PROSECUTOR FILES CLOSURE CASE AGAINST DEEP STATE

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