Israel complained to the Turkish government when it allowed the airing of a television series called “Land of the Wolves,” which is being followed by Arab viewers, as a smear because it portrays the involvement of Israeli intelligence in murders and conspiracies by domestic organizations in a bid to rid themselves of their enemies. The show, which has been running for more than a year, portrays a struggle among secret organizations. Each one claims that it seeks to preserve the secular order and prevent the dissolution of the state. Some groups are leftist, others are right-wing, and a third group are ultra-nationalists. They wage wars in the streets of cities, using mafia tactics, and they have external linkages to similar organizations and agencies in other countries, such as Israel, whose intelligence agencies are always trying to foment this struggle by supporting the ultra-right, the furthest from Turkey's Islamic spirit. The organizations also have extensions into the leadership of the army and security agencies, and their commercial and industrial establishments. It is a “covert state within a state,” as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has put it. Viewers of the show thought they were seeing a mere fictional tale, or imitation of American mafia movies, until Erdogan revealed plans by the so-called Ergenekon conspiracy, with acted in cooperation with high-ranking officers, to oust him from power, either by assassination or military coup, or through banning his party from politics, in the manner of Rafah and its leader, Najmeddin Erbakan, in 1997. The investigations have also shown that Ergenekon was involved in assassinating the Armenian writer Hrant Dink, and planning to kill the Nobel Prize winner for literature, Orhan Pamuk, while it framed the two incidents on Islamists. The suspects did this in order to harm the public image of Islamists in Turkey and keep the Armenian and Kurdish minorities distant from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The AKP has been trying to conduct a historic reconciliation with Armenia, and a settlement of the Kurdish question that enjoys the support of many Kurdish leaders. By killing the two, Ergenekon would have gotten rid of two opponents of ultranationalist policies, and portrayed the Islamists as anti-freedom of expression. In fact, Ergenekon would not have enjoyed this scope of influence and ability to act freely, were it not for the support of the military. The Turkish army has constitutional veto power over political life, a right that was gained when Ataturk re-formed the institution and authored its guiding doctrine, making it the protector of secularism and nationalist principles following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. This right has been enshrined in laws authored by military men, after each coup. However, it is another matter for there to be a secret organization (a state within a state) supported and protected by the army command. This involves the corruption of this army leadership, which is even worse than the corruption of the civilian façade that ruled Turkey over those decades, and was a reason for the coups? Exploiting the discovery of the Ergenekon conspiracy, Erdogan managed to get a bill through Parliament that would submit military personnel to civilian tribunals, since military courts would find them innocent of charges for merely showing up. But this law might not be implemented; it might share the fate of another law, passed in 2005, which stipulated that the army's budget be put under civilian oversight, and this has yet to be applied. Thus, the confrontation between the ruling AKP and the army is one in which the European Union is involved, as it asks Ankara to apply EU criteria to the military and keep it out of politics, and hopes that this will take place simultaneously with the exclusion of Islamists. The US is also involved, as it wants to see a strong Turkish army, one that remains in alliance with Israel, which is involved in activities with secret organizations, and angry about Erdogan and his party. The struggle in the “Land of Wolves” goes on. And Israel is at the heart of it.
