Records of PM's phone conversations found during raid

Records of conversations held between the prime minister and various businessmen were found during a police search of a magazine office, it was alleged Tuesday.

The offices of the Ulusal Kanal television station and Aydınlık magazine were searched Monday as part of the ongoing Ergenekon investigation. Both the station and the magazine are linked to the Workers’ Party, or İP, whose leader, Doğu Perinçek, was detained as part of the case and is currently on trial.

Two people at Aydınlık were detained during the office search and the homes of the editor in chief and news coordinator of Ulusal Kanal were also searched. Many documents and CDs were confiscated, and recordings of conversations between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and various businessmen were said to be found on the CDs.

Among other conversations recorded between 1999 and 2004 was one between Erdoğan’s adviser Cüneyt Zapsu and former Cyprus representative of the United Nations Alvaro De Soto.

“We asked Erdoğan a question about one of his telephone conversations with Turkish Cypriot President Mehmet Ali Talat after the referendum on the Annan Plan was carried out. We didn’t get a response from him, but now we have a response from the Ergenekon prosecutors,” İP General Secretary Mehmet Bedri Gültekin said in response to the searches conducted at Ulusal Kanal and Aydınlık’s offices.

The court hearing the Ergenekon case has meanwhile decided to question the Secretariat of the General Staff, the National Intelligence Organization, or MİT, and the Police Department separately to ascertain whether the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, is part of Ergenekon. The court has requested the file on Öcalan.

The court has also decided to release three suspects in the case, Kahraman Şahin, Erol Ölmez and Ümit Oğuztan, though all three will be barred from traveling abroad.

The cases involving the attack on the Council of State and on the offices of daily Cumhuriyet have been merged with the Ergenekon case. Alparslan Arslan, who is standing trial for his alleged role in a fatal shooting at the Council of State in 2006 and the bombing of Cumhuriyet’s Istanbul offices, has said he received his orders from God.

Arslan refused to respond when asked where he had received the grenade that was used to attack the Cumhuriyet offices.

The accused said his aim was to kill the then-head of the Council of State over a ruling on continuing the ban on the headscarf. Arslan also said he had learned about retired Gen. Veli Küçük through the media and only saw him for the first time during the trial. Küçuk is standing trial as one of the alleged leaders of the Ergenekon gang.

The Ergenekon case started after the discovery of 27 hand grenades on June 12, 2007, in a shanty house in Istanbul’s Ümraniye district. The house belonged to a retired noncommissioned officer and the grenades were found to be the same type used in the attacks on Cumhuriyet’s offices in 2006.

The findings led to scores of detentions, putting more than 100 journalists, writers, alleged gang leaders and politicians under interrogation in what has turned into a terror investigation seeking to crack down on an alleged ultra-nationalist gang. Members of the Ergenekon organization are accused of trying to spread chaos and mayhem in order to justify toppling the government by staging a coup in 2009.

The name “Ergenekon” refers to a pre-Islamic Turkish saga that tells of Turks’ reemergence from defeat by tricking their enemies under the guidance of a gray wolf.

Many detainees in the case are retired officials who had gathered in associations linked to the ultra-nationalist Kuvayi Milliye (National Forces) – a reference to irregular forces that led the Turkish independence war back in the early 1920s.