Ex-general faces inquiry for ordering attacks

Turkish Daily News | Aug 3 2006

Prosecutors in Diyarbakir have launched an investigation into retired Lt. Gen. Altay Tokat for remarks during a magazine interview in which he said he had ordered that bombs be detonated in southestern Anatolia to influence state officials in the region.

In Ankara, two leading human rights organizations, the Human Rights Association (IHD) and the Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed Peoples (Mazlum-Der), filed a complaint with the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office against Tokat, demanding an investigation.

Tokat, now a member of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), triggered controversy when he said in remarks published in a weekly that he had ordered bombs to be thrown near the homes of two civil servants in the region in what he described as a move to intimidate them and make them understand the gravity of the situation. “The civil servants, the judges who come from western Turkey, do not realize how serious the situation is [in the Southeast]. ... They walk around without a care, do what they want,” Aktüel magazine quoted him as saying last week.

Gen. Tokat served in southeastern Anatolia between 1995 and 1998, at the height of a separatist campaign at the hands of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the region.

The remarks prompted the General Staff to launch a probe into the retired general.

The Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in Diyarbakir will decide whether a court case should be launched against Gen. Tokat after completion of the investigation, the Anatolia news agency said.

If a court case is brought against him, Gen. Tokat may then face up to three years in jail for “abuse of authority” and “deliberately endangering the public” under articles 257 and 170 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).

The joint petition of the IHD and Mazlum-Der claimed that Gen. Tokat had committed the crimes of “setting up an armed organization for criminal ends, intimidation with the purpose of spreading fear and panic among the people, influencing judicial officials, praising crime and those who commit crimes, inciting hatred and enmity and abuse of authority.”

Gen. Tokat's remarks were not the first time that soldiers came under suspicion of carrying out attacks in southeastern Anatolia. In November two gendarmerie officers tossed a grenade into a bookstore owned by former PKK member Seferi Yilmaz in the town of Semdinli near the Iraqi border. Yilmaz survived and identified his attackers, who turned out to be noncommissioned officers with suspected ties to top generals. A court last month sentenced the two noncommissioned officers to nearly 40 years in prison for trying to kill Yilmaz, who had previously been jailed on charges of membership in the PKK.

But prosecutor Ferhat Sarikaya was sacked in April for an indictment he prepared in which he also alleged the complicity of Land Forces Commander Gen. Yasar Büyükanit.

“It is understood that none of us are safe in Turkey,” said Yusuf Alatas, chairman of the IHD, told reporters after presenting the petition to the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office. “These remarks showed that some people believed that the judiciary could not reach them and that they did not recognize supremacy of the law.”

Mazlum-Der Chairman Ayhan Bilgen said the decisions to disbar Sarikaya and dismiss Sabri Uzun, former head of the police intelligence unit, after his testimony at a parliamentary inquiry commission on the Semdinli incident, should be revised in the light of the statements of Gen. Tokat.

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