What legal action has the TSK taken against the suspects? Are there problems in inspections? Were those weapons stolen? The Ergenekon investigation itself started in June 2007 with the discovery of the military’s weapons in a shanty house in a district of İstanbul. Since the start of the investigation, hand grenades, explosives, light anti-tank weapons, rocket launchers, Kalashnikov rifles, assault rifles, thousands of bullets and various other munitions have been discovered in secret depots or buried underground in various cities including Eskişehir, Ankara and Sapanca.
Most of these weapons were manufactured by the Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation (MKE) and NATO, neither of which supplies any institution in the country other than the military. None of the suspects arrested in relation to the discoveries have admitted any connections to the weaponry found.
The latest discovery came when the caches of arms were uncovered last week in İstanbul during excavations to uncover more ammunitions and weapons as part of the Ergenekon investigation.
Light anti-tank weapons, hand grenades, explosives and rocket launchers were unearthed during the excavations this week on land owned by the İstek Foundation, which was set up by a fugitive suspect in the investigation, former İstanbul Mayor Bedrettin Dalan, the chairman of the foundation. Three military officers currently on active duty were arrested on Wednesday as part of the investigation into Ergenekon after the arms cache was discovered on Tuesday. Those detained included Maj. Levent Bektaş, Lt. Col. Ercan Kireçtepe and Maj. Emre Onat, all of the Turkish Naval Forces. Yesterday, the three were referred to court, which will decide on their release or arrest. The police are seeking to capture yet another naval officer, Lt. Col. Mustafa Turhan Ecevit.
The excavation on İstek Foundation land, launched on Tuesday of last week, was started after an anonymous e-mail was sent to the İstanbul Police Department.
In last week’s excavations in İstanbul’s Poyrazköy district, 10 light anti-tank weapons, 20 percussion bombs, three other bombs, 250 grams of C-4 explosive, 19 emergency flares, 10 hand grenades, 800 G3 bullets and a large number of bullets for revolvers were found. The discovery follows the unearthing of similar underground weapons sites earlier in January, which were uncovered based on information from maps found in the homes of two suspects — former Deputy Police Chief İbrahim Şahin and Mustafa Dönmez, a lieutenant colonel who turned himself in a few days after the initial warrant for his arrest was issued. Dalan was in the US during the period of this wave of detentions and discoveries, which started on Jan. 7, 2009.
Ankara excavated for guns
The police, as part of the January investigation, carried out a series of digs at a number of sites around the capital in a search of weapons linked to Ergenekon. An arms cache was unearthed in the Zir Valley in Ankara’s Sincan district, which was found based on a map discovered in the house of Lt. Col. Dönmez. Thirty hand grenades, nine smoke bombs and more than 800 bullets for G3 assault rifles were found there. Around the same time, two hand grenades were found buried in a park in an industrial zone. Nearly 200 bullets were discovered also in Ankara in early January, in a vacant lot across from a housing complex in the Oran neighborhood, formerly reserved for members of Parliament and their families.
(e)SP_A0012_edited.jpg)
