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Former Chief of Staff Is a Convicted 'Terrorist'

One needs to worry for younger Turkish generations as to what it means when the courts send Ilker Basbug, a former chief of general staff, behind bars for life as a “terrorist organization leader.”
Protesters run after a prison van as an unidentified defendant sticks his fist out as he's driven to a courthouse in Silivri, where a hearing for people charged with attempting to overthrow Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government is due to take place, August 5, 2013. A Turkish court on Monday began sentencing nearly 300 defendants accused of plotting to overthrow the government, handing prison sentences of up to 20 years to some and acquitting 21 others. The court was announcing the verdi

In the 321st hearing that spread over four years, producing more than 2.5 million pages of documents, leading to nearly 7,000 interim judgments, pulling together 23 separate indictments into one where 275 defendants stood trial, the board of judges at an Istanbul special court hearing this case reached a verdict on Monday, Aug. 5, and found the accused guilty of the alleged crime: that is, being members of a secret group calling itself Ergenekon, composed of former and active military personnel and their civilian counterparts, to bring down the elected, Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.

In raining heavy sentences ranging from life in prison, to acquittal, the court also decided that Ergenekon is indeed a “terror organization,” and its members are “terrorists,” including Ilker Basbug, a former chief of general staff between August 2008 and August 2010, the highest-ranking military officer before the judges, sent to prison for life convicted of “leading a terrorist organization.” 

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