For foreigners, it must be quite discombobulating trying to understand how two distinctly separate legal battles may end up influencing the outcome of the other. It’s not any easier for locals as well to grasp the moment, but this is Turkey — that is what makes it interesting.

Not long ago, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was proud to assert himself as the “prosecutor” of a series of trials all linked to Ergenekon, defined as a terrorist organization aimed at bringing down his government. More than 200 current and military officers have been convicted and given long prison terms. Until December, Erdogan and his party members were jubilant in their arguments proclaiming how much these trials helped to end the military tutelage in the country and how much it helped to strengthen the country’s democracy.

Times have changed. In December, four of Erdogan’s cabinet ministers came under a suspicious spotlight in a corruption and bribery scandal and resigned or were forced to leave their posts. The prime minister has been arguing since that this is yet another form of a coup initiative, this time by the judiciary, in an attempt to finish him off. Erdogan claims that US-based Sunni religious leader Fethullah Gulen is behind this conspiracy against him, and that he will do all in his power to avert this coup plot, too. So, what does he do?

On Sunday, Jan. 5, Erdogan expressed willingness to throw his political weight behind the retrial of all those convicted military officers behind bars in the Ergenekon-related trials. “Our position on a retrial is a favorable one,” he said. “First, we must establish the legal grounding for fresh trials.” Legally speaking, it is actually not possible to correlate the injustices executed in the Ergenekon trials and the corruption and bribery ring that potentially includes even Erdogan’s family members.