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Turkish Popular Prime Minister Defends Curbing Secularist Military Courts' Powers
28 June 2009
Turkey's prime minister says a legal amendment that curbed powers of military courts, in accordance with EU demands, is aimed at protecting democracy. Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended the move Sunday after a secular opposition party accused his Islamic-rooted government of hastily passing the amendment in parliament Friday amid an alleged military conspiracy to discredit the ruling party. The amendment allows the prosecution of military personnel in civilian courts during peacetime instead of military courts. Civilian prosecutors are now expected to question a handful of navy officers in the latest alleged conspiracy against Erdogan's government. The military says it is committed to democracy. ‘Military Prosecution Is Attempting To Restrain Civilian Judiciary’ The former editor of a newsweekly that shut itself down after a police raid on its office following stories it published exposing coup plans inside the military has stated that the military prosecutor's completion of an investigation on Wednesday is an attempt to restrain the civilian judiciary. The now-defunct Nokta weekly's Editor-in-Chief Alper Görmüs said the completion of an investigation into an action plan seeking to bring down the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and undermine the Gülen movement was “very problematic.” The document, titled the “Action Plan to Fight Reactionaryism,” which was first published by the Taraf daily earlier this month, bears the signature of a senior official, Col. Dursun Çiçek, and describes a plot to bring down the government party and the Gülen movement via framing individuals by planting weapons in their homes and fabricating news stories. The military prosecutor launched an investigation and on Wednesday announced that the document had not been prepared inside the General Staff and that no further action was necessary. This Görmüs interprets as an attempt to cover up the truth about the document. “This isn't over yet. What's more, the military prosecution has no right to declare this over. You might not reach a conclusion. But what if tomorrow the original copy of the document is found? Can this file be closed? Civilian prosecutors have the right to conduct all sorts of investigations into this. But the military prosecution's text also tells civilian prosecutors ‘not to pay attention to this.' This leading and warning are obvious in the text when you read it.” However, Görmüs also added that the civilian prosecutors conducting the Ergenekon investigation will not give in to such pressure. He also criticized the Military Prosecutor's Office for ignoring a modified version of Col. Çiçek's signature at the end of the colonel's testimony. “The fact that they overlooked his using a different signature for his testimony also creates doubts,” he said, adding that normally prosecutors take too many signatures from a single person even in the most insignificant case. “The fact that they ignored such a thing in this case means to me that they have done a sloppy job of investigating.” Görmüs said the military missed an opportunity to correct its image by trying to cover up the document.
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