Crime and punishment

After a 13-month preliminary investigation, the indictment regarding the Ergenekon terrorist organization is finally being announced today.

In fact, given its activities and organized structure that we have somehow become familiar with until now, this preparation phase cannot really be considered that long. Unraveling a graphic of crime and action spread over many years, along with a structure extending to the highest echelons of the military and civilian bureaucracy, politics, academia, judiciary, and the business world, is certainly not something that can be done at a moment's notice. It is not difficult to understand that the pressures forcing prosecutors to act hastily before their time, as if it were unknown that this indictment preparation process could be rendered ineffective by a counter-move as soon as it came to mind, are also an extension of this structure.

In this context, while on the subject, it would not be wrong to say that it was this haste that prevented the Şemdinli case from going two steps further. Excessive burden was placed on the evidence revealed in Şemdinli by ascribing much more power to it than the legal procedure provided. It is understood from the data emerging today that the manner in which Gen. Büyükanıt's name was implicated in this case functioned precisely as a way to trigger a miscarriage of justice in the outcomes of this case.

For the healthy operation of the judicial process, it may seem odd, but it is extremely natural for it to consider its own security and to follow a policy of its own scale to ensure this security. It is not possible to think of the judiciary as a process that functions straightforwardly just as written in books. While Retired Gen. Hilmi Özkök Pasha opened the topic of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, it is worth reminding of the police inspector's tactics that forced Raskolnikov, the protagonist of the novel, into a faltering and confession that would lead him to feel remorse for the crime he committed and to break free from this suffering.

It is possible to see that the Ergenekon investigation has successfully carried out the psychological tactics of Crime and Punishment's police inspector for 13 months. The manner in which the data from preliminary investigations was reflected in the press was heavily criticized. Indeed, in many cases, it is not possible for one to place these leaks within legal logic or ethics. However, it is also understood that these irregular tactics created psychological support that provided the Ergenekon investigation's own legitimacy and security, and in this respect, helped achieve the result.

The greatest danger of the Ergenekon web of relations is that they see committing all kinds of crimes as legitimate in terms of their own sublime goals, such as protecting the secular regime and not losing power to reactionaries. Just like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, who saw himself as a "superior human" privileged to commit crimes. He also begins his work by considering it "normal," even a right, to kill a moneylender woman who, according to his own evaluation, is useless or even harmful to humanity, and to seize her property.

The Ergenekon members seem to have thoroughly legitimized committing crimes to themselves and their consciences in order not to leave this power to "others" whom they think do not deserve it. Apparently, they did not have the slightest doubt about the wrongness of what they were doing. The worst part is that they were able to find media support for their perspective that turned these crimes against humanity into non-crimes...

Despite the existence of overt and organized acts such as the Ümraniye bombs, the Cumhuriyet newspaper bombings, the Council of State murder, the Republic Rallies pumping feelings of hatred and animosity into society, and the Hablemitoğlu murder, those who describe the Ergenekon investigation as "nonsense" can clearly see even such crimes as very innocent when a sublime goal such as "getting rid of the AKP" is at stake. It is understood that a syndrome of "superiority" was effective in the perspective on crime of those who initially saw no news value in a series of murders and crime relationships exposed every day.

Towards the end of the process, we all witnessed that the opposition towards the investigation gradually waned. Seeing this as a sign of the decrease in the superiority syndrome that feeds the crime machine might be an overly optimistic evaluation.

A more realistic evaluation is that the operation of law is the most effective treatment for this syndrome.