The Ergenekon case is indeed confusing, to even us Turks, let alone foreigners. The 2500-page indictment is quite a challenge to read and grasp. Moreover, I am no expert in not just criminal law, but also all those nasty things going on secretly in Ankara. Yet luckily there are good experts on these matters in Turkey, and I rather rely on their analyses. And probably none of them are as solid and clear as İsmet Berkan, the editor-in-chief and columnist of the liberal-left daily Radikal, on Ergenekon.

A Brief History of Ergenekon

A few months ago, Mr. Berkan wrote a series of articles titled “A Brief History of Ergenekon.”It was a must-read to understand what all this Ergenekon business is about. It still is. So, let me give you a summary.

According to Mr. Berkan, Ergenekon type organizations have a long history in Turkey, but the current one we are speaking about goes back to 2002. That year, the chief of staff whose term would soon end, Gen. Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu, warned Prime Minister Ecevit that his most likely successor, Gen. Hilmi Özkök had to be avoided because he was “too soft against religious backwardness.”Ecevit, a social democrat, apparently was not worried about that, so he signed the papers that would make this dovish general the next chief of the military.

The staunchly secular Gen. Kıvrıkoğlu took another step, though, to make sure that his line would persist. He ensured the appointment of two like-minded (i.e., very secularist and nationalist) generals to the heads of the land and gendarme forces: Gen. Aytaç Yalman for the former, Gen. Şener Eruygur for the latter. (Keep these names, especially the latter, in mind.)

In Turkey, there are always five top generals. The chief of staff is the highest, but then he is followed by the force commanders: The army, the air force, the navy, and the gendarme. So, according to Kıvrıkoğlu's plan, the “threat”coming from the dovish chief of staff would be balanced by the hawkish ones beneath him.

Soon, Gen. Kıvrıkoğlu's fears came true. The “Islamist”Justice and Development Party, or AKP, came to power at the end of that year, i.e. 2002. On election night, everybody was wondering how the military would react. “We respect the election results,”said the new and dovish chief of staff Gen. Hilmi Özkök. “We respect democracy.”

That was an alarm signal for not just the hawks beneath him, but also all those die-hard secularist circles in Turkey who were expecting a tougher line from their beloved military. Soon, daily Cumhuriyet, the secularist Pravda, wrote: “Young officers are not content with the line of the chief of staff.”As a response, Gen. Özkök held a press conference and asked: “I am democrat; is there something wrong with that?”

Yes, there was something wrong with that, and the hawks were determined to fix it. They just had to wait for a little while for the “treason”of the AKP to surface.

The Anti-Western Muscle

One thing about the two hawkish generals — Aytaç Yalman and Şener Eruygur — was that they were very concerned about the policies of the European Union and the United States. After the Cold War, they believed, the “imperialism”of these powers turned against Turkey. They were resentful, especially about the American and European positions on the Kurdish issue and the Cyprus problem.

No wonder that just a day before the Turkish Parliament voted, on March 1, 2003, about whether to allow US troops to use Turkish soil to invade Iraq, Gen. Yalman spoke to Milliyet and said that he was against the idea.

But the real deal would come with Cyprus. In 2003, United Nations' Secretary General Kofi Annan prepared a plan for the unification of the divided island. For Turkey's nationalists, including the Grand Old Man of Cyprus, then-President Rauf Denktaş, this meant “accepting the Greek yoke.”And those who supported the plan were “traitors”who were “selling”Turkish land to foreigners.

Denktaş had actually followed this “rejectionist”line for decades with strong support from Ankara. Their motto read, “The best solution to Cyprus is no solution.”Hence the Ankara-financed artificial state in northern Cyprus would survive.

The Cyprus ‘treason'

However the AKP government was determined to find a solution to the problem, which, itself, was continuously blocking Turkey's entry into the EU. In January 2004, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan took the matter in his hands and reaffirmed to Kofi Annan that the Turkish government was accepting his role as a negotiator. Therefore, the “Annan Plan,”which was categorically rejected by Denktaş when it first came out, gained momentum.

And hell broke loose in Ankara. For the hotheads in the military, and the like-minded, the government was now guilty of not just “Islamism”but also “treason.”That's why some “unnamed generals,”among which we have every reason to think that Gen. Yalman and Gen. Eruygur were present, started lobbying for a military coup. They spoke with not only their fellow officers, but also some business and media circles. The operation they planned was named “sarıkız,”or “blonde girl.”

But, apparently, they could not gain enough support and the plot failed. Therefore, Denktaş had to go to New York for a second time, quite unwillingly, to negotiate with the Greeks. On the road, he called Chief of Staff General Özkök and asked, “Why doesn't the military do something?” ”Constitutionally,”said the law-abiding general, “this is all that we can do.”

According to İsmet Berkan, “then Denktaş understood that the two [hawkish] generals, Yalman and Eruygur, have not been able to overcome Gen. Özkök.”

In other words, Turkey had barely survived a coup. But the coup-makers would not give up. What they did after that will be the topic of my next piece.