VZCZCXYZ0000
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHAK #0608/01 0921225
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 011225Z APR 08
FM AMEMBASSY ANKARA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5759
INFO RUEHIT/AMCONSUL ISTANBUL 4069

C O N F I D E N T I A L ANKARA 000608 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/01/2018 
TAGS: PGOV TU
SUBJECT: PROSECUTOR FILES CLOSURE CASE AGAINST DEEP STATE 
 
REF: ANKARA 401 
 
Classified By: ECONOMIC COUNSELOR DALE EPPLER FOR REASONS 1.4 D 
 
¶1. (C) In a surprise move, Chief Prosecutor of the Court of 
Appeals Abudrrahman Yalcinkaya  filed a party closure case 
March 31 against the "Deep State" (the shadowy organization 
long believed to operate in secret to uphold the Kemalist 
state, though no one knows if they have actually met them). 
The 41-page indictment charges the "Deep State" with acting 
as an unregistered political party,  being a center of 
"political intrigue," causing Turkey to lose standing in the 
world, and retarding economic growth, investment, and "the 
political and social maturation of Turkish society."  It asks 
that the Deep State be officially recognized as a party 
(called DSP2, since DSP has already been trademarked by 
another party),  then banned, and that 401 members of the 
party also be banned from Turkish politics for five years. 
 
¶2. (C) The move was particularly surprising, because 
Yalcinkaya names himself as one of the 401 members of the 
DSP2, along with some of those arrested in the Ergenekon 
investigation (reftel), Chief of the Turkish General Staff 
General Buyukanit, former President Sezer, 71 federal 
prosecutors and judges, the entire Constitutional Court, 
cross-dressing TV entertainer Bulent Ersoy and the "Merv 
Griffith" of the Turkish entertainment world, Ibo.  In a 
press conference announcing the filing, Yalcinkaya said, "I 
am required to do this by the Constitution.  I do not like it 
-- it's actually quite suicidal for my career -- but it is my 
duty." 
 
¶3. (C) The surprise closure threw the already tumultuous 
Turkish political scene into paroxysms of befuddlement.  If 
the Constitutional Court imposes bans on both the AKP and the 
DSP2, Turkey will be left in a political vacuum.  An 
apparently surprised Prime Minister Erdogan said, "It must be 
a trick.  No one could be that stupid."  Republic People,s 
Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal held a terse press 
conference, both denouncing the filing as a "stab in the back 
to right-thinking Turks" and complaining that he was not on 
the list of DSP2 leaders.  "I have earned the right to be 
taken as seriously as members of any putative Deep State, the 
existence of which I firmly deny.  Only a fool would have 
prepared such an indictment that omitted my name." He 
promised to file a suit with the Constitutional Court 
challenging both the closure action and his own exclusion. 
 
¶4. (C) Several legal scholars questioned the legality of the 
filing, saying the Constitutional Court will be hard-pressed 
to come up with a legal standard for what constitutes a 
Turkish political party. "It's true that the Deep State 
sometimes acts like a party, and causes problems equal in 
size and stature to the disasters produced by Turkish 
political parties in the past," said former chief prosecutor 
Sabih Kanadolu. "But the Deep State is different, and 
Yalcinkaya knows that.  It's less a political party than a 
mafia group, La Cosa Turca, if you will." 
 
¶5. (C) Former Constitutional Court president Tulay disagreed, 
saying the move sets up the Constitutional Court to rule on 
both the AKP and DSP2 closure cases simultaneously: "they are 
two sides of the same coin.  AKP wants to move towards 
sharia, DSP2 wants to go back to the 1970's, when life was 
simple, imports were blocked, Turks were poor, and officials 
were free to treat the treasury as their private piggy bank. 
Now, the Constitutional Court will have the chance to ban 
both these extremes, both of these bugaboos that haunt the 
political life of Turkey. It can, by force of law, make Turks 
politically moderate, because anything else is -- or at least 
should be -- unconstitutional." 
 
¶6. (C) The naming of all members of the Constitutional Court 
in the indictment caused many observers to wonder what 
Yalcinkaya could possibly have been thinking, since by law, 
the Court has to decide all closure cases.  Columnist Murat 
Yetkin said that at first it seemed that Yalcinkaya was 
setting himself and other DSP2 members up to be immunized 
from future prosecution.  But, he noted, since the Court 
itself was included in the filing, they will have to bring in 
a full slate of alternate judges to decide the case; 
alternatively, a new slate of Constitutional Court judges 
would have be selected by President Gul, whom Yalcinkaya 
named in the AKP closure case.  Since there also is a closure 
case pending already against AKP,  Yetkin reasoned, this 
creates a "balance of legal terror" between AKP and DSP2.  In 
short, he concludes, DSP2 and AKP have cut a deal.  "Or else 
Yalcinkaya is just a righteous prosecutor--  in the secular 
meaning of the term -- and really did think that he had a 
duty to file this case.  But in Turkey, that's like believing 
in the Easter Bunny." 
 
¶7. (C) Columnist Yalcin Dogan said that the conspirators here 
were not AKP or the putative DSP2 "a political non-entity, 
about as real as the neo-cons in the United States."  Dogan 
argues that this is a clever, Nationalist Action Party 
(MHP)-masterminded coup: "Qui bono?   I have it on good 
authority -- including my barber -- that MHP convinced 
Yalcinkaya to file this case. But by naming the Court, 
Yalcinkaya has given AKP the power to destroy the DSP2, just 
as DSP2 can destroy AKP with the other closure case.  MHP 
will be the only party still standing afterwards, and that 
might actually give them the chance to win an election, bring 
back the gray wolves and strike the word  Kurdish, from our 
vocabulary." 
 
¶8. (C) A dazed and confused Bulent Ersoy (the highly popular 
transvestite TV star, previously charged with insulting the 
judiciary), accosted by press without a chance to put on his 
make-up, said of his inclusion in the case: " Only an April 
Fool would believe I was in any Deep State except 
depression." 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at 
http://www.intelink.sgov.gov/wiki/Portal:Turk ey 
 
WILSON