New arrests are raising tensions in an already divided Turkish society, worries Gareth Jenkins The often tense relations between the fiercely secularist Turkish military and government of the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP) were plunged into a fresh crisis last week following the detention of nearly 40 known opponents of the government, including 10 serving and retired members of the military, in police raids across the country. The raids were part of an ongoing investigation into an alleged shadowy ultranationalist group known to the Turkish media as "Ergenekon". The investigation was triggered by the June 2007 discovery of a crate of grenades, in a house in an Istanbul shantytown which the Ergenekon group was allegedly planning to use as part of a violent campaign to try to destabilise the JDP government. It is no secret that many Turkish secularists, including the Turkish military, remain deeply concerned by what they regard as the threat posed by the JDP to the prevailing interpretation of secularism in Turkey. The Ergenekon investigation is based on at least a grain of truth: a handful of the JDP's hardline opponents did attempt to establish a clandestine organisation dedicated to destabilising the government. However, it appears to have been a very small and shoddily-organised organisation, whose ambitions far exceeded its size or capabilities. Nevertheless, JDP sympathisers within the judicial system seem to be more interested in using the opportunity to try to implicate and discredit the government's most outspoken opponents. Last Wednesday's detentions were the tenth in a series of raids which have seen nearly 200 people detained and over 80 formally charged with membership of "the Ergenekon terrorist organisation". JDP supporters have hailed the Ergenekon investigation as a triumph for democracy and the rule of law. However, the 2,455 page indictment which was presented to an Istanbul court in July 2008 is a hodge-podge of fact, fantasy, rumour, speculation and blatant invention which seeks to portray a motley collection of journalists, academics, lawyers, doctors, politicians and former members of the security forces as belonging to an improbably vast covert organisation which had been directly or indirectly responsible for virtually every act of political violence in Turkey over the last 20 years. In September 2008, the investigation descended into farce when a transsexual concert organiser and one of Turkey's most famous actresses were briefly detained on suspicion of being members of a secret Ergenekon terrorist cell. Last Wednesday's detentions were arguably the most brazen to date. The detainees included three retired generals who had played a major role in the 1997 military-orchestrated campaign to topple a government led by the Islamist Welfare Party, which was where most of the leading members of the JDP began their political careers. The police also detained Kemal Guruz, the former head of the Supreme Electoral Board who had harshly criticised the JDP's attempts to lift the ban which prevents headscarfed women from studying at university. In addition, they spent nine hours searching the home of Sabih Kanadoglu, the honorary president of the Supreme Court of Appeal and the architect of the legal formula which had blocked the JDP's first attempt to appoint foreign minister Abdullah Gul to the presidency in May 2007. Even though pro-JDP elements in the media tried to portray the detentions as proving that nobody in Turkey was untouchable, to the vast majority of impartial observers, they simply looked like revenge. Few even of Kanadoglu's and Gurel's most outspoken opponents seriously believe that they were members of a terrorist organisation. The JDP's claims that the detentions were the product of a thorough investigation were hardly reinforced by the police arriving to detain former Istanbul mayor Bedrettin Dalan, only to discover that he had been in the US for the past two months, where his wife is undergoing medical treatment; something which even the most cursory examination of border police computer records would have revealed. Undeterred, the police detained Dalan's son instead. The raids reinforced the impression in the Turkish military that the JDP is now engaged in a political witch-hunt. On Wednesday evening, Chief of Staff General Ilker Basbug called his leading commanders to Ankara for an emergency six- hour meeting. No statement was released at the end of the meeting. Nor has any information about what was discussed been leaked to the press. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was in Istanbul. When he arrived back in Ankara at midday on Thursday he was told that Basbug had demanded an immediate meeting. The meeting, which had originally been expected to last for around 45 minutes, continued for nearly 75 minutes. Nothing has yet been leaked into the public domain about what the two discussed except that it was related to the detentions the previous day. But it is likely that, at the very least, Basbug warned the JDP against using its control over the police to conduct a judicial witch-hunt against its political opponents. Over the next few days, all the prominent figures in Wednesday's raids -- including the three retired generals, Gurel, Kanadoglu and Dalan's son -- were all released without charge. It is still unclear whether the pro-AKP prosecutor who ordered last Wednesday's raids had received orders from high-ranking members of the party, although he is likely at the very least acting with their tacit consent. But his actions have served to heighten tensions not only between the JDP and the military but also in Turkish society as a whole. "I don't share the political opinions of those who were detained on Wednesday," said a 51-year-old mathematics teacher who asked not to be named. "But if the police can storm into such prominent people's houses, haul them off to prison and accuse them of being terrorists without any evidence, where does that leave the rest of us? How safe can we feel?"
