Word: ergenekon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2008-2008
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...opening of a trial for 86 people accused of plotting to overthrow Turkey's Islamic-leaning government, forcing a halt in proceedings and prompting a judge to be removed from the case. The defendants--including retired generals, journalists and lawyers--are charged with belonging to a secret group called Ergenekon, which prosecutors say planned a campaign of violence to oust a leadership it saw as threatening Turkey's secular constitution...
...Silivri prison-court. Tensions are high in Turkey, not because of empty political wrangling, but rather because dozens of prominent Turkish men, including former top army officers, face charges for planning alleged attacks and assassinations to destabilize the Turkish state. Government prosecutors have accused the men of comprising the Ergenekon group, a secret network allegedly so sinister it had composed a menu of targets to be eliminated as part of a plan to give the army a pretense to take over the government. Americans should follow this trial not because its details sound lifted from the next James Bond film...
...when Sunday's attack came a day before a top court convened to decide whether to ban the governing party for anti-secularism, and just two days after another court decided to take up the case against the Ergenekon defendants, the timing struck many as significant. "Call me paranoid," says Cuneyt Ulsever, columnist for the mainstream daily Hurriyet. "I think the bomb was Ergenekon at work. It was telling us that they are still here." That seemed to be the angle the PKK itself was taking when it blamed Sunday's attack on "dark forces...
...There is yet a third option being discussed, one that merges the two: that the attack was carried out by renegade PKK militants functioning as terrorists-for-hire - perhaps for operators like those fingered in the Ergenekon indictment. "My impression is that this attack was carried out by subcontractors," Sedat Laciner, director of Turkey's International Strategic Research Organization, told the NTV news channel. "It looks like it was planned by a group who infiltrated the PKK. As an organization, the PKK is weakened. It has become open to this kind of infiltration...
...puzzle may never be solved. Critics of the Ergenekon investigation say that while aspects of the indictment may be relevant, the government is using it to avenge a bid by the secularist establishment - namely the courts and military - to close them down for alleged Islamism. Meanwhile, many supporters of the investigation argue that the case could finally rein in ultra-nationalist elements, which have long seen themselves as beyond the law's reach, and thus mark a crucial juncture in Turkey's democratization...