Turkish justice 'sledgehammered'

The legal saga of the alleged "Sledgehammer" coup plot in Turkey, a political scheme by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its allies to permanently disable the military’s ability to intervene in politics, ended March 31, when all defendants were acquitted. The 236 suspects — almost all military officers, including 86 generals and admirals, some of them retired — had been initially convicted to lengthy jail terms. They were declared innocent after the state's evidence was dismissed as invalid. Arrested in 2010 and 2011, most spent three to five years in jail before being released on June 19, 2014, pending a retrial.

Today, only one person remains behind bars in connection with the Sledgehammer case. This person, however, is not a defendant accused of plotting a coup but a figure who played a key role in exposing the case. This person is Taraf columnist Mehmet Baransu, who, back in 2010, famously delivered to prosecutors a suitcase full of documents on which were based the ensuing Sledgehammer arrests and trials. Imprisoned since March 2, he is now accused of “setting up a criminal organization” and “disclosing information that the state’s security and internal or external political good requires be kept secret.”

Everything about Sledgehammer has turned upside down. The suspects are cleared, while the police and judicial officials who put the soldiers in the dock — both in the Sledgehammer case and other similar probes — have lost their offices, powers and special courts.

Those police and judicial officials were known to belong to the Fethullah Gulen community, an Islamic movement that has entrenched itself in key positions within the state. Yet, Gulenist involvement alone cannot explain the Sledgehammer and similar cases. All of those probes and trials were carried out with the blessing of the AKP government and the active support of the pro-government media.