Engin Alan | |
---|---|
Born | Üsküdar | March 31, 1945
Allegiance | Turkey |
Service/ | Turkish Land Forces |
Years of service | 1965-2005 |
Rank | Lieutenant general |
Commands | 16th Armed Brigade Special Forces Command 2nd Corps 8th Corps Logistics Command |
Battles/wars | Turkish invasion of Cyprus Kurdish-Turkish conflict |
Engin Alan (born 31 March 1945 in Istanbul) [1] is a former Turkish general. He was Chief of the Special Forces of the Turkish Army from 1996 to 2000. He retired in 2005.
After his retirement he became General Director of the Foundation to Strengthen the Turkish Armed Forces (TSKGV), and was later charged in the Sledgehammer coup plan trials, relating to an alleged 2003 plot. [2] In the 2011 Turkish general election he was elected to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey representing Istanbul for the Nationalist Movement Party. A court ruled against releasing Alan so that he could take up his seat. [3]
In 2012, he was sentenced to 18 years for his role in the Sledgehammer coup plan, and later detained in connection with the 1997 "post-modern coup". [3] [4] [5] He remained an MP while the case was under appeal. [6] He was acquitted in 2015. [7]
Mehmet İlker Başbuğ is a Turkish former general who served as the 26th Chief of the General Staff of Turkey. He was charged with contravention of Articles 309, 310, and 311 of the Turkish Penal Code. In August 2013, he was convicted on charges of "establishing and leading a terrorist organization" and "attempting to destroy the Turkish government or attempting to partially or completely prevent its functioning" and sentenced to life imprisonment as part of the Ergenekon trials. However, the Constitutional Court of Turkey determined that Başbuğ's legal rights were violated and overturned his conviction; he was released on 7 March 2014.
The Zirve Publishing House murders, called the missionary massacres by Turkish media, took place on April 18, 2007, in Zirve Publishing House, Malatya, Turkey. Three employees of the Bible publishing house were attacked, tortured, and murdered by five Muslim assailants.
Nokta was a leading Turkish weekly political news magazine. Founded in 1983, it was closed down by its owner in 2007 under military pressure after revealing several coup plots. Revived in 2015, it was closed again in the course of the 2016–17 Turkish purges.
Ergenekon was the name given to an alleged clandestine, secular ultra-nationalist organization in Turkey with possible ties to members of the country's military and security forces. The would-be group, named after Ergenekon, a mythical place located in the inaccessible valleys of the Altay Mountains, was accused of terrorism in Turkey.
Operation Sledgehammer is the name of an alleged Turkish secularist military coup plan dating back to 2003, in response to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) gaining office.
During the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government, civil–military relationship moved towards normalization in which the influence of the military was reduced. During its nine-year reign, the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has often faced off against the military, gaining political power by challenging a pillar of the country's laicistic establishment.
The Ergenekon trials or the Ergenekon conspiracy, were a series of high-profile trials which took place in 2008–2016 in Turkey in which 275 people, including military officers, journalists and opposition lawmakers, all alleged members of Ergenekon, a suspected secularist clandestine organization, were accused of plotting against the Turkish government. The trials resulted in lengthy prison sentences for the majority of the accused. Those sentences were overturned shortly after.
Sarıkız, Ayışığı, Yakamoz, Eldiven were the names of alleged Turkish military coup plans in 2004.
The 3rd Corps is a field corps of the Turkish Army and the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps — Türkiye (NRDC-T). Headquartered at Ayazaga, Sarıyer in Istanbul, it is part of the First Army. It was established at Kirklareli on March 14, 1911, in the Ottoman Empire. It took part in the First Balkan War, the Second Balkan War, the Gallipoli Campaign, operations in the Caucasus 1916–1917, and operations in Palestine in 1918. It then took part in the Battles of Kutahya and Sakarya in 1921, and the Great Assault of 1922.
The Imam's Army is a book by Turkish journalist Ahmet Şık on the life and work of Fethullah Gülen and his Gülen movement. Şık was detained in March 2011, before the book was published, and the draft book was seized by the government and banned, claiming it was an "illegal organizational document" of the secret organization Ergenekon. Şık was detained pending trial, being eventually released pending trial in March 2012. In the interim, in an act of anti-censorship defiance, a version of the book was released in November 2011 under the name 000Kitap (000Book), edited by 125 journalists, activists and academics, and published by Postacı Publishing House.
Veli Küçük is a retired Turkish brigadier-general. He is thought to be the founder of the JİTEM intelligence arm of the Turkish Gendarmerie, and is accused by the Turkish government of being the head of the Ergenekon organization, based on testimony by Tuncay Güney. He was arrested in January 2008, and on 5 August 2013, sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
Mehmet Şener Eruygur was a Turkish army general. He was general commander of the gendarmerie from 2002 to 2004, and was later head of the Atatürk Thought Association. He graduated from the Turkish Military Academy in 1960.
Bahtiyar Aydın was a Turkish general. He was a regional commander in the Turkish Gendarmerie in Lice, Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey when he was assassinated by a sniper using a Kanas rifle. Officially a victim of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), his death has long been considered suspicious. He was said to have "close relations with the public" and not to approve of the extrajudicial violence which was commonly used by the Turkish military in south-eastern Turkey at the time.
Çetin Doğan is a retired Turkish general. He was Commander of the First Army of Turkey.
Özden Örnek was a Turkish admiral. He was the Commander of the Turkish Naval Forces from 2003 to 2005. In 2012 Örnek was sentenced to twenty years in prison for his alleged role in the 2003 "Sledgehammer" coup plan.
Mehmet Baransu is a Kurdish journalist and author from Turkey. He is a correspondent for Taraf, and previously worked for Aksiyon (1997–2000). He is the winner of a 2009 Sedat Simavi Journalism Award. Known for investigating the Turkish military, he reported on the "Cage Action Plan" which became part of the Ergenekon trials, and published documents in January 2010 revealing "Balyoz" ("Sledgehammer"), a plan for a coup that was supposedly hatched by Turkish military officers in 2003. In January 2010, in connection with Sledgehammer, Baransu delivered a suitcase to the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office a suitcase containing evidence of the coup plot such as CDs, tapes, printed documents, and handwritten notes. The Sledgehammer plot involved plans to bomb two mosques in Istanbul, attack a military museum and blame it on religious extremists, and attack a Turkish plane and blame it on Greece. Three hundred and thirty-one of the 365 suspects were sentenced to prison on 21 September 2012, while the remaining 34 were acquitted. Three retired generals were sentenced to life in prison on charges of "attempting to overthrow the government by force," but their terms were later reduced to 20 years. Turkey's Constitutional Court ruled in June 2014 that the rights of most of the convicted suspects had been violated, and ordered the immediate release of 236 of them. The rest were released later. A new trial began on 3 November 2014. Reports released in December 2014 and February 2015 claimed that some of the evidence in the case was fabricated.
Şükrü Sarıışık is a retired Turkish general. He was Secretary-General of the National Security Council from 2003 to 2004, and then Commander of the Second Army.
The Batı Çalışma Grubu was an alleged clandestine grouping within the Turkish military said to be linked to the Ergenekon organization. It was allegedly set up in 1997 by General Çevik Bir as part of the process relating to the 1997 military memorandum, and active until at least May 2009. The primary activity of the group appears to have been classifying politicians, military personnel, journalists and others according to ethnic background, religious affiliation and political leanings, and to monitor the activity of those considered a potential danger to secularism in Turkey. This included monitoring some religious communities outside Turkey. It has been claimed that in 1997 BÇG had records on 6 million people, and offices in the Higher Education Board (YÖK) as well as in each branch of the military.
Ergün Poyraz is a prolific Turkish author known for his controversial books about the ruling Justice and Development Party, the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, and people associated with them. He is best known for his 2007 book The Children of Moses, which accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his wife of being secret Jews and of cooperating with Israeli intelligence to undermine Turkish secularism. He was arrested in 2007 and was a defendant in the Ergenekon trials; on 5 August 2013, he was sentenced to 29 years in prison.
Muzaffer Tekin is a former member, of Turkey's Special Warfare Department, and a suspect in the Ergenekon trials as well, as the Turkish Council of State shooting. In August 2013, Tekin was sentenced to consecutive life sentences.