Jenkins Gareth H. Between Fact And Fantasy: Turkey’s Ergenekon Investigation

Central Asia-Caucasus Institute : The Silk Road Studies Program, 2009. — 104 p.Contemporary Turkish politics is striking for many reasons, not least the fundamentally opposing and mutually exclusive narratives by which domestic as well as foreign observers describe its major fault lines. Hence the irreconcilable descriptions of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, in power since 2002: its supporters describe it as a the Muslim world’s equivalent of Christian Democracy, the political force that is ridding Turkey of its authoritarian past and making it a European democracy. Its detractors, however, accuse it of seeking to Islamicize the country’s state and society, muzzling independent media and criticism, moving it in the direction of authoritarianism, and in the process driving Turkey away from Europe. Descriptions of the mainly nationalist opposition to the AKP are equally divided, ranging from seeing these forces as well-intentioned supporters of Turkey’s secular republic to being authoritarian-minded, fascistoid groups that clamor for a return to military rule.
One issue that most observers of Turkish politics can agree on, however, is the murky nature of aspects of its recent history. For decades, the existence of shadowy networks with connections to state institutions has been common knowledge. These networks, known as the deep state, have been known to do the state’s dirty work, such as targeting terrorist sympathizers with extra-judicial killings; but they have also been known to collude with organized crime and to undermine Turkish democracy.