Retired military judge Ümit Kardaş advises caution about the latest Ergenekon operation, in which some military personnel were taken into custody, too.

“It is important that some officers were taken into custody, but we do not know why they were. apprehended. If these officers had done something unlawful, their superiors, their commanders should know.”

It is the first time that military personnel who are on active duty have been part of the Ergenekon investigation that started last year in June. Criticizing this, Kardaş says, “This makes one question how useful this case will be in making Turkey a country where the rule of  law comes first and democracy reigns.”

According to Kardaş, “the operation consists of purging the spears that do not fit into the sack.”

“This [the operations] does not mean the system is cleaned. The real issue is how much the mentality is changed, how much the formations that produced the people in jail for the Ergenekon investigation have been deciphered. This operation does not look like the kind of purification needed on the way to democracy. Such a will power does not exist at the moment anyways. For the ruling power itself is not very clean either.”

Kardaş finds it very interesting that this operation came when the intensity of the reactions  against the government regarding the ‘Deniz Feneri’ (Lighthouse) case in Germany is on the rise; he thinks it is an attempt to change the agenda.

In the Ergenekon investigation, eighty six people, forty seven of them in prison, will appear before the court on October 20.The indictment about retired general Şener Eruygur and Hurşit Tolon have not been submitted yet.(BÇ/EÜ/TB)