All eyes in Turkey

All eyes in Turkey have turned to two top-secret rooms at the Ankara headquarters of the Tactical Mobilization Group, a unit under the General Staff’s Special Forces Command, which have been searched by civilian prosecutors and police officers for the past four days.The prosecution believes that the two rooms in the Tactical Mobilization Group building, dubbed the “cosmic rooms,” where classified documents considered state secrets are archived, might hold key evidence proving that some military personnel were planning to assassinate political leaders.

The searches were conducted in the wake of a recently discovered assassination plot against Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Ar?nç, despite initial resistance from special forces officers who did not allow the searches to begin on Friday. Everyone now wonders what will come out of those rooms and whether the ongoing process will encourage the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) to clean up its act.

Everyone is holding their breath and cannot believe what has been happening in Ankara, says Sabah’s Mahmut Övür. He relates the current amazement among the public regarding the search of the rooms to the fact that these rooms have been considered taboo in so far as civilians having access to them.

In his view, those rooms were not considered taboo places because they contain information on organizing resistance movements in the event of an enemy invasion; if this had been the case, the presence of civilian prosecutors there would not have drawn much attention or led to concern. He suggests that the problem with these 57-year-old units lies in the role they assumed in regard to political events and the incidents they have been involved in. “This is what renders the latest investigation a historic and critical one,” says Övür, adding that although European countries dissolved such units after the collapse of the Soviet Union, their existence continued in Turkey under the Special Forces Command.

Bugün’s Erhan Ba?yurt says Turkey, Turkish democracy and the law will benefit from the ongoing process, and if the General Staff had insisted on not allowing civilian prosecutors to search the Tactical Mobilization Group headquarters, everyone would begin thinking that those rooms held records of illegal plots and that the General Staff saw itself as being above the law.

All these perceptions, says Ba?yurt, would damage the TSK’s reputation in the eyes of the public and its image would be tarnished; hence, he says it is the TSK that will gain most from the ongoing process. “The more the TSK acts transparently and accountably, the more the prestige of this institution will increase,” remarks Ba?yurt.

Yeni ?afak’s Ali Bayramo?lu hopes the latest developments in Ankara will lead the generals to engage in a purge within the TSK that will prevent the institution from being worn down further and urges generals to stop challenging the judiciary. “Turkey is proceeding in the right direction,” says Bayramo?lu. Todays Zaman reported by F D Zibak