At the parliamentary floor on Thursday (22^nd), ANAP Chairman Mesut Yilmaz was cleared of five charges, including the one for his reference to the Supreme Court (about allotting the Ford-Koc partnership free land to build a modern car factory with a $500 million investment that was later upgraded to 650 million.)

There are three more files against him, including the second file for his reference to the Supreme Court for the privatization of telecom. One of these three files is a unanimous acquittal of the ANAP Chairman by all the 15 members of the investigation committee from the charge that he had favoured some people in the tourism business in Istanbul. So excluding this file that is sure to be dismissed at the floor, there remains only two files against the ANAP Chairman. Given that the DSP-ANAP solidarity has so far worked effectively in his favour, there is reason to believe that the rest of Mesut Yilmaz’s problems will also be solved at the parliament floor.

Meanwhile, Parliament has been working productively on the few days left before the summer recess starts in a week or so. It has already ratified the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline agreement and its protocols by Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia. It has also passed an important bill to regulate the conditions of oil and natural gas pipelines in Turkey. Energy Minister Cumhur Ersumer says, with probably over-optimism, that everything will now be plain sailing for the rapid realization of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline.

Another preoccupation of Parliament until the recess is the formation of a special body under an ambassador to regulate the preparations for Turkey’s accession to the EU as a full member. Thus while Mesut Yilmaz is being gradually cleared as a top level politician, the legal ground is being laid for the success of the Ecevit Government in its ambitious plans for economic recovery and structural reforms to raise Turkey among the richest ten nations.

With their recent misplaced move against their partner Mesut Yilmaz, the MHP and especially its new leader Devlet Bahceli have certainly proved to be the weakest link in this chain of tripartite coalition. That is why measures are now being taken to make up for this weakness.

A number of developments last week confirmed the accuracy of Turkpulse’s recent articles. One of them was a press report last week to the effect that in the seventies the Turkish intelligence organization, MIT, informed the Government that a young man from Malatya with two missing front teeth would resort to the murder of a leading personality in Turkey and that he was directly under the orders of the MHP Chairman, Alpaslan Turkes. The MIT report proved to be absolutely correct other than its expectation that the victim could be the then Minister of the Interior, Irfan Ozaydinli. Instead of Ozaydinli, Milliyet newspaper’s renowned editorialist Abdi Ipekci was killed in his car. Ipekci, who was the uncle of today’s Foreign Minister Ismail Cem Ipekci, (who later removed his family name Ipekci by a court verdict for an unknown reason) was a prominent pro-western and pro-American journalist. The murderer correctly defined by the MIT report was Mehmet Ali Agca, the assailant of the Pope who was extradited to Turkey by Italy last week after 19 years in prison in Rome.

There were attempts at that time to blame the Soviet bloc, especially Bulgaria for Ipekci’s murder and other crimes by Agca, but more reliable information was that Abdi Ipekci fell victim of his honest journalism. Even though he was a staunch pro-American journalist, Ipekci was more journalist than being pro-anything. He wanted to check with the other side the information he had learnt from the former Minister of the Interior of the leftist Ecevit Government at that time, Hasan Fehmi Gunes, that the United States was behind most of the political crimes in Turkey. Right at that moment, President Carter’s national security adviser for the Middle East, Paul Henze (who was the CIA’s station chief in Turkey for many years) was visiting Turkey within a high-powered American delegation and he called on Ipekci in Istanbul only to learn of the renowned journalist’s intention to run a serious of articles in Milliyet on American involvement in the activism to destabilize Turkey. Agca’s murder of Ipekci was committed shortly after this visit and he never had the opportunity to write these articles. Was there any linkage between the two events? Is it being a conspiracy theory-monger to suspect such a linkage? It is for the reader to judge.

Today Agca is in Turkey for interrogation about these past events, but judging by his brother’s press conference last week, Agca will continue with his accusations of external agents, especially Bulgaria for these crimes. The revealed MIT report, however, directly accuses the former MHP Chairman of Agca’s crimes and his successor, Devlet Bahceli, in contrast to his one year of a very promising performance as the first deputy of the Prime Minister, has recently started to manifest Grey Wolf inclinations when the final steps are being taken in Turkey for the translation into action of the three years of work on the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. He will now have to make more effort to dissociate himself from the ill legacy that he has taken over from the MHP’s notorious past.

The same is the case with the DYP Chairperson, Tansu Ciller. Last week, the mass circulation daily Hurriyet (23^rd) gave the details of her mismanagement of the prime minister’s secret funds. According to this dispatch, the main Ankara office of the Agricultural Bank, upon the orders of the Bank’s central management, paid TL500 billion and $50 million to some unknown persons without any documents. It took place on February 6^th, 1995. While the unidentified people carried away the money in sacks in the dark of the night, ten officials of the Bank went against the strict orders of the Central Management about keeping no record of the payment and drew up a process-verbal about this payment. It is thanks to this document that there is knowledge about the payment of TL500 billion and $50 million from the secret funds, but its whereabouts are still for anyone to guess.

It is common knowledge, however, that about a month after this payment, President Demirel was to inform President Aliyev of Azerbaijan at an international conference in Copenhagen that his police chief Colonel Rushen Dzevadof would kill him at Baku airport upon his return home, in cooperation with certain Grey Wolves from Turkey. Is there any linkage between the payment of secret funds to the Grey Wolves on February 6^th, 1995 and this event a month later? It is for the reader to decide. What is known, however, is that the then PM Tansu Ciller had ordered one of her ministers, State Minister Ayvaz Gokdemir, who was a former Grey Wolf himself, to coordinate this plot against President Aliyev. President Demirel, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Interior, MIT or the TGS (Turkish General Staff) knew nothing about the whole plot. The MIT representative in Baku was active in the whole affair along with Ayvaz Gokdemir’s Grey Wolves and they were using a special communication system outside Turkey’s regular communication channels. Luckily he showed the scruples of informing MIT of the whole affair via official channels a few days before the assassination attempt and Ankara, as well as President Aliyev learnt of it, cracking down upon Dzevadov’s gang in Baku.