Wednesday, February 13, 2008, Turkish Daily News
The legal team trying to unveil the truth about Malatya massacres is under a strange surveillance.
Orhan Kemal Cengiz
In the first piece of this series I quoted from news coverage in the local media in Malatya about the “legal team” representing the victims in this case. The tone, the style and the way it prepared clearly shows that “the writers” of this news aimed at creating hostility toward us and trying to show us as if we are there for illegitimate purposes. This effort starts with the title, “Is this a new game?” and goes like that along the text.
However, when we went into the details we realized we were not only confronting a bunch of hostile “journalists” there, but this was a “prepared and delivered” story. The details showed us very clearly that “some circles” tapped telephone conversations between the members of the legal team and somehow penetrated into our e-group which we use to discuss our legal strategies and to get organized. Anyway I would like to give you some specific examples of some items which can only be obtained through interception of our communications.
The names of the lawyers who were going to come to Malatya for the hearing are given in it. There were only two (normal) ways of obtaining these names. One is to check the hotel reservation book and the other one is to look at the power of attorneys given to the court. They could have obtained all the names of lawyers with these ways but except one. Mr. Serkan Cengiz’s name was not registered in neither in the hotel book nor did he deliver a power of attorney to the court then. The only way to obtain his name was to check the list of the members of the legal team’s e-group, which is of course not public.
In the news coverage they inform the public that Mr. İhsan Özbek, pastor of the Kurtulus Church, will not come to Malatya for the hearing and I was replaced with him. I am their lawyer, so it is not possible to have this kind of replacement but somehow the “authors” of this news coverage knew that Mr. Özbek would not come to the hearing. I requested him not to come for security reasons. Mr. Özbek did not declare to anyone that he would not come to the hearing.
The text mentions our possible legal strategies in this case. It is true that we were planning to submit a new context to the court in which we intended to show the similarities between Santora, Dink and Malatya murders. However, this intention was never declared anywhere. Somehow these local newspapers knew it and were able to inform their readers about our strategy.
There is very specific information in that news coverage that I would like to mention specifically. It mentions that we were making a preparation to allege that the crime concerned was indeed genocide. This was true. Some time ago before the hearing, Mr. Ergin Cinmen, a member of our legal team, called me from Istanbul and he suggested to offer the court to change the qualification of the crime from “terror” to “genocide.” And he explained his reasons for this demand. I agreed with him and I said “let’s discuss this in the legal team’s meeting before the hearing in Malatya.” Namely, this idea of us was even not known by our other friends before our meeting in Malatya. However, this newspaper somehow managed to guess what we would demand before the court.
In that mews coverage it is stated that I will make a press conference after the hearing in Malatya which was true again. However, like many other things, this was not declared anywhere; it was only known by the members of the legal team.
After considering all these items, we came to the conclusion that somehow this news coverage prepared by one of the “intelligent” agency or with the help of them.
Strange things continued to happen while we were in Malatya for the first hearing. In the first hearing we submitted some petitions to the court in order to show them how we perceive the case. A volunteer assistant stayed at the hotel during the hearing and tried to send these petitions to the members of the press while we were delivering them to the court. However, he was not able to enter into his email accounts; whenever he attempted to lodge into his mail addresses he saw the same sentence on his screen: “entrance into this website was forbidden by the court’s order.” His three different accounts were blocked and he was in shock when came back to the hotel from the court room.
Apparently, someone did not like the idea that our petitions will be on a wide range circulation. Of course there was no such “court order” but there were some people who somehow knew that this computer was going to use for the distribution of our petitions and they were able to stop our communication by using this “label.”
Highly ‘sophisticated’ letter of conspiracy :
While we were having a legal team meeting in İzmir for the second hearing, a quite weird news arrived into our meeting room. Journalists kept calling us, asking if we had any information about an “informer letter” which attributed whole responsibility of these murders on me. Everyone had a difficulty for a while to understand what that was all about. This is a very long letter. But I would like to make long quotations to give you the taste of Turkish style conspiracy producing:
“Important lessons had been learned from the Africa Mission. The Asia, Middle East and Turkey Mission should be directed in the same way. But some unexpected events began to occur. Within the Mission, the German “School” (ekol) began to dominate. This had to be stopped. And that’s exactly what happened. On 13.12.2004 the covert group (‘Kripto’) was mobilized and given its operational orders. In relation to this, certain problems had begun to be discussed within the Adana, Malatya, Diyarbakır and Van Mission. For example, the rivalry in Malatya between the German School the American School had gradually begun to turn into enmity. In this respect, the Mission’s bosses in America had begun to feel a significant unease regarding Germans within the Mission. The Americans thought that if this problem was not solved, in time, American interests in the region would suffer. The Germans had the opportunity to become dominant across the board. The plan was put into effect in a very professional manner. America employed Armenians under the umbrella of the covert group. The Armenian Protestants would work for America. The Germans would be liquidated. Since I am here only discussing the Malatya dimension, I won’t talk in detail about Istanbul, Nevşehir, Kayseri, Adana, Mardin, Urfa, Van, Diyarbakır. Because important events will shortly take place there, too. From now on Kripto is going to take decisive steps. Turkey is going to be covered with blood.”
There is subtitle after this paragraph, reading:
“The Employment by Kripto of Orhan Kemal Cengiz for the Purpose of Conducting Operations and Making Plans”
What it is written under it, is the subject of the next piece…