Hidden arsenal.

Fast forward to June 12, 2007. Turkish police uncovered a cache of weapons and explosives in a raid in the rundown Umraniye district of Istanbul. They also found evidence of several assassination plots that state prosecutors said were part of a conspiracy to destabilize Turkey and bring down Erdogan’s Islamist-led government.

This, the authorities said, was the Ergenekon network. They claimed that it was established in 1999 as a clandestine and violent network dedicated to preserving what its adherents saw as Ataturk’s vision of a strong, militaristic and secular Muslim nation, and to block what they saw as the Islamic takeover of the state.

Several of Ergenekon’s alleged leaders were among those named as suspects in the 1997 parliamentary Susurluk investigation. Their presence, said analyst Gareth Jenkins of the US-Based James-town Foundation security think-tank, “has underlined the extent to which the majority of those responsible for the darkest chapter in what remains the largely untold story of Turkey’s war against the PKK have escaped judicial retribution.”

There were a number of prosecutions in the years after the Susurluk crash, but these were directed against relatively low-ranking operatives, who were either acquitted by a judiciary generally controlled by ultranationalists, or given ex-tremely lenient sentences. 

But the wheel turns. On April 23, 2008, three months after the Ergenekon conspiracy came to light, Turkey’s Council of State ordered Mehmet Agar, the former interior minister who by then was leader of the conservative True Path Party, to stand trial for allegedly “forming a criminal organization” in the secret and dirty war against the PKK during the 1990s.

Agar had been protected by his parliamentary immunity for years. It was only when he lost his seat in the general elections of July 22, 2007, that he became vulnerable to prosecution. He was the first former cabinet minister to face charges related to the “deep state” era, although he has yet to come to trial.

On July 6, 2008, the crackdown on Ergenekon intensified. Another 21 suspects, again including retired army officers, were rounded up. Police said they uncovered plans for a sustained campaign of terror and intimidation against Erdogan’s government, a campaign that was scheduled to culminate in the prime minister’s assassination.

The government was to be toppled and replaced by a right-wing secular dictatorship, according to security authorities. The captured documents supposedly named a 30-member assassination squad that would eliminate judges, police chiefs and other prominent figures in commerce and politics.

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