Former Capt. Ümit Berber said officers acquitted in the Sledgehammer coup-plot case were placed in critical posts in Turkey’s Gendarmerie General Command before Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt and had begun directing the force in practice.
Berber, who worked in the Personnel Department of the Gendarmerie General Command, spoke about the period before the coup attempt in an ORSATV broadcast on YouTube.
The Gendarmerie General Command was then a military law enforcement force responsible for security in rural areas and smaller districts.
Berber said unusual appointments began in the Turkish Armed Forces in November 2014, nearly two years before the coup attempt.
“I was working on a project to improve assignments in the Personnel Department of the Gendarmerie Command,” he said. “Beginning in November 2014, assignments that did not comply with any custom of the Turkish Armed Forces began to be made.”
He said officers who had been tried and acquitted in the Sledgehammer case, known in Turkish as Balyoz, returned to the gendarmerie and were placed in key departments.
The Sledgehammer case involved allegations of a 2003 military plot against the government of then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The defendants were later acquitted in retrials after disputes over the evidence.
“Commanders who had been tried and acquitted in the Sledgehammer case returned to the gendarmerie and were brought to all critical points, including the Personnel Department and the Intelligence Department,” Berber said. “After that, papers began arriving in a way that violated the existing assignment system.”
Berber said those papers sought the transfer of many staff officers to posts that normally required lower ranks.
He said the 2015 assignment list was rushed through before ordinary checks could be completed.
“Normally, assignments were always delayed by a few days or weeks because of the command level,” Berber said. “But in the 2015 assignments, we were suddenly asked to publish the list two weeks before the date we had announced. No preparations had been made. Various checks had to be carried out.”
Berber said Maj. Gen. Fuat Güney, his commander at the time, told him the list had to be published that day.
He said he was hospitalized at the time because of a back problem.
“My desk at the Gendarmerie Command was removed, a spring mattress was placed there, and I was made to work like that for two months with a keyboard on my lap,” Berber said. “Those assignments were made in a hurry.”
Looking back at the assignments, Berber said the group he described as an alliance behind the events of July 15 had started working during that period.
“When I look back now at the assignments in the Gendarmerie Command, I see that the alliance that brought these events upon us on July 15 had begun working at that time, especially with the return of the Sledgehammer commanders,” he said.
“It was not just a few of those who had been tried, acquitted and returned,” he said. “All of them were brought to critical points in the gendarmerie, and they began running the Gendarmerie General Command. It was not Gen. Galip Mendi, the gendarmerie commander at the time, who was running everything. They were running everything.”
Gen. Galip Mendi was commander of the Gendarmerie General Command during the coup attempt.
Berber said the presence of those officers together on the night of July 15 showed prior organization.
“The fact that all of these people were together from 9:30 p.m. on July 15, perhaps even earlier, including those who had retired, and that they were contacted by the bar association and the police department, shows that everything was organized and that they had done their homework well,” he said.
“I listen to what they say,” Berber added. “They knew more about that night than Gendarmerie General Commander Galip Mendi did.”
