Colonel Dursun Çiçek, who was detained Wednesday morning for his alleged role in a supposed military plot to smear the reputation of Turkey's AK Party government, was released on Wednesday night.

Col. Dursun Çiçek

The Çiçek case has been a major topic of discussion in the Turkish media since June 12, when the Turkish newspaper Taraf announced that it had uncovered a plan by some individuals in the Turkish military to undertake a campaign against both the AK Party government and the followers of Fethullah Gülen. Many people in Turkey—and perhaps especially in the military—see the AK Party and the Gülen movement as posing a threat to Turkey's brand of "secularism" (actually laicism, because in Turkey the state controls—or is supposed to control—the institutions of official Islam). According to Taraf's charges, this plan involved framing AK Party and Gülen figures for various crimes and employing the media to create negative publicity relating to Gülen-friendly media organs like Zaman and the television station Samanyolu.

As I discussed in an earlier post on this blog, some questions have emerged over the authenticity of the document upon which Taraf has based its charges. Taraf's copy of the document is only a photocopy, and no original version of the document has emerged. A military investigation into the affair concluded that the document was a forgery, while a separate investigation launched by the gendarmerie concluded that "the signature on the document resembles that of Dursun Çiçek."

Soon thereafter, public disputes emerged between Turkish Prime Minister (and AK Party leader) Tayyip Erdoğan and General İlker Başbuğ, the highest-ranking military leader in Turkey and de facto military spokesman for matters pertaining to politics in Turkey. Erdoğan insisted that Taraf's charges be investigated by a civilian commission, while General Başbuğ argued that a military investigation would be sufficient. Başbuğ's position is that the military is the victim of a smear campaign, while Erdoğan announced he would lodge a criminal complaint over the Çiçek affair within just a day of the story first breaking in Taraf. Shortly thereafter, the AK Party passed a law allowing the professional actions of military personnel to be put on trial in civilian courts.


General İlker Başbuğ

On Tuesday, meanwhile, Turkish President Abdullah Gül (himself a former AK Party Prime Minister) chaired an eight-hour meeting of the National Security Council—which includes the Prime Minister,senior government ministers, General Başbuğ, and other high-rankingmilitary officials. The meeting was largely interpreted as an effort to smooth relations between the government and the military.

Nevertheless, the very next morning Çiçek was detained by a civilian prosecutor as part of the government's ongoing investigation into the Ergenekon case. Less than a day later, however, he was released due to lack of evidence.

President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan

What happens now is anybody's guess. Hürriyet (whose owner, Aydin Doğan, has recently been in a bitter fight with Erdoğan, an event which corresponded in the increase of anti-AK Party editorial comment in Doğan Group newspapers) has detected a softening in the rhetoric (scan to bottom) among AK Party officials, while pro-AK Party Zaman reports that the AK Party scored a victory on Tuesday when Turkey's military leaders "pledged not to impede" the Ergenekon investigation. Deniz Baykal, leader of the opposition Republican People's Party (or CHP) has been quoted by Cumhuriyet as saying that the release of Çiçek has "lowered the temperature" of the recent political tension in Turkey.

It's hard to say where this will go next. On the one hand, stories like this emerge and disappear with surprising regularity in the Turkish media. Generals and politicians throw mud at one another through the media, and the newspapers and television stations duly report on the theater. Most people I know in Turkey have been bored by this story for some time. Thus, there's a pretty good chance it will be absorbed into the general woodwork of "military-AK Party tension" narrative. 

On the other hand, this is still pretty serious business. For one and a half years, government prosecutors and the police (who have been on the receiving end of AK Party appointments and political patronage for seven years now) have been arresting people in the middle of the night for their alleged efforts to prepare a coup against Erdoğan and his government. According to people leading the Ergenekon investigation, the Turkish military no longer undertakes military takeovers on its own, but rather needs the help of university professors, journalists, and other civilians to do this.

Indeed, there's a weird symmetry here:the crime that Çiçek and (presumably) others are accused of committing—planting weapons on political enemies, besmirching the AK Party and Gülen group in the media—is precisely what many people think the Ergenekon trial has become. Except for in the case of Ergenekon, it is the enemies of the AK Party who have been detained for months thanks to notes, weapons, and other contraband which could easily have been planted in their homes and offices.

Cumhuriyet Ankara Bureau Chief Mustafa Balbay has been
in prison since March 5 over his alleged role in planning a coup
against the AK Party

As I wrote in my earlier post on this issue, I have no doubt that the military is capable of doing what Taraf and others have accused them of doing. What I find less easy to believe is that—in a tense political climate where the government has admitted to monitoring 70,000 telephones in the country and where people like Cumhuriyet Ankara bureau chief Mustafa Balbay have been detained for months because of documents allegedly found in their homes and offices—why on earth would a military man like Çiçek sign his name to a short (four-page) document which blandly states that, as a result of the military's secret plans, "agents inside the AK Party will be put into action," and "officers who are defendants in the Ergenekon case will be defended?"

Are points like this really so difficult to remember? I'm never one to rule out incompetence and stupidity, but is it really likely that military figures would ignore the practical ramifications of an enormous investigation (Ergenekon) that has been gripping the country for 18 months by putting such goals down on paper, signing their names to it, then hiding it away in the office of someone who would later be arrested in connection with Ergenekon? Why, in a secret and very illegal document deemed worth saving during a period of intense and unprecedented police scrutiny of the armed forces, are there no secret details other than the name of the person who supposedly signed it?

Where are the specifics?  Why was this document considered necessary to hang onto? Does Çiçek likewise record and save damning information relating to other aspects of his life? Is there a similarly signed "plan for cheating on wife" or "plan for stealing money" that is also locked away somewhere?

No matter what, relations between the military leadership and the AK Party have definitely grown tenser as a result of the Çiçek case. Military leaders, who have generally refrained from attacking the Ergenekon trial even as many active and retired military figures have been detained during the investigation, have clashed openly with the government in a manner rarely seen since the short-lived Refah Party government of the late 1990s (a government which was ultimately removed by the military). To the extent that mutual trust still existed between the AK Party and the military prior to Taraf's story on June 12, a lot of it has been dissolved over the course of the past three weeks.