Prime

Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, accusing

them having non-Muslim roots, has also published a hate-mongering

book titled "Six Months Amongst Missionaries." This latter book became

the bible of the war against Protestants in Turkey. We now know from

the Ergenekon file that Mr. Poyraz was actively using the archives

of the gendarmerie.

 

The Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO) also used to publish regular

paranoid reports about missionary activities. These "reports" were

taken very seriously by the National Security Council (MGK), which

is dominated by generals, and those reports led the MGK to declare

that missionary activities were a real threat to national security

in Turkey. Sinan Aygun, the chairman of the ATO since 1998, is now

one of the suspects in the Ergenekon case.

 

Ergenekon's mindset

 

Ergenekon has a long his tory in Turkey, and it is not possible to

go into all of it in one article.

 

However, if you want to understand what Ergenekon is and what kind of

mentality it has, just look at the Committee of Union and Progress

(Ä°TC), which was responsible for the massacres of Armenians while

the Ottoman Empire was falling apart. Ergenekon has exactly the same

mindset; it is the last inheritor of the Ä°TC in Turkey. Since Turkey

has never faced its dark past, it has never dissolved these shadowy

structures within the state. It therefore was no coincidence that when

NATO sponsored "shadow armies" (widely known as Operation Gladio),

they developed very strong and deep roots in Turkey. The country is

simply fertile ground for these kinds of illegal structures. In fact

Turkey has never attempted to dissolve them. It is the only NATO

member country that has not exposed and dissolved this organization.

 

When it comes to the question of what the purpose of all these

attacks and propaganda against Christians is, my conclusion would be

as follows: Like its predecessor the Ä°TC, Ergenekon also wants to

"purify" Anatolia.

 

With all these murders they were trying to send the message to

the members of Christian communities in Turkey that they are not

welcome in this country. On the other hand Ergenekon wants to

give the impression to Turkey and the outside world that as soon

as an Islamic-oriented government came to power, massacres against

Christians started. Finally, with these and remaining unsuccessful

murder attempts, they aim at creating obstacles to Turkey's EU path.

 

Why were they specifically trying to create paranoia about missionary

activity? I think this was aimed at making conservative Muslims more

nationalist. They portray missionaries as the agents of "imperialism,"

which seeks to divide Turkey. In this context, Protestants were

used as a kind of scapegoat to provoke Muslims. The main purpose of

Ergenekon, after all, is to create an obsessively nationalist country

cut off from the rest of the world, and especially Europe. Turkey's

democratic system and the rights of its non-Muslim minorities will

be only secured if this fascist gang, and its mentality, fails.