Today’s Zaman News

Erkan Acar

A security analyst has said Ergenekon, a political crime gang accused of preparing to topple the government, must have links to the police to be able to operate.

Önder Aytaç, an instructor at the Police Academy in Ankara, said Ergenekon’s links to the police should be exposed in order to truly fight the illegal network.

He said such illegal structures have legs in the military, the police, the judiciary, corporations and the media. “The first basic course new police officers take in the United States shows a video about organized crime networks. It notes that such structures need to be in touch with the police to find breathing room.”

An investigation into Ergenekon, which has been accused of orchestrating various murders and attacks with the intention of creating chaos that would trigger a coup, revealed the names of a number of retired military officials who are suspected of being involved in the gang. One of them is retired Gen. Veli Küçük, the suspected leader. Aytaç said according to the Ergenekon indictment, which was made public in July, Küçük spoke over the phone with a high-ranking Justice Ministry official. Aytaç also said anybody who has been involved in dirty business among the police would be known by others and that what he or she had done could not be forgotten.

“You cannot erase the security forces’ memory. It’s like a computer’s memory. For example, if a police chief received a complaint about someone for being a homosexual in 1988 and if a similar report was written again 10 years later, everyone would know that the second report was written by the same person who wrote it in 1988. So someone in the police, if involved in a crime gang would be spotted easily by others.”

Aytaç said police had filed some assassinations as “unresolved” even though their perpetrators are known publicly. He claimed that the police know who is behind the murders of investigative journalist Uğur Mumcu, journalist Ahmet Taner Kışlalı and Professor Bahriye Üçok, all of them killed by bombs.

“I gave courses to 240 bomb specialists in Turkey. They say similar explosives are being used in similar assassinations. If the government can support an investigation into many of those cases, they would be solved,” Aytaç said.

‘Turkey is different today’

According to Aytaç, today’s Turkey is different from that of the 1960s, the ‘70s and the ‘80s because “more average Anatolians” have started to own the country through investing in their lives. “The children of Anatolians started to become judges, prosecutors, police chiefs, lieutenant colonels and colonels. They side with democracy.”

According to Aytaç people are more scared to be involved in illegal structures because of YouTube and small technological devices that make monitoring and recording easy. In addition, he said the media is more diverse as opposed to the period of Feb. 28 [1997, often referred to as the post-modern coup] and the coup in 1960.

“But we have people in the media linked to Ergenekon. There may be more revelations about this. This is a fight between good and evil,” he said.

Aytaç also said people are more conscious and do not believe in everything they hear and see.

“When there is an explosion or when there is an assassination or when there is a religious leader provoking the public, people ask who the forces behind them are,” he said.

Referring to Grand Unity Party (BBP) leader Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu, who was involved in ultra-nationalist gangs previously, Aytaç said: “He says they were trying to save the country but following the Sept. 12, 1980 coup, the state cracked down on them along with leftists. He says he would never do what he had done before.”

The investigation into Ergenekon began in the summer of 2007, when the police discovered a house in İstanbul being used as an arms depot. As the investigation expanded, another house in the central Anatolian city of Eskişehir was discovered to have held a large number of explosives, weapons and ammunition.

During a raid of the home, police found lists of people compiled by various intelligence agencies that categorized them according to their political affiliation. Many such lists were prepared by the military’s intelligence departments in 1999 and 2000 as part of the Feb. 28 process, which started in 1997 when the military overthrew the government in an unarmed intervention.

More than 40 people are currently under arrest, accused of having links to the Ergenekon gang.

Suspects will start appearing before the court as of Oct. 20 and will face accusations that include “membership in an armed terrorist group,” “attempting to destroy the government,” “inciting people to rebel against the Republic of Turkey” and other similar crimes.

BBC News, Istanbul

Sarah Rainsford

It is a story that has set Turkey abuzz with rumour and speculation.

At its heart is an ultra-nationalist gang known as Ergenekon, exposed when 33 of its alleged members were seized in a police raid in late January.

The claims widely reported in the Turkish press ever since read like a thriller.

They allege the gang was plotting to bring down the government.

It is claimed their plan was to assassinate a string of Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk, fomenting chaos and provoking a military intervention in 2009.

“ When the Cold War ended those structures [illicit paramilitary gangs] went out of business, but they still existed ”

Cengiz Candar

Turkish newspaper columnist

A “menu” of targets had already been drawn up and a hitman hired when the police swooped, according to the daily Hurriyet.

Sabah newspaper linked the gang to the recent murder of three Protestant Christians and Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Those details – apparently leaked by police – have never been officially confirmed.

The lawyers of several of the accused told the BBC only that their clients have been charged under Article 313 of the penal code for inciting armed revolt against the government.

Those still detained include retired Brig Gen Veli Kucuk, an alleged mafia boss and an ultra-nationalist lawyer who provoked numerous prosecutions against prominent Turkish writers and intellectuals – including Mr Pamuk – for “insulting Turkishness”.

‘Deep state’

A brief statement at the outset linked the arrests to a raid in Istanbul last June. A large cache of hand grenades and explosives was discovered; then and a number of former military personnel detained.

“ The Turkish military is not a criminal organisation ”

Gen Buyukanit

Turkish army chief-of-staff

There have been no further formal statements about the gang, or their plot. But that has not stopped the Ergenekon affair making top “news” for almost two weeks.

From the start, this operation has been portrayed as a blow against the “deep state” – which explains the excitement.

It is a term widely used to describe renegade members of the security forces said to act outside the law in what they judge to be Turkey’s best interests.

The phenomenon, much-discussed but never proven, is said to stretch back to Cold War times, when illicit paramilitary gangs were supposedly set up in collaboration with Western intelligence agencies to prevent the spread of communism.

“When the Cold War ended those structures went out of business, but they still existed,” claims newspaper columnist Cengiz Candar, who has no doubt a “deep state” exists.

“Then the threat changed. The target became Kurdish insurgents or Asala,” an Armenian militant organisation that targeted Turkish diplomats, he says.

For ultra-nationalists today the threats to Turkey include EU accession, Armenian genocide allegations and any talk of a peace deal to end the 24-year-old Kurdish insurgency.

‘Under watch’

In 1996, many Turks’ suspicions of a “deep state” were confirmed when a car crashed in the town of Susurluk. Inside were a senior police chief, a prominent politician and a wanted assassin.

“Susurluk revealed weird connections between state officials and those who operate outside the limits of the law. It happened at a time when we had a lot of extra-judicial killings in Turkey,” Mr Candar explains.

“But the investigation stopped just as there was speculation it was reaching very sensitive spots, even the military establishment. That only confirmed the existence of these networks in the public consciousness.”

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan clearly has his own suspicions.

He used the same “deep state” terminology to describe the police operation against Ergenekon.

“These gangs are not new in our country. Our aim is to get rid of them. We see gangs in the most important institutions. People who once worked in these institutions join these organisations,” Sabah quoted Mr Erdogan saying, immediately after the initial arrests.

Praising the police raids, he added: “There is a deep Turkey working against the deep state. This prevents them [the gangs] being as active as they once were.”

If the prime minister has proof linking Ergenekon members to active security officials, it has yet to be revealed.

“I think the government moved now to dirty these peoples’ names and reputations. It’s a warning that they’re under watch,” believes Irfan Bozan, who is following the story for the privately-owned NTV 24-hour news channel.

Army rebuttal

Mr Bozan also raises the possibility the operation is part of a continuing power struggle between a government led by devout Muslims and a staunchly secular military.

“At first it does look like an attempt to crack down on the deep state at last. But this is not a real challenge to those forces. This is an attack on those who are anti-government,” Mr Bozan suggests.

Still, the chief-of-staff of Turkey’s army was concerned enough by the suggestion the military might be tied to Ergenekon to issue a public rebuttal.

“The Turkish military is not a criminal organisation,” Gen Buyukanit told journalists last week, apparently washing his hands of the accused.

 ”Military members who commit crimes are punished by the courts. It is wrong to try to link such incidents to the military as a whole,” he said.

As the prosecutors gather their evidence the country is gripped, awaiting the next revelation, the next headline and the denouement.

After years of “deep state” rumours, many see the Ergenekon case as a real test of the government’s will to dig deep and expose any ties between illicit gangs and the state. If they do really exist.

a or a schoolboy the back lighting enables one to pick out from the central tower the little captive silhouettes in the ring of cells in short the principle of the dungeon is reversed daylight and the overseer’s gaze capture the more effectively than darkness which afforded after all a sort of protection there is no need for arms physical violence material constraints just a gaze an inspecting gaze a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorisation to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over and against himself a superb formula power exercised continuously and for what turns out to be minimal cost mirror with memory memory without a mirror if instead of being hanged by the neck you’re thrown inside for not giving up hope in the world your country and people like a stone at the bottom of a well four o’clock no you no six seven tomorrow the day after and maybe who knows I love my country I have swung on its plane trees I have stayed in its prisons nailed to the sky this is the price and the promise of citizenship for as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the and of the people upon which this nation relies these things are true they have been the quiet force of throughout our infernal possessing now neither the quality nor the quantity of humanity labyrinth of thoughts empty labyrinths madness as a domain of knowledge at each stage of his imprisonment he had known or seemed to know whereabouts he was in the windowless building possibly there were slight differences in the air pressure the cells where the guards had beaten him were below ground level the room where he had been interrogated by was high up near the roof this place was many metres underground as deep down as it was possible to go (con)naissance extraordinary rendition I have seen hell labyrinth of blindness and is god innocent innocuous innocent malignant malicious I never borrowed a kettle from you blind eyewitness I returned it to you intact the kettle was already broken when I got it from you under the snow and lava a swimming pool with no bottom let flowing water bring to you the king is but an earthen bowl on the potter’s shelf and victories are told on the ruined walls of the king of kings I carved your name on my watchband with my fingernail where I am you know imprison in prison inprison I don’t have a pearl-handled jackknife they won’t give us anything sharp two gentlemen meet on a train and one is struck by the extraordinary package being carried by the other he asks his companion what is in that unusual package you are carrying there prisoner a prisoner B screen memory the other man replies that is a macguffin what is a macguffin asks the first man the second says a macguffin is a device used for killing leopards in the scottish highlands naturally the first man says but there are no leopards in the scottish highlands well says the second then that’s not a macguffin is it world’s embrace blind witness omnipresent omniscient a prison where the walls are made of glass the guards are watching the inmates, the inmates are watching the guards a dark room single bright lamp in the middle a chair underneath interrogation/inter-rogation/interrelation dis-closure carrying the sky entropy what does solitude taste like pure presence is fetish in a wilderness of mirrors what do you look at subversive mirror simpl(ifi)e(d) drinking emptiness symbol of wholeness I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh because its wounds are not upon the surface and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear therefore the more I denounce it as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay art ceases to be based on ritual and begins to be based on another practice politics the worst thing in the world said varies from individual to individual it may be burial alive or death by fire or by drowning or by impalement or fifty other deaths there are cases where it is some quite trivial thing not even fatal dark moments, such as everyone has when you think you’ve achieved nothing at all when it seems that the only trials to come to a good end are those that were determined to have a good end from the start and would do so without any help while all the others are lost despite all the running to and fro, all the effort, all the little, apparent successes that gave such joy

Hürriyet (Newspaper)

Yusuf Kanlı

While still serving in office, when he was presented with a complaint that some security personnel engaged in the fight against the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, terrorism were subjecting people to summary execution, the most senior politician of the country, former President Süleyman Demirel was reported to have said, “The state cannot murder its citizens.” The parliamentary Human Rights Commission of the time reportedly did not take such reports seriously either, saying the claims were products of some foul imagination.

With a pragmatic and rather ignorant approach it could be argued that if there is a secessionist terrorist campaign continuing since 1984 and the security forces have been trying to battle that threat to national security, territorial and national integrity of the country, because of the continued impact of the continued difficult conditions and atmosphere of confrontation on the psychology of the security forces there might be some elements both in police anti-terror task force and in the military to get involved in some summary executions, which is outlawed in the country.

That will be, of course, a rather simplistic approach incompatible at all with either the notion of supremacy of law, sacredness of life or the principle that the most fundamental one of individual rights is the right of living.

Yet, revelations by “informants,” the accuracy of which cannot be verified so far, continue stressing that some civilians, as well some village guards suspected of abetting, supporting, providing information to the separatist gang or engaged in some illicit trade, such as drug trafficking, were “executed” by security personnel. There are claims that bodies of some of the victims of such summary executions were thrown in wells, or are buried secretly at locations far away from view.

A bad record

It is a fact also that as part of policy at the time, villagers were uprooted from their homes, forced to migrate and hundreds of villages were burnt. It is a fact that not only at the Diyarbakır Prison where inmates were forced to eat human excrement, villagers were forced to eat excrement in village squares in full view of other villagers. It is a fact that many people were “convinced” under torture to testify and claim responsibility for many crimes that they did not hear about until the start of their interrogation. It is a fact that this country has lost over 40,000 people in PKK related violence, most of them civilians. It is a fact that over the past almost three decades of PKK related violence, over 17,000 people were declared missing and presumed dead. It is a fact that there are cemeteries in many areas in southeastern Anatolian provinces for victims of terrorism or terrorists whose bodies were not claimed by the families or simply whose identities could not be established. The state cannot murder, but it is a fact that once there was a prime minister, a blonde lady, who was saying “to kill for the state and being killed for the state are equally sacred for us.” That is, there were people who were killing people assuming that they were killing for the state or for the defense of the state.

Crime is crime

Irrespective by who, in what outfit, where, how and in what psychological condition such crimes were committed, there can be no excuse. A crime is a crime, no one should try to ignore or present such crimes as certain acts that might be overseen because of “conditions” or some other pretext. All such claims have to be taken very seriously, investigated and whoever was responsible for them should be brought to justice. This is a duty for the state, the government, security forces and of course the Turkish judiciary.

Such investigations should not be mixed up with politically tainted probes such as Ergenekon, prejudices should be avoided and the utmost care should be attached to verification of the claims backed by hard evidence, as it would not be a surprise for anyone to eventually figure out that at least some of the claims might be baseless and aimed at nothing more than to harm the image of the state and the security forces.

It was shocking for me to read this week the latest “Wells of Death” book by eminent journalist Saygı Öztürk on the Şemdinli events. Öztürk skillfully documented how the gang staged some heinous acts and then successfully placed the blame on the security forces. Such investigations have to be continued with that awareness and should go deep and draw out what indeed might have happened. That is, such investigations should not be allowed to become propaganda tools of the separatist gang or their domestic and foreign political agents.

Hürriyet (Newspaper)

Cüneyt Ülsever

Turkey has undergone a number of military coups and witnessed as many attempts. Let’s not forget the murders committed by unknown perpetrators either. Many in southeastern Turkey were killed by individuals with some sort of link with the state. I am as certain of the existence of JİTEM as I am of the sun. I know that I was bugged upon the orders of retired generals, Şener Eruygur and Levent Ersöz, since I was considered to be a “dangerous journalist”. My name appeared on the flimsy lists they prepared.

In my novel titled “Hadji” and published in 2003, I narrated how an illegal structure nested inside the Turkish Armed Forces, or TSK.

The Ergenekon case is vital in our struggle for democracy as being the first to try coup plotters, maybe not putschers yet, and those who institutionalize illegal structures in the southeast.

Everyone making contributions to this case is in fact contributing a great deal to Turkey!

***

However, the legitimacy of the case is being harmed in five ways:

1) Information is being leaked to the pro-government media; therefore, highlighting several aspects of this case unnecessarily. They are nurturing revenge in society.

2) The existence of defendants, with no democratic world view and who have dreams of coups, and who also accept that what they do harms the sense of community, and yet deny what they do is a crime, negatively affects the case.

3) The number of claims suggesting that the Criminal Procedures Law is being violated is increasing.

4) A large portion of the claims in the case are based on legal or illegal wiretappings, and some may not be accepted as evidence.

***

5) Finally, we read news stories on the doubts surrounding the secret witnesses. For instance, two of these witnesses, who play a critical role in the trial of a military colonel for who nine consecutive life sentences is sought, have recanted their depositions claiming that the promises they were given have not been met yet. (Hürriyet daily, July 20, 2009)

In the petitions the two witnesses submitted to the court on June 26, 2009, they claimed the Security Forces had asked them to give false testimonies in exchange for rewards.

Both witnesses, former members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, have withdrawn their original statements claiming that the promises made had not been delivered!

***

This strange situation that emerged in Diyarbakır may have a tremendous impact on the Ergenekon case.

And the main reason is that the case in essence depends on phone wiretaps, on documents that have not been proven to be original, and on the testimonies of secret witnesses.

In fact, wiretapping, even if legal, does not stand alone as evidence.

Since the original of an infamous document hasn’t been found, the columnists that had lent their support were debunked.

And now we are seeing a slide the in credibility of the secret witnesses.

This strange scene that took place in Diyarbakır cast a shadow over all secret witnesses who gave depositions in the Ergenekon case.

At this point, those accused in the case will easily question the credibility of the secret witnesses if their trial is not going well.

They will claim that the statements made by these secret witnesses were made up in return for some sort of reward.

***

The public acceptance of the rulings handed down in this case will determine the direction of Turkey!

For now, however, the case is baffling!

Sabrina Tavernise and Sebnem Arsu

New York Times

SILIVRI, Turkey — One of the most sensational public trials in Turkish history began Monday, as a court started hearing a case against 86 people — among them retired army generals, journalists and a former university rector — charged with assassinations, bomb attacks and trying to topple the government.

The focus of the case is a secret, ultranationalist group named Ergenekon, a word that refers to a legend about the genesis of the Turkish people. Prosecutors say the defendants worked together, using violence to try to create chaos in society and weaken public support for the government in order to pave the way for a coup.

The charges, unveiled this summer in a 2,455-page indictment, include the murders of a judge, priest, journalist and three Christian publishing house employees, as well as the bombing of a newspaper. The group is also charged with plotting to kill public figures, including Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose governing party, Justice and Development, is said to have been a prominent target in the plots, has been accused of using the case to silence critics who say his party has an Islamist agenda.

One of the defendants, Tuncay Ozkan, a journalist and the founder of a television network, Kanalturk, was a principal organizer of antigovernment rallies that drew hundreds of thousands into the streets last year.

Turkey is a democracy with an elected government, but a powerful elite of military officers, judges and senior bureaucrats has helped steer the country since its inception in 1923, carrying out four coups. This trial is the first real attempt in Turkish history to prosecute the leaders of this country’s violent nationalist fringe, who prosecutors say have had links to the elite.

The case has riveted Turkish society because public criticism of the military, a vaunted institution in Turkey, is extremely rare. The military has denied any role in the plots; the officers identified in the indictment are all retired.

Prosecutors say the Ergenekon organization is the Turkish equivalent of the Italian Gladio network, a code name for operatives who infiltrated Italian society after World War II to counter Communism and who were responsible for a series of political assassinations and bombings in the 1970s. Turkey, according to the indictment, has allowed Ergenekon “to turn our country into a mafia and terror haven.”

Lawyers for the defendants questioned the extent of the connections that prosecutors seemed to be drawing among people from different, often opposing, backgrounds.

Vahdettin Erdem, a lawyer for Dogu Perincek, the leader of a nationalist political party and one of the accused, said in an interview that the case was more about politics than law and that it contained many irrelevant and unfounded accusations. One of the documents prosecutors are using to charge Mr. Perincek is from part of his party platform calling for changes in the way the Turkish state is organized, which has been public for years, Mr. Erdem said.

“This indictment is a work of people who cannot bear political opposition,” he said.

The trial opened in a chaotic, crowded courtroom in a prison complex 50 miles west of Istanbul. A noisy throng of the suspects’ supporters waved flags outside the entrance to the prison, hurling insults at Mr. Erdogan’s party. The government has put 19 witnesses under protection.

Prosecutors began investigating last year, when the police, acting on a telephone tip, raided an apartment in Istanbul and found a cache of hand grenades that had the same identifying number as those used in a bomb attack on the offices of Cumhuriyet, a pro-military newspaper, in 2006. Authorities believe the attack was a provocation not aimed at the military but intended to discredit its opponents.

The police later arrested several suspects, including Veli Kucuk, a retired general, who is accused of having been the mastermind behind several recent political murders, including that of a judge last year.

Other defendants include Ilhan Selcuk, the top columnist at Cumhuriyet; Kemal Kerincsiz, an ultranationalist lawyer; Kemal Yalcin Alemdaroglu, a former Istanbul University rector; and Adil Sacan, the former chief of Istanbul’s organized crime unit.

Most of the evidence is from hours of tapped phone conversations, as well as classified documents taken from suspects, including ones that include plans for attacks on Turkey’s Supreme Court and NATO buildings.

A document in a laptop computer found during a raid on a nationalist group outlined what to do if anyone from Mr. Erdogan’s party were to take the presidency. The indictment said the plan was for “shock assassinations” of Greek and Armenian religious leaders in Turkey, as well as a prominent Jewish businessman, Ishak Alaton.

But there was no violence after Abdullah Gul, a party member, became president in 2007, and it was unclear whether there was ever any attempt to attack members of his party.

Turkey has had glimpses of state ties to the criminal underworld in the past. In 1996, a former police chief and a mob boss who were sworn enemies in public died together when their Mercedes crashed on a highway. In 2006, two undercover military officers were caught after planting a bomb in a Kurdish-owned bookstore that killed one person.

The Associated Press

New York Times

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Two retired generals were jailed Sunday in connection with a suspected plot to topple Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

The two men, who were arrested late Saturday, are the highest-ranking former military officials to be detained in the inquiry. They are among 21 people held in the past week in connection with what investigators say is a pro-secular and nationalist network called Ergenekon, the news agency reported.

The two retired generals — Hursit Tolon, who once headed Turkey’s paramilitary force, and Sener Eruygur, a former top army commander, who helped organize a series of antigovernment rallies last year — were being held at an Istanbul jail.

No charges have been filed, and few details about the suspected plot have been made public. Some newspapers close to the government have said the suspects were plotting a series of events, including demonstrations and violent confrontations with the police, that could have created conditions leading to an army takeover.

The labor minister, Faruk Celik, urged people to be patient and to wait for indictments. “We have to trust the republic’s prosecutors,” Mr. Celik said Sunday. “I believe that as soon as the indictment is released, we will all learn what it is about.”

Critics have denounced the arrests as an attempt to silence government opponents. In Ankara, hundreds of people attended a peaceful demonstration against the arrests.

“The day will come when the AKP will be forced to account!” the protesters shouted, referring to the governing Justice and Development Party by its initials in Turkish.

Similar protests occurred in other Turkish cities.

The AKP, the party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been locked in a power struggle with secular groups supported by the military and other state institutions, including the judiciary.

Secularists see themselves as the defenders of the modern secular ideology espoused by the Turkish national founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and they oppose groups they say want to impose Islam on society.

The Constitutional Court heard a case last week accusing the governing party of antisecular activity. The prosecutor is seeking to have the party disbanded and Mr. Erdogan and 70 other party members banned from joining a political party for five years.

Mr. Erdogan’s party, formed in 2001 by politicians who once belonged to Turkey’s Islamist movement, denies that it has an Islamist agenda, noting that it has backed changes intended to help Turkey start negotiations toward membership in the European Union.

Sebnem Arsu

New York Times

ISTANBUL — Eighty-six people, including writers, members of civil organizations and former military officers, were charged Monday with membership in an illegal ultranationalist organization and of plotting to overthrow the Turkish government.

Speaking at a televised news conference, the Istanbul chief prosecutor, Aykut Cengiz Engin, refused to give details of the case against the ultranationalist and hard-line secular organization, known as Ergenekon, because the case had not yet been formally accepted by the court.

But he said the suspects, 48 of them in police custody and the others free while awaiting trial, were charged with forming, managing and aiding the organization, which is accused of plotting a coup against the Islamic-rooted, governing Justice and Development Party, or AKP.

The 2,455-page indictment is widely perceived in Turkey as being part of a power struggle between the secular establishment, including parts of the military, and the democratically elected and religiously conservative government.

In another case currently before Turkey’s highest court, AKP and its leadership are charged with introducing religion into government and violating the secular principles on which the Turkish state was founded. Prosecutors seek to disband the party.

The possible coup emerged when a cache of weapons, explosives and illegal documents was found in the home of an ultranationalist retired military officer during a security operation 13 months ago.

Since then, several police investigations have provided information that the Ergenekon group — the name is a reference to a central Asian Turkic legend with strong nationalist overtones — had also been involved in an armed attack on a senior state court in 2006, as well as the 2007 bombing of Cumhuriyet, a left-wing newspaper in Istanbul. Both attacks were included in the charges announced Monday.

A security operation this month led to the arrests of other suspects, including two high-ranking retired generals. These suspects were not included in the indictment on Monday, but will be added in a separate filing, Mr. Engin said.

Military prosecutors have also begun an investigation into the charges against the two retired generals, Sener Eruygur and Hursit Tolon, a private news station, NTV, reported Monday. Military prosecutors demanded copies of evidence that security forces had collected from the former generals’ personal premises, NTV said.

The arrest of the two former generals has stirred controversy in a nation where the military has traditionally seen its role as protecting the secular state.

The military strongly denies any links with the Ergenekon network. It reasserts its loyalty to the secular Turkish Republic in occasional public statements.

Secularists remain suspicious of the governing party, which grew out of previous pro-Islamic parties. Some warn that the government’s policies will lead to Islamic-oriented conservatism.

Opposition parties have heavily criticized the government for appointing religious candidates to critical state positions during its almost seven years in power.

The coup investigation has coincided with the case against the ruling party at the Constitutional Court, where hearings have been held this month.

The timing of the coup indictments, as well as the harshness with which some suspects were forced from their beds after midnight for interrogation, was seen by some Turks as an effort by pro-government prosecutors to intimidate secularists.

Since the founding of the republic in 1923, military coups have removed elected governments from power three times. In 1997, the military also pressured an Islamic-leaning government to step down.

There is widespread concern in some circles that closing down the ruling party, which won more than 45 percent of the vote in the general election last year, might destabilize the nation’s economy and damage reforms aimed at leading the country into the European Union.

Bekir Bozdag, a senior AKP official, strongly denied any links between the government and the continuing investigation into the Ergenekon network.

“These are statements by those that merely aim at diverting the subject,” Mr. Bozdag was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Anatolian news agency. “Government cannot direct an investigation; it doesn’t have an authority like that.”

Some on the left see the cases as reflecting Turkey’s struggle toward democracy.

“Circles that do not trust their political power to fight against the threat of fundamentalism on a democratic platform look up to the military, as antidemocratic as their ways are,” said Mithat Sancar, a law professor at Ankara University.

“Therefore both the closure case and the Ergenekon indictment are not about whether you support AKP or elitist military, but about whether you support a law state and better democracy in Turkey,” he said.

In a separate investigation, into the armed attack on the United States Consulate last week that killed six people, Turkish authorities arrested but released Cebrail Kocanarslan, who they said had driven the gunmen to the consulate and then fled in the same car, NTV reported.

Mr. Kocanarslan still faces charges and will stand trial, the report said.

An Istanbul court formally charged one suspect late Sunday with belonging to an illegal organization.