Authenticity of Military Plot Document Gains More Ground
Two Turkish dailies have refuted claims against the authenticity of an alleged military plot against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the highly respected Gülen movement, publishing the official records kept by security forces when the document was seized in the office of an Ergenekon suspect's lawyer.
There were claims that the document, which allegedly includes vicious plans against political and civilian bodies in the country, was fake and was placed in Serdar Öztürk's office by the police officers who carried out the raid. Öztürk is the lawyer of a suspect in the ongoing Ergenekon case, an underground network charged with plotting to overthrow the government.
Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ also cast doubt on the authenticity of the suspected plan, which was allegedly put together by a colonel on active duty in order to defame the AK Party government and the Gülen movement in the eyes of the public, to play down the Ergenekon investigation and to gather support for members of the military arrested as part of the Ergenekon inquest.
"We took statements from related people. We asked them, and they said they had no part in this work. Computers were seized and technical analyses were conducted, but there was no trace of any such work. That is, no such document had been written on those computers," Başbuğ told the Hürriyet daily in an interview on Monday.
Claims against the authenticity of the document were, however, refuted by documents printed by the Star and Taraf dailies yesterday. The dailies published the official records that were prepared by prosecutors, lawyers and police officers when the document was seized in Öztürk's office.
According to the dailies, the raid at Öztürk's office came on June 4 at around 10:20 a.m. A list of all documents discovered in the office was taken down by a prosecutor, four lawyers and several police officers. Prosecutor Hüseyin Görüşen, lawyers Bayram Özkan, Özge Evci, Çağri Eryilmaz and Gizem Ulusoy and unnamed police officers put the documents and a hard disk into a bag and sealed it.
They all signed a document when they opened the seal to check what was inside the bag at 9:30 p.m. the same day. Öztürk's lawyer was also present when the seal was opened. All documents in the bag were all undersigned by the prosecutor, lawyers and police officers to prevent counterfeiting of documents.
The dailies also reported that only the office of Öztürk was raided and other offices in the building went untouched. The raid was also captured by security cameras in the office.
There is currently a military investigation into the authenticity of the alleged plot. The General Staff's Military Prosecutor's Office initiated an investigation into the document last Friday. The office announced the preliminary results of the investigation on Monday, but fell short of satisfying the questions in people's minds.
"Having assessed all of the initial evidence acquired so far, we have reached the conclusion that the alleged action plan was not prepared by any department of the General Staff," the prosecutor's office said.
The Taraf daily also claimed yesterday that the alleged military plot, titled "Action Plan to Fight Reactionaryism," was not retrieved from a hard disk or a CD, but it was found in printed form in Öztürk's office. The document also reportedly bore a wet signature. Security forces also seized 239 other documents along with photographs in a military bag in Öztürk's office.
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