’Grenades distributed in area’

This is crucial because ballistic controls may remove man reservations. So I asked about this to the Democratic Left Party, or DSP, İzmir Deputy Recai Birgün who is a former member of the Security Department and security director of the late Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit. I had a chance to meet him at the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review's office in Parliament. He provided quite striking information about the weapons. One of his main qualities is that Birgün is a former Special Operation Director.

He makes assessments about the weapons unearthed in three categories. According to Birgün, those confiscated through the sketch found Col. Mustafa Dönmez’s house and through former Special Operation Department Deputy Chair İbrahim Şahin were gathered from the state depots illegally. He also said, "I know through my experiences in the region... Hand grenades are distributed like candies in the Southeast... A teacher friend of mine asked a hand grenade as a memento while I was in special operation unit and we gave him one. No one thought that there was an ulterior motive..."

In the discussions of "if there is the deep state or not," Birgün takes side and says, "Whether it is named Ergenekon or not, I certainly believe there is some sort of structuring within the state. This is the reason ending the 50th government. We worked in the Southeast and witnessed many incidents. We surely heard speculations about the existence of such structure and had impressions in this direction. But we wouldn’t know who their leader is. It cannot be known anywayÉ" Birgün believes there are two Ergenekon, "old" and "new." "The old Ergenekon names itself as neo-nationalist, pro-Atatürk, laic and pro-republic. Therefore, the new Ergenekon must be the opposite. By looking at the old Ergenekon’s line you may see who the new ones are and who established the new deep state. The new Ergenekon will do some secret works just like the old one did. This is the nature of similar structures. We will soon witness several incidents and understand who do this."

What Birgün, as a former special operation member, shared with me is quite striking. But his being a DSP deputy at the same time makes one to take his statements seriously. We’ll see how much the weapons unearthed will help the judiciary to untie the Ergenekon knot.

No female candidates from AKP
The ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, is about to wrap up local election works. At the beginning, the AKP had decided to have female candidates at the percentage of 15 percent. The decision adopted at the party’s Central Executive Board was announced by Women Branches Chairwoman Fatma Şahin. Hüseyin Tanrıverdi, the AKP’s deputy leader for local administrations, was saying, "We will increase the number of women candidates."

The party is about to complete the candidates list but has nominated not a single woman in 16 big cities. Only in the Black Sea city of Ordu, Ayşe Bahar Çebi was nominated in a total of 65 province municipalities. In about 1,000 counties percentage of female candidates is not satisfactory. Names of Sibel Çarmıklı in Beşiktaş district of Istanbul, Filiz Ulusoy in Kalecik of Ankara, Işıl Zeliha Gençoğlu in Nilüfer of Bursa and Ayşe Güney in Mahmudiye of Eskişehir are coming to the fore. The list indicates the AKP has failed in keeping its promise to "increase the number or women candidates."

’Virus in the blood’
The Turkish Red Crescent, or Kızılay, launched a blood donation campaign in Parliament in an attempt to reach out to the people of Gaza, who have gone through extreme hardship in recent times after Israeli forces launched a blistering attack on the territory to deal with what it called increasing Hamas attacks on its territory. Many deputies participated in the campaign.

Doctors said that they are running the blood tests and donors were informed. While this activity of donating blood was taking place, a parliamentarian from the opposition was heard whispering to his friend, "We cannot trust the government. They may say now ’We have found the Ergenekon virus in the opposition’s blood.’"