New arrests link Ergenekon to generals' coup attempts

Twenty people, including two former army commanders, a journalist and the leader of a business group, were detained in operations in Ankara and İstanbul Tuesday morning as part of an investigation into a powerful and illegal organization suspected of plotting to overthrow the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.

Retired Gen. Şener Eruygur, retired Gen. Hurşit Tolon, Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO) Chairman Sinan Aygün and Ankara bureau chief of the radically secularist Cumhuriyet daily Mustafa Balbay were among those taken into police custody early in the morning.

Eruygur was a leading figure among the organizers of so-called republican rallies organized ahead of July elections last year in protest of the AK Party government. His name was also mentioned in documents leaked to the press proving the existence of two failed coup attempts called Ayışığı and Sarıkız, plotted when Eruygur was yet a member of the army. Tolon was known for making frequent appearances at symposiums and conferences organized by ultra-nationalists. This is the first time generals of such high ranks are being detained in Turkey.

Eruygur is also head of the secularist Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD), named after the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Birol Başaran, former head of the ADD's Kadıköy chapter and chairman of the Nationalist Businessmen's Association (USİAD), and ADD Kadıköy's current Chairman Coşkun Gürel, a former colonel, were also detained.

İstanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office ordered the detentions, reports said. The police also carried out searches at the Ankara office of Cumhuriyet, the ADD's İstanbul office and ATO's headquarters building in the capital.

The editor-in-chief of the ultra-nationalist Tercüman daily, Ufuk Büyükçelebi, and writer and strategy expert Erol Mütercimler were also detained in Tuesday's raids. The dailies' offices were searched by police teams looking for former AK Party deputy Turhan Çömez and former Gendarmerie General Command Intelligence Department Chairman Levent Ersöz, also on suspicion of links to Ergenekon.

A newspaper had reported Tuesday morning that Çömez was out of the country to study English abroad.

The Ergenekon investigation under which Tuesday's arrests were made began in the summer of 2007 when a house filled with arms and ammunitions in İstanbul's Ümraniye district was uncovered. As the investigation expanded, a structure suspected of responsibility for a number of politically motivated murders, including that of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007, and attacks at newspapers and judicial agencies to invoke chaos and engineer a military takeover. Forty-nine people including former army members, journalists, drug lords and academics have been detained in the operation so far.

TZMN/EBRU İSTANBUL

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