Deep State Surfacing

In the raid on a single-storey house in Ümraniye, a suburb of Istanbul, 27 hand grenades, TNT explosives and fuses were found. The owner of the house and his nephew were arrested. They stated that the weapons belonged to retired petty officer Oktay Yildirm. After his arrest, Yildirim claimed that he had found and collected the bomb material from the waste dump of military barracks in Istanbul.

Ergin Cinmen, a lawyer at the Istanbul Bar Association, has interpreted this event as follows:

"We used to call this "deep state", but there is nothing "deep" left about it, everything is out in the open. We will see how the police and prosecution deal with this event. Will we have to be satisfied with seeing the tip of an iceberg, or will an appropriate investigation go deeper?"

According to Radikal newspaper, last year Yildirim had attended journalist Perihan Magden's court case, in which she was being tried for "discouraging the people from military service", and he had shouted "I am a veteran". Yildirim had also caused disturbance at writer Orhan Pamuk's trial in July last year.

Yildirim's friend Muzaffer Tekin, a retired army captain, has been implicated in the attack on the state council in May 2006, in which one member of the council was killed by an ultra-nationalist lawyer. The ultra-nationalist Kuvayi Milliye Association which was implicated in the attack was co-founded by Yildirim.

Yildirim had also attempted to become a third party plaintiff in the court case against "Agos" writer Aydin Engin and the newspapers owner Serkis Seropyan and managing editor Arat Dink. His application had been rejected. Another person who had applied is retired brigadier Veli Kücük, a name familiar to Turks from the Susurluk scandal (in which the "deep state" was unmasked) and because he is the founder of the gendarmerie secret service JITEM. Kücük is also said to have been close to the attacker of the state council.

Cinmen commented that these kind of relations are increasingly common and that "crimes are committed before our eyes. We can only watch, but the government needs to use its authority. The prosecution must not just pretend to investigate."

Cinmen recalled the Susurluk scandal after which, despite a mound of information and documents, the court case was not satisfactory. Similarly, in the Semdinli case and the attack on the state council there has not been an in-depth investigation. Recently, after a car accident in Afyonkarahisar, a weapons arsenal and money were found in the wreck, and it is still unclear how authorities are proceeding in that case.

In the aftermath of the murder of journalist Hrant Dink, said Cinmen, there was insufficient investigation. Because of a dispute between the police and the gendarmerie in Trabzon, where Dink's assassin is from, Dink was not informed of existing intelligence of a planned murder.

In short, he said, illegal relations are taking over. (EÖ/NZ/EÜ/AG/EÜ)