Turkey’s former top military official, who was convicted in the Ergenekon coup-plot case, has accused the US administration under then-President George Bush of being part of a plot against the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), which resulted in his and other TSK members’ conviction.

“The George W. Bush administration supported the plot carried out against the TSK,” İlker Başbuğ, a former chief of general staff, said in his statement during the appeal hearing of the Ergenekon case at the Supreme Court of Appeals on Wednesday.

Maintaining that the Bush administration saw the TSK as the core of a deep state in the Turkish political system, a roadblock before its projects regarding Turkey and the Middle East, Başbuğ said: “This deep state posed an obstacle before the restructuring of the Middle East, the implementation [in Turkey] of the concept of moderate Islam, the production of a ‘political solution’ to the terrorism problem in Turkey.”

He said in the hearing held at the court’s 16th. Penal Chamber: “It can be said that this administration was sympathetic to what the TSK was subjected to [in the years that followed], that some state institutions and officials in these institutions took part in this plot or offered their support to it.”

Başbuğ was arrested in January 2012 on coup charges as part of the case against the terrorist Ergenekon organization, which was accused of working to topple the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.

He was given a life sentence in August 2013, but in March 2014 another court ruled for Başbuğ’s release, saying he does not need to spend time in prison waiting for the final verdict, whch, in turn, led to the court ruling for his release. Latterly, in early March 2015, the Constitutional Court ruled that Başbuğ’s right to a fair trial had been violated.

Başbuğ also accused the AK Party government of being part of the scheme against the armed forces, recalling that current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had earlier said that the government had fulfilled all the demands.

Former İstanbul Police Department Intelligence Bureau Chief Ali Fuat Yılmazer claimed, in March 2014, that Başbuğ was arrested upon the instructions of Erdoğan who was prime minister at the time.

Başbuğ claimed that the Gülen movement, also known as the Hizmet movement, was also behind the Ergenekon investigation.

Source: ZAMAN