Monday, October 22, 2012
Markar Esayan
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| Remembering the victims of Malatya |
Turkey has so many issues that have accumulated over time and such a busy agenda that we can hardly allocate sufficient time or interest to the very important developments. Yet it is of vital importance to maintain the general public's interest in such trials and processes. This is because when they are relegated to oblivion, these critical trials may be sabotaged by the deep state networks that still survive in our time.
On Oct. 18, the Bugün daily published testimony given to the court by İlker Çınar, who was a major witness in this trial, and who had been involved in the process leading up to the heinous massacre of three Christian missionaries in Malatya.
Çınar is both a defendant who was released pending trial and a witness. In 2010 and 2011, he had given statements to Zekeriya Öz, one of the leading prosecutors in the trial against Ergenekon -- a clandestine organization nested within the state trying to overthrow or manipulate the democratically elected government -- to whom, I think, this country is highly indebted, and thereby the lawsuit of the murder of Christian missionaries acquired a new dimension, although it was destined for complete oblivion. Already Çınar says: “After these statements of mine, the people against whom I filed official complaints were arrested. Eventually, this clandestine network was exposed to the light, and the course of the lawsuit, which was being manipulated, changed. If I had not made those statements, this lawsuit would end without any change.”
Çınar notes that the murder of the Christian missionaries had been performed by the National Strategies and Operations Department of Turkey (TUSHAD) with the intention of putting the blame on the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Gülen movement, and that he had been a member of this organization.
“After serving TUSHAD and seeing it as the state per se for years, what made me make statements against it is that I have come to realize that this organization is not the state, but a clandestine network nested within the state. It was no longer possible for me to conceal this organization, which is behind all those abhorred attacks against Christians and which is not working for the state. If I had continued to conceal this network, then I would have condoned its acts. That I am acting with my conscience is that I disclosed TUSHAD. … Seeing that the people with whom I had worked were arrested under the investigations into Ergenekon, I conclude that TUSHAD is the armed wing of the Ergenekon terrorist organization. Accordingly, the fact that people with different identities had worked together to carry out the massacre in Malatya proves that this network was an illegal organization. With its manipulations, TUSHAD created a different public perception of missionaries and made sure that the state was abused inthis regard,” Çınar said.
Çınar claims that the TUSHAD network was connected to JİTEM -- a clandestine gendarmerie intelligence unit established in the late 1980s to counter ethnic separatism in the Southeast -- and was established by Hurşit Tolon in 1993, and that he himself was trained by Levent Ersöz. TUSHAD has a department dealing with Christian missionaries. Çınar says he was personally a witness to events confirming that the murder of Christian missionaries in Malatya had been carried out by this department, and that it was originally designed as an attack to intimidate certain groups, but that after it proved to be a violent attack he had come to realize the true nature of the organization.
Indeed, after the massacre, he had phoned in a rage Ruhi Abat, one of the accused in the trial, and Abat spoke to him in harsh tones, saying: “Look at me, man. Listen to me carefully. Understand this: There is no turning back from this business. We only intended to intimidate them. But those bastards killed them. So you will help us. OK?” After this phone call, he realized what sort of business he was in. He further claims that with his personal efforts, he had prevented the murder of another Christian named Behnan Konutgan.
Another interesting point is that Çınar says TUSHAD is still active. The judges decided that Çınar should be exempted from attending hearings as he was part of the witness protection program and was receiving death threats. The court will later hear Çınar as a witness.
The trial is still under way. Of course those who are on trial should be considered innocent until proven guilty. Çınar's claims should be evaluated and tested against other evidence. Yet the statements from an official of this network can hardly be ignored.
Published on Sunday's Zaman, 21 October 2012, Sunday
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