Note in Şık's book contradicts cronyism claims

Serkan Sağlam

The draft of a book written by journalist Ahmet Şık, who is currently under arrest as part of an investigation into Ergenekon -- a clandestine network charged with attempting to overthrow the government -- includes a note the prosecution says came from the administrators of the Ergenekon network.

The note seems to say Şık's allegations, that followers of the Gülen movement in positions of power in the police department favored fellow members to a great extent in order to put their own people in important positions in the police force, are based on a false report.

The draft of the book, which would have been titled “İmamın Ordusu” (The Imam's Army) had it been published, was seized two weeks ago by police during a search of the offices of online news portal Odatv as part of the Ergenekon investigation. The prosecution, which defines Ergenekon as a terrorist organization, claims the book was prepared under orders from higher-ups in the Ergenekon network. Following an announcement by the prosecutor's office that owning a digital copy of the draft book would be viewed as aiding and abetting Ergenekon, a copy was posted online, with hundreds of thousands of readers having already downloaded it.

The prosecutors say that on page 127 of the book it speaks about a report titled “Gülenists in the Police Force” by former Ankara Police Chief Cevdet Saral and his assistant Osman Ak. A note in parenthesis in the draft says that the list of “Gülenist” police officers included in the report kept changing because the report was manufactured by the two officers. The text of the book says 528 people were accused of being Gülenists in the last version, but the note in parenthesis says: “Since the report was made up, the figures kept changing all the time; there was nothing credible about them. Naturally, this will be confusing both to you and to your readers. What truth will you be able to find in a report of lies and convey it to your readers?” However, this note was not included in the copy of the draft that was distributed online.

Prosecutors said there were three versions of the book found during recent searches relating to the Ergenekon network. According to sources, the version the prosecution has does include the note, where it is also written that there are no reasons to make any changes to the section in question.

Şık’s book is not the first of its kind with allegations against the Gülen movement. A segment in Turkey has been saying the same thing for many years, claiming that the police force is the armed force of the Gülen movement. However, representatives of the Gülen movement strongly deny this, saying nobody has been able to produce a convincing document to prove these claims. Şık’s book takes a look at the beginnings and history of the Gülen movement, asserting at length that the movement infiltrated the police force so that it could have an armed force of its own. The report by Saral and Ak was used as evidence in a trial against Fethullah Gülen at the Ankara 2nd State Security Court, where Gülen stood accused of “establishing an illegal organization to change the secular state structure and found a state based on religious principles, and making efforts toward this aim.” The court studied the report and investigations were launched into the people on the lists. Only 14 of these people were found to be connected to the movement, while the remaining 514 were cleared.

On March 4 journalists Nedim Şener and Şık were arrested on charges of having links to Ergenekon. The arrests came after a draft of the book by Şık was seized from the computer of Odatv’s Soner Yalçın, also arrested in the Ergenekon investigation. A note reportedly written by Yalçın read: “This book should absolutely be published before the [June parliamentary] elections. It should be more striking than Simons,” referring to jailed Police Chief Hanefi Avcı’s “Haliç’te Yaşayan Simonlar” (Simons in the Golden Horn). In that book, Avcı argued that the Ergenekon trial is a conspiracy run by the government to silence its critics.

Published on Today's Zaman, 04 April 2011, Monday