The authors continue their public campaign to free their close relative, Çetin Doğan, a leading defendant in the Sledgehammer case. Here, they take on the evidence.
In just about three months, 196 active-duty and retired officers are scheduled to go on trial in Turkey, charged with plotting in 2003 to overthrow the then-newly elected Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. The alleged coup plot—codenamed Operation Sledgehammer—involved horrifying acts, including the bombing of mosques and the downing of a Turkish fighter, aimed at destabilizing the government and paving the way for martial law and eventual takeover.
If the charges prove to be well-founded, the country’s powerful military establishment will stand disgraced for harboring violent, anti-democratic elements among its senior ranks. And it will be the first time that civilians have brought it to account for its frequent political intervention. Turkish democracy will have gone through a rite of passage, emerging stronger. Conservative-Islamist groups—the AKP and their ally the Gülen movement, a network of the followers of the Muslim spiritual leader Fethullah Gülen—will be vindicated and their political dominance assured.
But if the prosecutors’ case crumbles, it is the government, the Gülenists, the prosecutors, the media, and much of the country’s intelligentsia that will find itself discredited. For these groups have fought hard in recent months to convince Turks (and Turkey’s friends abroad) of the veracity of the Sledgehammer coup plot.
The sad irony is that the facts of the case leave no doubt as to where the truth lies: Operation Sledgehammer is a fiction. Its authors are not the defendants in the case but unknown malfeasants who fabricated the documents sometime after 2008. Anyone with a couple of hours to spare—and a good command of the Turkish language—can see it for themselves. That the charges have been allowed to stand for so long—and that a trial will take place at al—is testimony to the intensity of the disinformation campaign waged by the AKP and its supporters.
This is a bold claim, but one that is easy to substantiate. The Sledgehammer plot is chock-full of inconsistencies, the most telling of which are the inadvertent, but glaring anachronisms that make it plain that it could not have been hatched in 2003 as claimed. The documents purporting to be original military plans from 2003 contain references to entities that did not yet exist and future developments that could not have been known at the time. It’s as if a text pretending to date from 1970 referred to Diana Spencer as Princess of Wales—a title which she acquired only in 1981—or mentioned her car crash decades later. Hence, to any but the most jaundiced eye it is obvious that the incriminating documents were authored not by the military officers on trial, but by others many years later.
SOME KEY FACTS:
In January 2010 an anonymous individual claiming to be a retired officer delivered to a virulently anti-military newspaper, Taraf, a suitcase of material, including cassettes and CDs, which he said had been secreted from the 1st Army headquarters in Istanbul. Extracts from the documents were serialized in Taraf, and the whole batch subsequently turned over to the Istanbul public prosecutor.
The authenticity of much of this material, consisting of routine military documents and correspondence, is not in question. The heart of the case resides in three of the CDs that contain the incriminating documents referring to the Sledgehammer coup plot and related operations. (The cassettes are recordings of the proceedings of a military contingency planning seminar. The prosecutors maintain that the seminar was a dress rehearsal for the Sledgehammer coup, even though there are no references during the seminar to Sledgehammer, to a coup, or to any other criminal activities.) The Sledgehammer case therefore stands or falls with the authenticity of these three CDs.
There is no direct evidence that ties these CDs to computers in the 1st Army where they are said to have been produced. Not a single one of the hundreds of officers questioned in the case has acknowledged ever hearing of Operation Sledgehammer or any of the other plans included in the incriminating CDs. The documents on the CDs don’t carry signatures or other authenticating features. The evidence that the three CDs in question are genuine comes solely from their “metadata:” the username and date contained on the CDs and the Word documents therein. According to these metadata, the documents and the CDs were produced in 2003, and the authors of the documents are the officers now under indictment.
The problem with basing the case on metadata is obvious. Every computer forensic expert knows that manipulating the metadata in question is child’s play. One simply has to assign appropriate user names to computer accounts and set the computer’s clock to any desired time—or use one of the many freeware programs that alter time and username information. Remarkably, this didn’t prevent TÜBİTAK—the nation’s once premier scientific institution, now reeling under government control—from authenticating the CDs based on their metadata alone.
Even more telling is the affirmative evidence that shows the CDs to have been fabricated.
Comments
It is easy to claim that Fethullah Gulen or the Gulen movement has ties to this trial. What seems to be hard, in your case, is proving some "tie" between Fethullah Gulen or Gulen Movement which does not exist at all. I do not see any facts in this article. What I see is a fully biased opinion about Fethullah Gulen.
I am writing this email to criticize the bad ethics of the author of this article Prof. Dani Rodrik and her wife lecturer Pinar Dogan who are academics in Harvard Kennedy School. I believe that the first standard of academical institutions and being an academic is ethics and these people are not good examples for academical society and for their students regarding that. Their father Cetin Dogan who is a retired Turkish general is a defendant in a military coup trial in Turkey nowadays and Rodrik and Dogan are trying to defend him sadly with an unethical manner. Turkey had two military coups in 1960 and 1980, these coups led to damage of our democracy and many human rights violations including tortures and murders. Military also gave an ultimatom to government in 1971 and did a post-modern coup in 1997, both changed the governments and deeply effected the political system. People of Turkey have suffered a lot because of military coups and continuous military interference to our democratic system. For the last couple of years there had been revealed that some Turkish generals planned several coups between 2003 to 2005, thousands of coup plan documents and voice records were found from various sources in papers and CDs. Mr Cetin Dogan is a defendant in one of those trials for being one of the main responsible generals in Balyoz coup plan. Pinar Dogan is Mr. Dogan's daughter and Mr. Rodrik is his son-in-law. They have found out that there are discrepancies in some of the evidences and declared that some CDs were prepared after the alleged coup year 2003, this allegation is being investigated in Turkey and there is controvery on whether these CD evidences are fabricated or they were just updated later for coup. I do not want to bother you with the details, let me write the unethical behaviours of them. 1) Rodrik claims abroad that the coup plan is fictitous and "groups within the judiciary, police, media, intelligentsia, the national science and technological institute, and (last but not least), the AKP government have played in creating what can best be called an “alternative reality", you may find this remark below in his website. This allegation about the major institutions of Turkey shows a picture of it as a failed state and a corrupt country which is an outrageous lie, this is unethical. They also claim that the democracy in Turkey is dead. Mr. Rodrik and his wife gave interviews on Turkish media, they did not say anything like that, if they would do that people would laugh at them. Saying one thing in Turkey and writing another one abroad is not an honest behaviour and it is unethical. They are simply trying to agitate and manipulate the foreign public opinion by these outrageous remarks in their articles in foreign press. Turkey is a serious country and a strong ally of USA and claiming that it is corrupt, failed and not-democrat is just laughable. Whether those CDs which are a part of the evidences are fake or just updated is a question under investigation and there are columnists in Turkey who thinks that these might true evidences. There are also a lot of other evidences in the trial other than those CDs. 2) Mr. Rodrik claims that Taraf newspaper who made most of the evidences public and and its chief editors are partners in crime. Well, as I told you whether the CDs which are a part of the evidences, are fake or updated is a subject under investigation and reporting these evidences in newspaper is not a crime but a public service. He and his wife also accuse the liberal intellectuals of Turkey for not supporting them, they claim that they are not liberals but jacobens. The world is not turning around Mr Rodrik and Mrs. Dogan and they have no right to label the liberals because they do not think in the same way with them and their unproved allegations, this is uynethical too. These people also changed the surnames of the Taraf editors and one reporter to ugly phrases like Aldatan, Cingar and Bulaniksu in their blog; this was so childish, immature and awkward on the side of Dani Rodrik and Pinar Dogan. 3) There are discrepancies in their allegations to which they can not respond, you may find articles below by Onder Aytac and Alper Gormus about that. Despite it and despite the fact that the situation of CDs is under investigation and there are a lot of Turkish intellectual and columnists who thinks different than them in this topic, they present their allegations as pure truth. Let me also introduce their father retired general Cetin Dogan to you, so that you may understand what the mindset behind the military coups in Turkey is. 1) He was the president of BCG, the group in military who prepared the post-modern coup in 1997. 2) In the voice records of him which was recorded while he was in active duty as a general, he says "There should be no mercy in public events/demonstrations, there should be beating/thrashing severely and nothing else" 3) In another voice record he says "The prime minister has to be insulted in private conversations with him. We should use the good ones in press and give an ultimatom to government with the military chiefs of staff." 4) While he was in active duty, eight colonels and lietunant colonels under him filed complaints to Joint Chiefs of Staff Command about him and questioned whether he has his own plans/calculations. In the light of all the evidences, on 11th of February judges of the court ordered the arrest of many generals including Cetin Dogan. The trials about the military coup plans are so important for our country, believing in the justice system I hope this will lead our country to a better democracy in which military will do only its own job. Although Mr. Rodrik claims that the demoracy is dead in Turkey, present American ambassador Mr. Ricciardone who has an extensive background on Turkey recently stated that Turkey has made a lot of progress in democracy and other fields and there is an open discussion environment in Turkey. You may find the evidences for my email below. I sent this letter to Harvard University, American and Turkish press. I also sent it to WSJ, New Republic, National Interest, Foreign Policy and Le Monde in which Rodrik and Dogan wrote articles in this subject too. Regards, Selim Berk http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2010/12/a-tale-of-two-books.htmlhttp://www.milliyet.com.tr/-onurlu-subay-a-degil-kayinpederime-inaniyorum/devrim-sevimay/siyaset/yazardetayarsiv/19.04.2010/1226824/default.htmhttp://www.t24.com.tr/haberdetay/117789.aspxhttp://www.medyafaresi.com/yazi/306/onder-aytac-cetin-dogan-in-cocuklarinin-anlamsiz-mucadelesi.htmlhttp://haksozhaber.net/author_article_detail.php?id=19432http://www.radikal.com.tr/Radikal.aspx?aType=RadikalDetayV3&ArticleID=1036149&Date=12.01.2011&CategoryID=77http://www.kontrgerilla.com/mansetgoster.asp?haber_no=2759 http://www.medyacafe.com/yasemin-congar-ve-ahmet-altan-font-colorredsuc-ortagidirfont-36024h.htm http://blog.milliyet.com.tr/Dani_Rodrik_in_%E2%80%9Ckurgulari__ve__kuruntulari%E2%80%9D/Blog/?BlogNo=281830 http://www.zaman.com.tr/yazar.do?yazino=1082613 http://www.liberalses.com/yorum/cetin-doganin-kizi-ve-damadina-celiski-dersi.aspx http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87etin_Do%C4%9Fan http://www.gazetea24.com/haber/_turkiye_cok_ilerleme_kaydetmis_.htm
Dr. Rodrik,Good luck to you and your family in your quest for justice in "democratic" Turkey. As it is evident by the comments posted here, yours is a very high mountain to climb. One cannot beat the Gulenists that are posting all the defamatory comments here (and on every other platform) because of the simple fact that they number in the millions and command funds in the billions. Theirs is a dark and transnational empire, unfortunately sponsored and protected by not only Turkey's Islamist government, but by powerful elements within other government(s). What has happened in Turkey is a "civil" coup. Behind the cloak of "democratization" (a term so loved in the West) all Turkey's defenses are being eliminated. Silivri prison/concentration camp is now home to hundreds of military officers (including one of every 10 active general and admirals) and many more will soon "move" there. Scores of journalists, intellectuals, academicians, politicians, lawyers, jurists, artists, authors are all lumped together with the military, and thrown to jails for allegedly "planning a coup". These people (that any nation would call "its best") are systematically being replaced by the very Islamists that Gulen has educated and prepared for this day. He has secretly and cunningly raised this new generation of rulers of Turkey! These people are not DEMOCRATS! and their rule is one based on fear. People in Turkey are afraid to speak on the phone (as recordings of their private conversations continue to show up in Youtube), they are afraid to write emails (as they are all read), journalists are intimidated (as their colleagues are jailed or lose their jobs), non-Islamist media organs are threatened by the government and/or confiscated by the government only to be sold to Gulen followers. Dr. Rodrik, fear rules Turkey and there isn't much you can do. All I can suggest is that you tell your story, educate the public as best as you can. No one is aware of what's going on in Turkey and instead of being outraged, they are busy marketing Turkey as a "model of Muslim democracy"! Very sad indeed...
Who is Fethullah Gulen and how he is related to the charter schools? Why are those schools called Gulen Charter Schools?Visit http://www.gulen-charterschools.com to learn more about the so called gulen charter schools
Fethullah Gülen is an authoritative mainstream Turkish Muslim scholar, thinker, author, poet, opinion leader and educational activist who supports interfaith and intercultural dialogue, science, democracy and spirituality and opposes violence and turning religion into a political ideology. Fethullah Gülen promotes cooperation of civilizations toward a peaceful world, as opposed to a clash: “Be so tolerant that your bosom becomes wide like the ocean. Become inspired with faith and love of human beings. Let there be no troubled souls to whom you do not offer a hand and about whom you remain unconcerned.” (Fethullah Gülen, Criteria or Lights of the Way. London: Truestar.)Please visit the following links to get more information about Fethullah Gulen.http://www.rumiforum.org/about/fethullah-gulen.html Fethullah Gulenhttp://www.fethullah-gulen.net Fethullah Gulen Blog