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."













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