I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

I knew all along that Bulent Ecevit, who happens to have been prime minister several times and is now mentor to the Democratic Left Party (DSP), would save my day. So when he came up with a statement last weekend to the effect that Turkey has to deal with its anomaly in the shape of the "deep state," meaning the existence of a state-like apparatus within the legitimate state, he divulged our dirty little secret. But this was kind of a silver lining for me.

Last week it became very evident that some forces who use the power of the state, although they aren''t necessarily the legitimate arm of any state apparatus or getting their orders from the chain of command, had struck again. They put a bomb in a bookstore in Semdinli, a small town in southeastern Turkey supposedly owned by a PKK supporter, and when their action attracted attention from politicians, they didn''t hesitate about opening a barrage on the deputies who were there to investigate the bombing.

Turkey has a long history of shadow militias and they''ve played significant roles in some terrorist activities. Their actions were used as a pretext for military takeovers. They killed and maimed people randomly. The same shadow militias are suspected of killing intellectuals who lost their lives in political murders.

Until Ecevit delivered his statement reiterating the existence of those forces, aptly called shadow militias, who are directed by the deep state, many within the legitimate state were inclined to cover up the Semdinli incident by understating its importance. Land Forces Commander Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, for instance, defended of one of the instigators of the bombing, saying he was "a good boy." In a country with a huge gap in status between a four-star general and a mere corporal, his defense of the corporal''s integrity was a real surprise but mattered a great deal nevertheless.

Ex-Prime Minister Ecevit is an expert on the matter since he was the target of the same forces a couple of times in the past. When he was in the opposition, he always made known the need to eradicate the deep state and dismantle the shadow militias, whereas as soon as he got into power he never went beyond cosmetic measures such as changing the name of the official institution overseeing the shadow militias.

Of course we''ve had our deeply seated tradition of setting up hit squads to further political agendas since the establishment of very first political party in Ottoman times but those squads were never sanctioned and sheltered by the state apparatus. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, our first president, had to deal harshly with the remnants of the armed hooligans the new republic inherited from the Ottoman era.

The shadow forces we have now are definitely a new phenomenon. They were set up after Turkey became a NATO member and when NATO was feeling insecure about the evil forces of communism. The stay-behind project was introduced to protect the free world if and when a part of that world was under threat from communist advances. As was the case in 13 other European countries, Turkey also created its own stay-behind militias and buried arms and ammunition in locations known only to the local commanders of those militias.

The mechanism remained a part of NATO''s structure in Turkey, and the militias played their rare political part to present pretexts for military takeovers. The civilian members of the militia were united in a party structure under the leadership of an ex-military leader of the force. They trained youngsters as a youth organization and those young people took to the streets whenever it was deemed necessary, supposedly countering leftist elements who were trying to overthrow the legitimate government through a Marxist revolution.

The turning point for the scheme came after the 1980 military coup. The military rulers felt helpless when the terrorist Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) first targeted Turkish diplomats abroad and later the terrorist Kurdistan Workers'' Party (PKK) resorted to violence. They recruited hit teams from the stay-behind forces which were ready to assume any role for the sake of the country. Those forces, which were trained to counter the advance of communism in Turkey, offered their services in a war against both ASALA and the PKK. They felt elevated by the upward move in status.

When a Mercedes was hit by a truck in Susurluk, in the western part of Turkey, in November 1995, the accident claimed three lives but it also made a dent in our understanding of the way our state operated. The passengers in the Mercedes were unlikely fellow travelers: A security officer was in the same car as a well-known fugitive believed to be responsible for many political killings in the past. The fugitive and his friend, the police chief, had become allies in private profiteering.

The 13 NATO countries with stay-behind forces have all dismantled them after strenuous inspections of their past activities. The Swiss, Belgians and Italians formed parliamentary committees and tried the members of hit squads, as well as their political backers, in court. Turkey too, especially after the Susurluk accident, made it an issue of public scrutiny. Many believed then and very few now that Turkey would never be the same again. Meaning the dark forces would never dare to strike again.

The incident in Semdinli is an ominous omen. Even though some respectable figures, like Buyukanit for instance, have tried to allay our fears -- that the same forces are alive and well and ready to strike again -- we can''t be sure of this. The public is looking to the civilians to come up with reassurances on the matter. Ecevit''s announcement that the deep state is still intact is putting pressure on the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party government to tackle this delicate issue decisively.

We, the people of Turkey, deserve a clean political environment free of interference from the ghost-like forces who hound us.

From The New Anatolian, 22 November 2005