Kamil Pasha

Those of you who think the plots you encounter in thrillers about state-linked secret societies scheming to overthrow a government and assassinate prominent people are overheated products of the author’s imagination, think again. Kamil Pasha fought against secret societies, assassinations, and coup plots in the 1880s, and these continue to exist in the present. Even the underlying issues of nationalism and religion are the same now as they were in his time. Over the past few days, the Turkish police have arrested a diverse group of shadowy figures, including former military officers, secret police, prosecutors, and others, accused of plotting to overthrow the Turkish government, preparing to assassinate the Turkish Nobel Laureate writer Orhan Pamuk, and of being involved in the murder of other prominent Turkish figures, including last year’s killing of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. The issue around which this gang organized its activities was the protection of Turkish blood and identity against foreign powers whom they believe to be acting against Turkey through its Armenians, Christians, and other minorities (Kurds, for instance) and through missionaries. The group, thought to have ties high up in the state apparatus (the Turks call this shadowy network the “Deep State”), also dislikes the present Muslim-inspired elected government (ergo the coup). It calls itself Ergenekon after the origin myth of the Turks in which a gray wolf showed them the way out of their legendary Central Asian homeland Ergenekon. The gray wolf has long been a symbol of the ultranationalists who at their rallies hold up the forefinger and little finger of both hands (not unlike the University of Texas Hook Em’ Horns gesture) in the sign of the wolf and chant allegiance to the struggle for the homeland. Is truth not stranger than fiction?

The Ergenekon Arrests

YouTube Video created by Ergenekon nationalists showing the various Turkic empires, ending with the present republic and its founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Ergenekon’s vision is profoundly militaristic, even though Ataturk was a man who wished “peace at home, peace in the world”.

Tags: Culture, Deep state/Ergenekon, Fiction, Kurds, Nationalism, Politics, Uncategorized //