President Abdullah Gül was elected in August last year in a presidential vote in Parliament under the suspicious eye of Turkey’s military and secularist establishment. An earlier attempt to vote him in as president in May 2007 was blocked by a disputed Constitutional Court ruling that the quorum necessary to hold a presidential election was 367. In the August election, however, the MHP, which has more than 70 seats in Parliament, announced it would participate in the election, helping the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which had 341 seats, guarantee the quorum to get their candidate, Gül, elected.Evidence presented to a court of law last week on Monday against the Ergenekon gang, indicted for the perpetration of numerous murders, attacks and assassinations in hopes of triggering a coup against the government, shows that the group worked hard to stop MHP deputies from voting in the presidential election. MHP Adana deputy Kürşat Atılgan said all MHP deputies and those deputies inside the AK Party from a MHP background had received a large number of messages calling on them not to vote in the election.
Atılgan, in his testimony to the prosecutor, said he had received a message from Hayrettin Ertekin, currently in jail as part of the Ergenekon investigation, telling him not to vote in the presidential elections. “When I received such a message I called him on his mobile. I told him not to interfere. I told him not to disturb me again.”
The MHP deputy found his way into the Ergenekon indictment through the monitoring of Ertekin’s telephone conversations. No accusations have been brought against Atılgan.
TİT-Ergenekon link exposed
Former Human Rights Association (İHD) head Akın Birdal, currently a Diyarbakır deputy from the Democratic Society Party (DTP), also says an assassination attempt on his life in 1998 is linked to Ergenekon. Birdal pointed out in an interview with Today’s Zaman that the founder of the ultranationalist Turkish Revenge Brigade (TİT), the organization that carried out the assassination attempt he narrowly escaped, is currently under custody as an Ergenekon suspect. “And now Semih Günaltay’s relations with [Ergenekon suspect and retired army Capt.] Muzaffer Tekin have been exposed. The indictment has included TİT under Ergenekon. In other words, it has been established that these organizations are essentially the same.”
“I only know Çevik Bir”
Other MHP members whose names are mentioned in the indictment are former İstanbul Police Chief Hasan Özdemir and current Gaziantep deputy Hasan Özdemir.
Based on the testimony of Osman Yıldırım, arrested for taking part in a lethal shooting at the Council of State in 2006 -- an attack now believed to have been organized by Ergenekon -- Özdemir stands accused of accepting bribes from a businessman in Tekirdağ. The suspect says former Gen. Çevik Bir and former Gen. Veli Küçük, who is currently under custody accused of being a leader of Ergenekon, were also involved in the bribe scandal. However Özdemir says he only knows Bir: “I neither know nor have I ever heard of the person who is said to have bribed me.” Özdemir says he has held many meetings on terrorism and security with Bir, who was the first army commander during Özdemir’s time as police chief, and underlined that he did not know any of the other people mentioned.
Özdemir vowed to fight in court against the accusations, which he termed “severe.”
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