Dr. Doğu Perinçek, Chairman of Turkey's Workers' Party, jailed for the controversial “Ergenekon” case, which has caused the imprisonment or accusation of many famous public figures such as retired university rectors, army generals, political party members, trade-unionists, journalists and newspaper chief editors, the common denominator of whom is their opposition to the present AKP (Erdogan 's party) government, gave testimony to the court on 22, 23 & 24 Jan. 2009, after 8 months of imprisonment. On the other hand, the retired army generals, one of whom suffered cerebral hemorrhage after slipping in the prison cell, after 10 months of imprisonment, are still waiting to be brought to court with an additional indictment. The arrests connected with this case have been going on for over a year, in so-called 'waves', which have reached the 11th. The case have also been criticized for being an 'open-ended' investigation which has been carried on for months by the police and a 'specially designated' public prosecutor, while the accused arrested in the first few 'waves' are, in the meanwhile, being tried in court established on the prison premises. The procedure used for indictment in the Ergenekon case has also been criticized by law authorities and Turkish bars for trying to acquire evidence by first arresting people, then searching their home and office premises and confiscating all the personal documents of the person. The latest examples of this unacceptable method has been breaking into the homes of a retired High Court Prosecutor and searching it without putting forth any official accusation. The same practice was repeated, around the same time, for a retired professor, an ex-president of the Higher Education Office and a retired Full General, who had also served as the Secretary of the Turkish National Security Council, the top civil and military organ of the Turkish Republic. No official accusation was brought against these people either. The prosecutors and the police have also been criticized for illegal wire tapping and using private telephone conversations as evidence. On the other hand, the case is also unique in that the prosecution has been mainly built on the evidence of a person with questionable identity. This person, who has got several identities, the most frequently used one being Tuncay Güney has quite a dark background, including claims as to his being a member of the Turkish Intelligence Service and/or of CIA. The evidence given by this person in 2001, to the police, who filled numerous CD’s, was not made the subject of any official inquiry then. Tuncay Güney, acquitted after his long police interrogation went to the USA and lived there for some time, later going to Canada and becoming a Jewish rabbi, according to his own claims, which the Jewish community in Turkey has refuted.
If you leave WP out, Atatürk will resemble a pile of incomprehensible material. It has been WP who has brought out the real Atatürk who has been fragmented and censured. If you do not understand Mao Tse-tung, you will not understand Atatürk and if you do not understand Atatürk, you will not understand Mao Tse-tung.
Dr. Doğu Perinçek:
“Withdrawal From NATO Will Root Out All Gladio-Type Illegal Organizations"
Colonel Kırca's suicide is a nation's suicide
Dr. Doğu Perinçek, the Chairman of Workers' Party, under arrest for over 10 months, started his testimony, remembering Veteran Colonel Abdülkerim Kırca who committed suicide 2 days ago, on false information published in a newspaper concerning his past activities in South Eastern Anatolia. Perinçek, stating that Colonel Kırca was a hero, pointed out that a nation who incited their heroes to commit suicide loses its capacity to stand against assaults. “The ex president of the Higher Education Office declares he is every inch a pro-American! In other words, he means to say ‘I am innocent, I am Pro-American, why did you arrest me?’ Then, I suppose the Turkish Penal Code has changed. The ex-Chief of Staff explains, ‘I organized the ‘Steel’ operation in Northern Iraq in 1995, the Kardak operation against Greek aggression. I am responsible for several operations against the USA, and this is my crime.’ This Chief of Staff of Turkey, in office between 1998-2002 says, 'the reason why I was targeted [in the Ergenekon operation] is the fact that I stood against [Turkey's] official Northern Iraq policies.” Dr. Perinçek quoted Bertold Brecht who said “Woe for the nations in need of heroes!” Dr Perinçek said: “You have turned life into hell for the heroes fighting against the terrorists and other hostile powers. You are sending them to death. You are throwing them to dogs and jackals. You are getting them killed and then attending their funerals and saluting them, wearing your dark glasses. It was not Colonel Kırca who committed suicide; it is a whole Turkish nation that is committing suicide. Those who are keeping silent in face of this assault are contributing to this self defacement of a nation. Your court should also consider its responsibility in this process.”
Dr. Perinçek continued his testimony saying “We will not leave any point in the dark! We will not leave a single point about the Chairman and the officials of the Workers’ Party in the dark. If you see a single point unanswered, not refuted and vague about the accusations, please ask. I want the prosecutors to ask any question they like. I will let them ask any question they like whether or not it is legal, whether or not they have a right to. I beseech my solicitors to allow the prosecutors any question they like. Let them collect all their illegal evidence and come before me. Let them bring here all their secret wire tapping reports, insidious observations, all the reports they have written in the past. All these will prove their guilt. They have already sunk deep in crime and illegal practice. We are ready to reveal everything before our people. We will bring this Ergenekon plot before the eyes of our people with all its dimensions. We will bring to light all those who are plotting against Turkey. We will be condemning all those who are guilty of this plot, here! I will be expecting your questions after I have given my testimony. We will leave nothing unsolved.”
Dr. Perinçek, then touching on the fact that the indictment is 2500 pages long, comprising the deciphering of wire tapped conversations of all the accused, including those that relate to their private lives, said “criminal trials should relate to criminal acts, you cannot write an official indictment in a ‘once upon a time’ manner”.
The “Tuncay Guney” Case
Doğu Perinçek who stated that “the backbone, the core of this case” was constructed by Tuncay Güney said “if a name is to be given to this case, it should be the ‘Tuncay Guney Case’. The backbone of the case consists of the interview with Tuncay Güney in 2001, the ‘diagram’ made according to this interview and the ‘sac of evidence’ given to the police by the same person. “If this person and his evidence is excluded from this case, there will be no ‘organization’ left!” Dr. Perinçek continued, “It is this person who founded the organization, appointed the top figures in it, wove the connections, fabricated the incidents and all in all plotted the whole scenario. The name Tuncay Güney is repeated 487 times in this indictment. He is no. 1, in an unrivalled way.”
Dogu Perincek, stating that Tuncay Guney has been mistakenly called ‘deranged’, ‘a crook’, ‘a trickster’ etc. said “The greatest misconception is this. Can a deranged person, a crook, a trickster twist the whole Turkey round his little finger? Can a whole nation be played with, with nonsense and absurdity? Can public prosecutors become a tool of a deranged person? Can the official Intelligence Agency of a country take the diagram drawn by a deranged person seriously and turn it into an official document and start using it in all the schemes within the state after 2002?” Dr. Perinçek stated that it was indeed Tuncay Güney who was behind the accusations but that these ‘absurdities’ were turned into an indictment by the public prosecutor Zekeriya Öz and his team and Tuncay Güney in the CD’s was actually many persons fused in one: he was Zekeriya Öz himself; he was also Fetullah Gülen, who, in 2006 gave the order to ‘fight against the nationalist movement!’; he was also the Turkish President, who gave the instruction ‘find evidence, find the public prosecutors and arrest them!’; he was also Turkey’s Prime Minister, the co-president of the Greater Middle-East Project, who said he was ‘the prosecutor of this case’; and G.W. Bush himself, who commissioned Prime Minister Erdoğan with this task. Doğu Perinçek stated that Tuncay Güney was actually speaking from the Oval Office.
Dr. Perinçek pointed out that the public Prosecutor Zekeriya Öz did not give credit for the information sent by the military authorities and the gendarmerie, on the contrary did not find them sincere, even thought them guilty of crimes, while giving all the credit for Tuncay Güney’ s claims because “they both used the same criteria.”
My Crime is to Defend the Atatürk Revolution
Repeating that Tuncay Güney was not deranged, Doğu Perinçek stated that those who thought he was deranged at last realized he was not, because they took him seriously and immediately started to explain themselves: “A high commander of the Turkish army suddenly started to review his past: he was the responsible military commander of the ‘Steel Operation’ in Northern Iraq in 1995 and the Kardak operation against Greek assault: what a crime! Another high military commander remembers standing up against the US operation against Iraq: what a crime! An ex-president of the Higher Education Office tries to clear himself: ‘I’m every inch pro-American!’ he says. He is really innocent, because the guilty and the not-guilty are determined by America, not the Turkish judges and courts! The Oval Office must have heard this statement and will send his medal shortly!
“When I look at the accusations directed at me as the Chairman of the Workers’ Party, the summary of it is our determination for continuing the Kemalist Revolution! Defending our country against the imperialist and reactionary powers! A premeditated and willful defense of my country, my people and the Atatürk Revolution! (Turkish national-democratic revolution)”
Those Who Are Clean Are the Target, Not the Unclean
Doğu Perinçek who pointed out that the silliest word going around was that ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ people were mixed up in this case, said: “What does ‘clean’ mean? If it means launching the ‘Steel’ operation and the Kardak operation, resisting USA’s plans to partition both Iraq and Turkey, defending withdrawal from NATO, Turkey’s taking its place in Eurasia as an independent state and commitment to the goal of Atatürk Revolution; this case is heading for the right target. The instructions sent from the Oval Office is put into practice quite correctly. Everybody should look at the diagrams in the indictment. The names of full generals, army commanding officers are there. You will see the names of Gen. Kıvrıkoğlu, Gen. Eşref Bitlis there, İlhan Selçuk, the editorial writer of the daily Cumhuriyet; Kemal Alemdaroğlu, the retired rector of Istanbul University; Doğu Perinçek, The Chairman of the Workers’ Party are there. Those ‘unclean’ ones have been placed there for their sake. We will have to apologize to these people who are quite innocent from imperialists’ point of view.
Withdrawal Form NATO Will Root Out Ail Gladio-Type Illegal Organizations
Everybody is against the Counter-guerilla, the Gladio, the gangs, and the mafia! What an opportunity! With the newly elected Obama at the head, along with Fetullah Gülen, Tayyip Erdoğan and Abdullah Gül, we are cleaning the country of illegal organizations, using the cadres implanted by Fetullah Gülen in the police forces! The reactionary, imperialistic forces have reached a point where they are trying to pull down the last defensives of the Kemalist Revolution, to overcome the resistance of the Army, disqualify the Workers’ Party, suppress the patriotic forces and making their final move to establish a new reactionary regime, but the naive people of my country, the innocent well-wishers are thinking that the illegal organizations might be cleaned with this operation called the Ergenekon Case! These naive well wishers are expecting a clean fresh start from those who have signed secret contracts with the Oval Office, the co-directors of the Greater Middle East Project, the defendants of the Lighthouse Case [opened in Germany which ended with their imprisonment as well as tying up the case with other people of higher rank in office in governmental positions in Turkey], those in high positions who have bought their sons trader vessels after a couple of years in office [The Prime Minister R.T. Erdoğan], those whose wives have started wearing rings worth thousands of Turkish Liras and those who have even set their sights on Turkish State assets kept in the Dolmabahçe Palace [President Gül's wife demanded certain Ottoman Royal furniture and ornaments be moved to the Presidential residence].
The only solution to stop political assassinations, Sunni oppression over the Alawis, the PKK and Hizbullah terror is withdrawal from NATO!
This will also be the best aid to the Palestinians in Gazza!
It will also be the most heart felt salutation to the Iraqi people!
Let us stop being hypocrites and withdraw from NATO!”
Dr. Perinçek recalled that bombs, terror, terrorists, gangs did not exist in the early years of the Turkish Republic when Atatiirk was alive.
Doğu Perinçek then pointed out how Nazım Hikmet, the celebrated Turkish poet who had been imprisoned in Turkey for nearly 20 years for being a communist and who later had to leave Turkey to live in the Soviet Union was very recently very much honored by the government authorities. He said “The reactionary forces who tormented Nazım Hikmet when he was alive, love his dead body very much now!”
Criminal Complaint against the Public Prosecutors
Doğu Perinçek made a criminal complaint against the public prosecutors of the case for ‘slander’. He said: “In the interrogation at the Police Headquarters, I showed them, with irrefutable evidence that their accusations were lies, slander and fabrication. What does a public prosecutor do then? He certainly does not include these accusations in his indictment! In fact this is the aim of the police interrogation. However, the prosecutors insisted on including those accusations as if they had not been proved wrong! Thus, they have committed the crimes of slander, falsification, malfeasance in office, fabricating crime and perpetrating a fraud on the court. They have committed these crimes before the court by reading the indictment aloud in court. I demand a criminal complaint be made by the court.
Doğu Perinçek then talked about WP’s 40-year struggle against illegal organizations within the state mechanism and told how WP had exposed the provocation at the 1st of May, 1977 celebrations where 36 people got killed by ‘secret agents’.
Perinçek said that innocent people were deluded that ‘coup d’etats’ were put on trial in this case and asked what coup d’etat was it that was attempted and pointed out that real, accomplished military coups such as the one on 12 September and its instigators were never put on trial. Dr. Perinçek argued that the present Turkish President and Prime minister were the children of this same coup, who had gained political power after it. Dr. Perinçek named the assassinated progressive, anti-imperialist political figures and asked if there was anyone among them who resembled Orhan Pamuk [the novelist who received the Nobel prize and who claimed that Turkey was responsible for killing 30 thousand Kurds and 1,5 million Armenians] and Fehmi Koru [a writer of editorials in a pro-Erdoğan newspaper, who daily names the people to be arrested in connection with the Ergenekon case] ideologically.
Dr. Perinçek further discussed how WP exposed other illegal activities linked with personages within the Turkish State and how the official authorities had not done anything about them, then and how WP had brought out the evidence showing Esref Bitlis, an anti-US Full General was killed as a result of a sabotage to his plane.
Dr. Perinçek also asked if Prophet Muhammet’s wives had worn rings worth millions of TL, like Erdoğan's and President Gül's wives, who claimed to be devout Muslims and again asked if these were the people who were supposed to be ‘clean’.
Dr. Doğu Perinçek told the court how WP had organized a meeting in Berlin where MPs and diplomats of Turkey participated. He also explained how the EU authorities told the Prime Minister to dissolve this committee which organized these meetings abroad on the so called ‘Armenian Genocide’ issue and then how some committee members from Erdoğan’s Party withdrew from the committee, saying they were under pressure from the Prime Minister.
He said another meeting had been organized in Zurich and the Swiss Minister of Justice had declared they were going to amend the law concerning genocide, when the Turkish Minister of Justice went to Switzerland to confer with his Swiss counterpart after which the Swiss Minister declared that he had heard from the Turkish Minister that Perinçek was 'a ferocious opponent' and that they did not expect any opposition from the Turkish Government.
Doğu Perinçek explained his struggle against Karen Fogg, the former EU ‘commissar’ to Turkey, who had fought against Turkish benefits in the international arena and how WP had exposed her e-mails in a book, which contained these hostile activities, and how this lady had to leave Turkey. Dr. Perinçek added that the personages of the Turkish media who had stood beside Karen Fogg then, were now actively fighting against Perinçek on the ranks of the Government.
Doğu Perinçek told the court how two past leaders of the ADD (Associations advocating Atatürk’s Ideas) had been assassinated and how its present president was imprisoned in connection with the same case and was now sick in hospital with brain hemorrhage.
Answers to the accusations concerning Perinçek’s advocating ‘Eurasianism’
Doğu Perinçek explained how WP succeeded in adding 48 new political parties from Eurasia into the Eurasia Conference in 2004, 8 of which were in power and how these activities had to be carried out against the wishes of the government of Turkey. He further added that the Eurasia Conference organized by WP in Ankara in 2004 was attended by Süleyman Demirel, the ex-Prime Minister of Turkey; Rauf Denktaş, the ex-Premier of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; Alexander Dugin, advisor to Vladimir Putin and himself. Dr. Perinçek pointed out that he knew there lay his ‘crime’!
Doğu Perinçek said he accepted all his telephone conversations, wire-tapped legally or illegally and said they were his defense evidence! He added that he had always declared that solution to Turkey's problems could never be a military coup.
After completing his testimony, Doğu Perinçek was cross-examined. Here are a few more important points that he made in his cross-examination:
- “WP has always educated its cadres according to this principle: we will always bear our own heads on our bodies. We have always kept our heads high in our relations with the Chinese Communist Party as well as with other parties. In the future, if there is a threat from China or Russia to Turkey it will be WP who will be the first to resist it. In such a case, Tayyip Erdoğan and his team will again bow, this time to them! We have proved this attitude: In 1970’s we shouted “Neither America nor Russia, Independent Turkey!” and resisted Soviet Union’s imperialistic policies. We were very much criticized for this by leftists. Our members got killed in this struggle.
“Was America’s puppet Kurdish regime in North Iraq founded by China or Russia? Is the PKK [the Kurdish Terrorist organization in Turkey, who has killed thousands of Turkish citizens] supported by China or Russia? Is this ‘Armenian Genocide’ tale told by China or Russia? If we are to complete the Democratic Revolution started by Atatürk, we need allies. If we are to save Turkey’s future and resist the forces which have been trying to partition it, we need support from Eurasia. Turkey should act together with Russia, India, China and Iran. It is only the team now governing Turkey who need the USA, for their own future. If Turkey develops relations with Eurasia, it will have better and more equal relations with the USA too.
Atatürk accepted financial help from Lenin’s SU, openly, recording the received sums in Turkey’s financial records. He placed this statue of Aralov, in the middle of Taksim Square in Istanbul in memory of this great solidarity between the two countries. Only the SU leaders knew about the secretly prepared last offensive against the imperialist powers in the Liberation War of Turkey.
Now Turkey is begging IMF for money. The IMF gets the money from China. China has a 2-million-Dollar reserve. I met with Hua Guo-feng in China and their next leader succeeding him, Hu Yao-bang. The leader of the second biggest party in Russia, Ligochev came to Turkey twice, as my guest. The whole world is watching China and trying to understand how this miracle happened, but in Turkey our reactionary forces swear at Mao Tse-tung! People must leave their prejudices behind to understand the developments. The international policies of WP will become Turkey's international policy in a few years’ time.”