Psychological warfare

Lale Kemal

An İstanbul court finally released today, on April 3, the detailed reasoned opinion for its verdict in August 2013 on the Ergenekon coup plot trial, in which hundreds of former soldiers, including former Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ, as well as lawyers, politicians and journalists, received prison sentences, including life imprisonment, for planning to overthrow the current government through the use of force. A close to 17,000-page reasoned opinion was just released as I was writing a column on the March 30 local election results, hence it is too early for me to make a thorough analysis of it.

However, the court's detailed reasoning contains shocking charges leveled against the convicts that invalidate their allegations that much of the evidence was fabricated.

The court's reasoning on the Ergenekon verdict focuses, among many other things, on a massive campaign of psychological warfare organized by the now-convicts nationwide to prepare the grounds for toppling the government through the use of force. According to my quick initial reading, the content of the court's reasoning is quite striking and ironic in the sense that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) recently forged a de facto alliance with the military, many of whose members have been convicted for attempting to unseat the government, in order to fight its one-time-ally-turned-enemy, the Hizmet movement, which it accuses of orchestrating a bogus graft probe to undermine its 12-year rule.

It is highly striking that the government has sometimes been using similar methods of psychological warfare against its opponents to those the Ergenekon convicts were sentenced for resorting to against their opponents, in particular the AK Party, with the ultimate aim of toppling it.

In fact, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan celebrated his ruling party's local election victory on March 30 with threats that he would go deep into what he described as the caves of his former ally, i.e., the Hizmet movement, to take revenge for its alleged disclosure of the high-profile graft scandal in December of last year. Yet he has provided no evidence so far to support his claims against the Hizmet movement.

Despite the serious allegations of corruption leveled against the AK Party government, it has emerged the winner of the local elections with slightly over 45 percent of the vote. This election victory appears to have made Erdoğan and his party more arrogant and overconfident than ever before, as his March 30 speech from the balcony of his party headquarters carried a tone that has frightened many Turks, including me.

His challenging and threatening tone towards those opposed to his increasingly authoritarian tendencies has offered evidence that the coming months before the presidential elections in late August will be quite tense.

In fact, the pressure that has already been exerted on media outlets, businesses and academics close to the Hizmet movement has seen an increase since the elections, and this pressure is not expected to be limited to the movement's supporters but also to the widening opposition in general.

Bans on accessing Twitter and YouTube have now been followed by cyber attacks by unidentified groups, mainly on the pro-Hizmet Zaman and Today's Zaman dailies, in addition to the Cihan news agency and Taraf, which is not affiliated with the movement.

And yet the decision of a top court has indicated that we, the Turks, should not give up on our hope that there are still some democratic mechanisms at work in our country. The Constitutional Court is one of these.

This top court ruled yesterday, on April 2, that the Twitter ban is unconstitutional and unlawful because it violates free speech, demanding an immediate lift of the ban adopted two weeks ago by the Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) on the grounds of a lower court's ruling to remove an account that was deemed to be pornographic. Yet there is a possibility that the government will defy and ignore this court's decision, as it has before.

The government's defiance not only of court decisions but also of the people's legitimate demands is a strong indicator that the current turmoil will continue into the foreseeable future.

For instance, if the government exerts pressure on the relevant institutions not to allow a recount of the votes, in particular in the capital, Ankara, which saw a very close race between the ruling party and the main opposition candidate for the metropolitan mayor's post, this will have the potential to expand the currently small-scale street protests.

In Ankara, less than 1 percentage point separated the AK Party candidate, Melih Gökçek, and the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) candidate, Mansur Yavaş, in favor of the former, in the March 30 local elections. The CHP, coming up with strong evidence of fraud at the ballot box, is insisting on a recount of the votes.

Not only have there been allegations of irregularities in the voting in Ankara but also in some other cities.

The battle for Ankara, however, derives from the fact that if it is won by the CHP, this will relay a signal that the AK Party can be defeated in the 2015 national elections.

The only way for the government to prevent things from getting out of control is to allow the graft charges to be investigated without any pressure while stopping its ongoing psychological warfare and witch-hunt against the opposition.

Published on Today's Zaman, 04 April 2014, Friday