Conspiracy theories receive press in every country. However, in Turkey they receive more press, are more widespread and are actually more believable.
To understand the reasons for this is to take a step toward understanding politics in Turkey because the scenarios in this country, just as they are the fruits of imagination, are also based on reality. For this reason, they are also believable.
During the period leading to the 1960 military coup, there were some unbelievably strong allegations at hand. One example of such allegations was the claim that leftist youths had been captured by police and thrown into meat grinders. These allegations were a huge news item for days. Everyone who heard these allegations was completely horrified. But in reality, the actual names of these “revolutionary youths torn apart in meat grinders” were not known, nor could anyone say where this terrible event had taken place.
Nor could anyone have known these things because they were lies. This made-up news originated from some center, serving to alter the atmosphere in the country. Then when the conditions were ripe, it was time for the military coup to take place. After the 1960 military coup, the Turkish public had been strongly affected by this type of false news story.
Perhaps one of the most striking examples of this phenomenon was prior to the 1980 coup. Towards the end of the 1970s, Turkey was divided along lines of left and right. It was not possible to remain neutral or not being decisively on the right or on the left. Each side leveled accusations of treason at the other. When the armed struggles began, the left claimed it wanted to save the country from the fascist right. And the right believed it was protecting the country from the threat of communism.
There were armed clashes, bombings and assassinations. So much so that at the beginning of the 1980s, 5,000 of the nation’s youth had already been killed, and the daily average death toll from conflict had risen to 30. And in response to critical questions over why the military had “waited for so many people to die,” coup leader Gen. Kenan Evren replied with, “We waited for the conditions to be met.”
Thus on Sept. 12, 1980, the military, with Gen. Evren at its helm, took control of the country. Labor strikes, student protests, assassinations, bombings; everything, yes everything, came to a halt overnight. Years later, Süleyman Demirel, who had been prime minister during that period, asked, “With 30 people dying every day up until Sept. 11, 1980, how was it that on the morning of Sept. 13, everything stopped in one moment?”
Demirel was right to ask this. The many illegal organizations and groups, and the tens of thousands of militants, had their fighting cut short overnight, even though the government at the time gave the military very great power and authority before the coup.
What, then, was the authority they possessed that was not being used that brought the need for a coup to the forefront? This was a question debated for years in the Turkish public, and in the end, the following conclusion was reached: In the period before the 1980 military coup, the powers controlling the right and the left were coming from the same point. In the deadly acts each side was launching against the other, people were being guided from the same center. And the naive youth jumping into the scenario were unaware that they were simply pawns in the game. During the 1970s, former Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit used to talk about an organization called “Gladio.” Ecevit, whose own life was the target of assassination attempts many times, could never prove the existence of this “Gladio” group. But the majority of people in Turkey did believe his claims to be true.
Later, on Nov. 3, 1996, there was an odd traffic accident that took place in Turkey, and for many Turks, this accident came to represent a turning point. The car involved in the notorious accident in Susurluk contained a former leader from the right wing sought all over the world (Abdullah Çatlı), one top-level police official (Hüseyin Kocadağ) and a parliamentary deputy (Sedat Bucak).
It was said that there was strong evidence that Çatlı had been sent by the state abroad to incapacitate Armenian terrorists operating internationally. This was the same person who, before 1980, had been involved in bloody protests and who had been accused personally of being the cause for the deaths of so many leftist youth in Turkey.
Meanwhile, Police Chief Hüseyin Kocadağ, who died in the Susurluk accident, was known for his identity as a leftist and an Alevi. Thus the people of Turkey were shocked when a famous right-wing terrorist and a renowned leftist police commander were revealed to have been in the same car. The weapons present in the car, the fact that the car itself belonged to a deputy who was also the family head of an enormous clan from the Turkish East, the fact that an unknown woman was also present in the car... Everything turned in one moment into a mysterious puzzle and one which still hasn’t been solved.
Deputy chief of the Turkish Police Intelligence Bureau at the time, Hanefi Avcı, talked during a live television program of a “gladio” that had settled itself into the workings of the government. At that time, then-general Veli Küçük blamed Intelligence Bureau Chief Mehmet Eymür and current DYP leader Mehmet Ağar. According to Avcı, the structure that had rooted itself in the government was a triangle consisting of the military, police and politics. For saying these words, Avcı was arrested, but then later returned to his post, where he carries on to this day. But the curtains of secrecy have never lifted on this event because the people named in the Susurluk accident never came to court to give their testimonies.
There have, however, been frequent reminders of the gladio organization that former Prime Minister Ecevit used to mention so often because the phenomenon of unsolved murders has continued on while different groups in society become hostile to one another. Because of psychological wartime techniques, the people themselves have experienced polarization.
Suspicion in Turkey over gladios and gangs has carried on until today. And there are connections between some of the events we see occurring today and some of the secret structures within the government.
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