Today's Zaman - A headline war has begun between archrivals Dogan Media and the Aksam group since transcripts of phone conversations surfaced last week, indicating that owner Aydin Dogan had worked together with the deputy prime minister and senior bureaucrats to confiscate a bank belonging to the Aksam group, owned by Cukurova Holding.
The transcripts were included in the evidence folders of an indictment against Ergenekon, a shadowy criminal network with links to the bureaucracy, state security forces and other agencies, and whose members are being accused of orchestrating various murders and attacks so as to create chaos and trigger a coup d'état against the government.
Turkish newspapers claimed last week that certain politicians and Dogan Media owner Aydyn Dogan were behind the highly controversial 2002 confiscation of Pamukbank, owned by Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, who is also the owner of the Aksam Media Group.
The story first appeared early last week in Yeni Safak, which belongs to neither of the two groups. Karamehmet's Aksam ran the same story with more details and witnesses the next day, while Dogan's Hurriyet denounced the transcripts as imaginary.
Hurriyet wrote that the imagined conversations had been downloaded from a conspiracy theory Web site launched by Ergenekon in an attempt to start a smear campaign against the military and the National Intelligence Organization (MIT). "In other words, there is no record of the transcripts," Hurriyet wrote.
The newspaper emphasized that in the indictment the prosecution had used the phrase "downloaded from the Internet" so as to clarify that no actual transcripts of the phone conversations existed. Hurriyet also claimed that the same Web site displayed articles that praised Karamehmet and his companies. It further noted that the house in which the alleged transcripts were found had contained other fake documents.
On Sunday Aksam wrote that the Dogan group claimed the transcripts were false only because the company fears that "now it's their turn," referring to the Ergenekon case. Aksam claimed that Aydin Dogan is the media partner of the Ergenekon organization.
The headline of Hurriyet's Sunday issue read "Was this ordered by Aydin Dogan as well?" and reported that Baytur, a company owned by Karamehmet's Curukova Group, was deprived of its construction licenses in Russia over authorities' concerns about the company's commitment to work safety rules.
Pamukbank case
Pamukbank was taken over from Karamehmet's Cukurova Group in 2002 by the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) allegedly to recoup nearly $6 billion owed by the bank to the Treasury, although the confiscation remains controversial to this day. Documents that might be evidence of an orchestration of the Pamukbank takeover were seized during police raids conducted as part of the Ergenekon investigation.
Former head of the BDDK Engin Akcakoca denied allegations last week that the confiscation of Pamukbank by his institution was arranged on the basis of political and personal interest. The transcripts show various conversations that allegedly took place between Akcakoca, then Deputy Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz and an American employed at Citibank who said his "people are not happy about Cukurova." There are no transcripts of a conversation between Aydin Dogan and then Economy Minister Kemal Dervis, but both are mentioned as being aware of the details of the takeover plan. Dervis has not yet released a statement.