According to senior Turkish government, media, and civil society officials, the Turkish Ergenekon network, a successor to a Cold War-era Gladio stay-behind network established by NATO and the CIA in Turkey, Italy, West Germany, Spain, and other western European countries, is linked to neoconservative think tanks in Washington that all toe the pro-Israeli line.
The neocon think tanks, which, according to a senior Turkish government official, are indistinguishable from the Israel and right-wing Jewish lobbies in the United States. The Turkish Ergenekon network, centered in the military, MIT intelligence organization, certain Turkish think tanks, and among certain Turkish professors, has received assistance and encouragement from Israel's Mossad intelligence and Israel's supporters in the United States to step up the propaganda line that Turkey's reform-minded Justice and Development Party (AKP) is steering Turkey away from Europe and toward an Islamist and pro-Arab foreign policy. In fact, after a week in Turkey, WMR has witnessed first hand that the AKP's goals are to change Turkey's Constitution, imposed after two military coups d'etat, and guarantee freedom of speech, the press, minority and women's rights, and religious freedom for Christians, Jews, Alawites, and even atheists.
However, not happy with Turkey's probe of Ergenekon, which could spread to similar exposures of "deep state" operations in Azerbaijan, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon, Israel has martialed its media and propaganda resources in Washington, DC and Turkey to paint Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a radical Islamist intent on transforming Turkey into an Islamic state in the mold of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi. The charges against Erdogan and his government have also been influenced because of the Turkish government's condemnation of Israel's attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, annexation of Palestinian territory in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Turkey's rapprochement with Syria. One senior Turkish Member of Parliament said that Turkey had even been likened to Malaysia by its detractors in the West.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy, eager to please the neocons and his Israeli friends, has been vehement in opposition to Turkey's membership in NATO. A Turkish MP said Sarkozy was nothing more than a racist. However, Sarkozy may be more concerned about Turkey than its recent criticism of Israel's policies in Gaza and East Jerusalem. If the Turkish government's investigation continues, it may reveal that Ergenekon-like "Deep States," with ties to the Turkish covert network, exist in other countries, including France. If there was an investigation of France's "Deep State," certain information on who and what funded and organized the France-wide arson attacks that propelled Sarkozy into office may be revealed. That, coupled with the real story behind the Clearstream bank account in Luxembourg that laundered money to politicians -- including Sarkozy -- may become a major problem for Sarkozy. The use of false flag terrorist attacks by Ergenekon in Turkey may also lead to similar attacks in other countries, including France and Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has also expressed opposition to Turkey's membership in NATO.
A senior Turkish broadcast media official also charged that the neocon-constructed global villain, Osama Bin Laden, is being manipulated by certain quarters through the release of a series of audio tapes of questionable authenticity.
Israel and the neocons in the United States have purposely distorted what Ergenekon actually is, according to the Turkish media official. The demonization of Turkish reform parties pre-dates the neocon assault on the AKP. The AKP's root party, which did not share all the reform planks of the AKP, the Refah (Welfare) Party, was also also attacked when it was elected to office. It was ousted in 1998 when Turkey's military power guarantor, the Constitutional Court, ruled it illegal.
The AKP is seeking to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Constitutional Court's power since it retains the ability, according to the present Constitution, to declare the AKP, which won the last electrion with 47 percent of the vote, illegal and force it from power. The AKP continues to enjoy widespread support with a 42 percent favorability rating in the polls. The AKP's reforms are being resisted by the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), which has been supportive of the chief Ergenekon conspiracists. Ironically, the CHP, a right-wing party, is afforded membership status in Socialist International.
Like the AKP, Refah stood accused by the Turkish "Deep State," operating through the Constitutional Court, of trying to impose an Islamic theocracy on Turkey.
The Turkish Deep State, also known as the Ergenekon network, has a parallel network operating in the United States that is trying to demonize the AKP by claiming it is attempting to overturn the secular state of Turkey. In reality, Ergenekon, working with Israeli and select Jewish interests in the United States, is trying to preserve the fascistic state established by Mustapha Kemal Ataturk after World War I. It is a state that suppressed not only the freedom of religion for Muslims, but also for Christians.
WMR has obtained details of the intelligence being collected on the American wing of Ergenekon, which, like its Turkish parent, is imbued in America's think tanks, universities, and military-industrial complex.
For example, Cetin Dogan, the former commander-in-chief of the First Army of Turkey based in Istanbul, is the father-in-law of Danny Roderick, a professor of economics at Harvard University who has defended his father-in-law from accusations of involvement in Ergenekon. It just so happens that Dogan is accused of launching in November 2003 false flag terrorist bombings of the British Consulate and HSBC bank in Istanbul to whip up ferver against the AKP government. The false flag attack, blamed on "Al Qaeda," killed 27 people, including British Consul General Roger Short. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush jumped on the "Al Qaeda" bandwagon in condemning the terrorist attacks.
Later, Cetin was named as one of the accused masterminds of OPERATION SLEDGEHAMMER) ("Balyoz"), a plot to detonate bombs in Istanbul’s mosques during Friday prayesr, bomb museums crowded with tourists, and shoot down a Turkish fighter jet and blame it on a Greek attack. The operation was designed to put pressure on the AKP government and then launch a military coup.
Orhan Cengiz, President of the Human Rights Agenda Association and himself a target of Ergenekon -- most visible by the presence of his government-supplied bodyguard -- explained that Ergenekon is a "network of hitmen, conspirators, and many others with international connections." Cengiz also said there are sympathizers who promote Ergenekon and whitewash its activities but are not members of Ergenekon. There are journalists and business people who fall into both categories of members and sympathizers. Cengiz said that the Secretary General of the opposition CHP, Deniz Baykal, is an advocate for Ergenekon.
In addition, Cengiz said Israel wants to use Ergenekon to pressure the Erdogan government away from its reformed foreign policy that seeks new relations with Syria and Iran and is more robust in criticizing Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. There is now a strong alliance between Ergenekon and Israel. Israel's friends and operatives in the pro-Israeli media are painting the investigation of Ergenekon as a "political case with no substance." That theme has been echoed by such pro-Israel entities as The New York Times.
Cengiz said Ergenekon sees itself as the "guardian of the secular system" in Turkey.
Cengiz also stated that there is a strong Ergenekon lobby in the United States and other places, including Russia.
One particular critic of the AKP and the Ergenekon investigation is Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and the Silk Road Studies Program non-resident senior fellow Gareth Jenkins, a British national. The program is partly sponsored by the U.S. government and has held joint programs with George Soros's Open Society Institute. WMR learned from informed sources that Jenkins's job in Turkey is to talk down the Ergenekon network and destroy the criminal case against it. Our sources revealed that Jenkins has the ears of many foreign ambassadors in Ankara.
Other identified supporters of Ergenekon in Washington, according to Turkish government sources, are former CIA station chief in Kabul and Iran-contra schemer Graham Fuller; arch-neocon Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute; and Zeyno Baran of the neocon Hudson Institute. The Hudson Institute actually hosted one of the Ergenekon generals, Deputy Chief of the Turkish General Staff, Ergin Saygun, at a conference in Washington on November 17, 2006. Baran is married to Matthew Bryza, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and a past interlocutor for neocon-led covert operations in Georgia, Ukraine, and other Caucasus and Black Sea countries.
Another key player in the anti-AKP network in Washington is Soner Cagaptay of the neocon and pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Cagaptay is also taking part in an anti-AKP seminar in New York on April 26 sponsored by the pro-Israel Levin Institute.
There are also revelations that Ergenekon attempted to oust Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit in 2002, prior to the AKP's victory in the election. On May 4, 2002, Ecevit became ill and was transported to Baskent University hospital in Ankara. After being sent home, Ecevit fell and broke his rib and was returned to the hospital. Ecevit's condition worsened. The investigation of Ergenekon is now focusing on whether Ergenekon generals were working with Baskent doctors to try to totally incapacitate Ecevit or kill him, thus paving the way for his deputy prime minister, Hüsamettin Özkan of the coalition partner Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), to take over. Ozkan was much more to the liking of the military. The prime minister's wife, Rahsan Ecevit, barred Baskent doctors from seeing her husband.
Ecevit was the first Turkish political leader to expose the existence of the Gladio "stay behind" network in Turkey. He said he first learned of the NATO secret unit in 1974. As Prime Minister between January 26 to November 17, 1974, Ecevit asked to see documents in Gladio. He revealed that he was banned from seeing the Gladio documents by more powerful forces. A few weeks before the 1977 general election, which Ecevit's party won, snipers began firing on a rally of 500,000 people in Taksim Square in Istanbul. The snipers killed 389 people and wounded hundreds of others. Ecevit linked the massacre to Gladio. Ecevit was jailed after being ousted in the military coup led by General Kenan Evren in 1980. Ecevit died on November 5, 2006, after suffering the cerebral hemorrhage the previous May. He had been in an induced coma since the hemorrhage.
Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, the leader of the Motherland Party, from which many AKP leaders began their political careers, narrowly survived an assassination attempt by a Gladio assassin on June 8, 1988. A shooter narrowly missed Ozal's head but he was struck in the finger. The assassination attempt was linked to the head of the Ergenekon nest, the National Security Council. Ozal became President of Turkey in 1989. Ozal died of a suspicious heart attack on 17 April 1993. Ozal's wife Semra, claimed Ozal was poisoned by lemonade. There was no autopsy and blood samples taken from his body disappeared.
Turkey is carrying out an investigation of the secret network discovered by Ecevit. The European Parliament called on all member nations to investigate Gladio in 1990, with little ever accomplished to expose the Deep States throughout Europe.
On November 22, 1990, the European Parliament passed a resolution on Operation Gladio.
Joint resolution replacing B3-2021, 2058, 2068, 2078 and 2087/90 A. having regard to the revelation by several European governments of the existence for 40 years of a clandestine parallel intelligence and armed operations organization in several Member States of the Community, B. whereas for over 40 years this organization has escaped all democratic controls and has been run by the secret services of the states concerned in collaboration with NATO, C. fearing the danger that such clandestine network may have interfered illegally in the internal political affairs of Member States or may still do so, D. whereas in certain Member States military secret services (or uncontrolled branches thereof) were involved in serious cases of terrorism and crime as evidenced by, various judicial inquiries, E. whereas these organizations operated and continue to operate completely outside the law since they are not subject to any parliamentary control and frequently those holding the highest government and constitutional posts are kept in the dark as to these matters, F. whereas the various 'Gladio' organizations have at their disposal independent arsenals and military ressources which give them an unknown strike potential, thereby jeopardizing the democratic structures of the countries in which they are operating or have been operating, G. greatly concerned at the existence of decision-making and operational bodies which are not subject to any form of democratic control and are of a completely clandestine nature at a time when greater Community cooperation in the field of security is a constant subject of discussion, 1. Condemns the clandestine creation of manipulative and operational networks and Calls for a full investigation into the nature, structure, aims and all other aspects of these clandestine organizations or any splinter groups, their use for illegal interference in the internal political affairs of the countries concerned, the problem of terrorism in Europe and the possible collusion of the secret services of Member States or third countries; 2. Protests vigorously at the assumption by certain US military personnel at SHAPE and in NATO of the right to encourage the establishment in Europe of a clandestine intelligence and operation network; 3. Calls on the governments of the Member States to dismantle all clandestine military and paramilitary networks; 4. Calls on the judiciaries of the countries in which the presence of such military organizations has been ascertained to elucidate fully their composition and modus operandi and to clarify any action they may have taken to destabilize the democratic structure of the Member States; 5. Requests all the Member States to take the necessary measures, if necessary by establishing parliamentary committees of inquiry, to draw up a complete list of organizations active in this field, and at the same time to monitor their links with the respective state intelligence services and their links, if any, with terrorist action groups and/or other illegal practices; 6. Calls on the Council of Ministers to provide full information on the activities of these secret intelligence and operational services; 7. Calls on its competent committee to consider holding a hearing in order to clarify the role and impact of the 'Gladio' organization and any similar bodies; 8. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council, the Secretary-General of NATO, the governments of the Member States and the United States Government." |
Turkey, which aspires to become an EU member, is doing more than any EU member in investigating its Gladio offshoot, Ergenekon.
Over the past two decades, three U.S. ambassadors in Ankara, Marc Grossman, Robert Pearson, and Eric Edelman, have been linked, according to those WMR spoke to in Ankara and Istanbul, to Ergenekon, including its Deep State functions in the United States.
The involvement of three U.S. ambassadors in what is known as ETO -- Ergenekon Treror Network -- should make every American pause. In effect, the U.S. State Department had three envoys in Ankara that supported a terrorist organization responsible for, among other atrocities, the following:
Murder of Italian priest Father Andrea Santoro in February 2006
The terrorist attack on the Council of State in 2006
The murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, a prominent Turkish Armenian journalist, in 2007
Trying to assassinate prominent Turkish writer Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk
A shooting at the Council of State
A grenade attack on Cumhuriyet, a left-of-center newspaper
Several attacks on priests in Malatya
Several plans to assassinate Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey
Ergenekon has also been linked to the following terorist groups, which also makes the U.S. embassy in Ankara an aider and abettor of terrorism in Turkey and other countries:
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
The extreme-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C)
The Islamist organization Hizbullah
The ultranationalist Turkish Revenge Brigades (TİT)
The Turkish Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army (TİKKO)
The Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) and
The Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), an extreme group wishing to reinstate the Islamic Caliphate"
The danger of the Ergenekon investigation resulting in disclosure of its American links has CIA and other U.S. government covert planners, in concert with their Ergenekon counterparts, considering three options:
1. Assassinating Prime Minister Erdogan
2. Convince the Turkish Constitutional Court to declare the governing AKP illegal and close it down.
3. Craft a CHP-Nationalist coalition government that would stop the Ergenekon investigation.
Senior AKP officials fear that the second option, closure of the party, could happen at any moment. The Turkish judicial system is also rife with Ergenekon members and supporters, including the Chief Prosecutor of Istanbul.
The fact that Christians including priests and Protestant missionaries, have been killed by Ergenekon and that the terror network's Washington lobby is supported by American Jews like Grossman and Edelman, and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) habitués like Pearson, will not sit well with Americans who have been made ignorant of Ergenekon's facts thanks to Israeli Lobby control over the corporate American media. Ergenekon also planned the assassinations of Kurds, Armenians, and Alawites in Operation Cage. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in switching its support from Turkey to Armenians in supporting the passage of the recent House resolution condemning the World War I-era massacre of the Armenians, may think twice when it becomes common knowledge that American Jewish supporters of Ergenekon have aided in modern-day massacres of Armenians in Turkey. In addition, Freemason and Sephardic Jew, Emanuel Carasso, a Greek emigre to Turkey, provided significant support for the CUP and Young Turks on behalf of the Rothschild banking family. Carasso's son, Daniel, started the food giant Danone, from a small yogurt business.
A senior AKP leader also revealed that Ergenekon is heavily involved in arms smuggling. The official also stated that Ergenekon has extensions of its network in Washington, DC and Moscow and that this involves diplomats, military officers, and civilians. In the planned 2003 Sledgehammer coup against Erdogan, it was discovered that the coup plotters could call on some 40 journalists to support the coup. On the other hand, several other journalists were identified by name among those to be arrested by the coup leaders.
A Turkish government official also admitted that the FBI was ordered to stop its investigation of Turkish bribes and other activities involving the American Turkish Council in Washington because it would "hurt arms smuggling." The details of the investigation into the Turkish smuggling and espionage network were revealed by fired FBI Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds. A number of Turks, including government officials, have either never heard of Edmonds or consider her to be unreliable because the Turkish press contingent in Washington were pressured into either ignoring Edmonds in their copy sent to Turkey from Washington or described her as mentally unstable or unreliable.
One Turkish correspondent in Washington was not as sanguine. After Milliyet correspondent Yasemin Congar reported on the Hudson Institute's connection to Ergenekon she was fired.
The senior AKP official also stated that the Turkish coup plotters are friends of the United States and that this has been the case for quite some time. He recalled when U.S. ambassador to Ankara, James Spain, called the 1980 coup plotters who ousted Ecevit as "our boys."
