New thriller out

According to the court verdict on the new thriller, retired Gens. Şener Eruygur, Hurşit Tolon and Levent Ersöz; Cumhuriyet newspaper’s Ankara representative, Mustafa Balbay; journalist Tuncay Özkan; former police special forces chief Adil Serdar Saçan; Ferda Paksüt, the wife of Constitutional Court judge Osman Paksüt; strategist-writer Erol Mütercimler; former Justice and Development Party, or AKP, deputy Turhan Çömez; Ankara Chamber of Commerce chief Sinan Aygün; and scores of other people are accused of establishing a gang with the aim and intention of toppling the elected government of the country and annihilating the Turkish Parliament or being member of such a gang. The new case will start on July 20.

The first part of the new thriller is a summary of the first thriller, or the indictment. The new document charges that the "gang" tried to topple Republican People’s Party, or CHP, leader Deniz Baykal and the top executives of that party. The "gang" is also accused of attempting to divide the AKP, as well as the opposition Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP. It charges that the republican rallies before the July 22, 2007, elections were condemned as actions aimed at provoking the masses and preparing grounds for a military coup. As was the case in the first thriller, or indictment, almost all charges were based on telephone decoding and allegations by some "deep throats" or "secret witnesses."

While already the total pages of Ergenekon thrillers or indictments have exceeded 4,500 pages and likely will be added several thousand more pages when new chapters are added to the existing ones, confusion remains on what indeed is the Ergenekon trial, where it starts and where the accusations will end. Will the prosecutors ever introduce some hard evidence?

Talat’s trip to the US

It appears that the United States has given in to pressure from the Greek lobby in Washington. Even if the invitation to Turkish Cypriot President Mehmet Ali Talat to visit the U.S. capital and meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is not put off all together, it is highly possible that it will not come as early as expected.

According to Talat, his office was approached by Clinton’s office "through diplomatic channels" a while ago and was told that Clinton was willing to invite him for a meeting in Washington and that March 30 was a convenient date for the U.S. secretary of state. Talat’s office reported back that March 30 was convenient for the president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

Then, this communication somehow leaked to the media, the Greek Cypriot lobby in Washington started pressuring both President Barrack Hussein Obama and Clinton and tried to prevent such a meeting. The U.S. embassy in southern Nicosia has not yet officially invited Talat to Washington despite the tentative accord that the president and the secretary of state are both available for a March 30 meeting. Now, there are reports coming out from Washington that Clinton will first have a meeting with Marcos Kyprianou, the Greek Cypriot foreign minister, on the sidelines of a EU-U.S. summit to be held in Prague when Obama visits the Czech capital next week and then she will meet with Talat in Washington sometime in April.

The Clinton invitation to Talat was important because it implied the United States was preparing to use the "stick" portion of a new "carrot and stick" approach on Cyprus to prod a federal resolution on the island. Now, if the Talat visit is postponed because of Greek pressure, which appears so, then the "stick" the United States might have used on the Greek Cypriot side to energize them for a compromise solution on the island could be considered broken.

Why should Greek Cypriot leadership compromise and agree to share power with Turkish Cypriots if it already has everything a settlement could provide and it would not lose anything if the problem remained unresolved?