The White, Black and Gray Of the Ergenekon Trial
That fervent belief in secrecy is behind the excesses of the Ergenekon case in Turkey.
Since its genesis in 2007, the Ergenekon trial has been quite hard to grasp by Turks themselves, let alone foreigners — for the case, which ended last Monday with heavy prison sentences for 254 suspects, is probably the most complicated in Turkish legal history. The indictment is longer than 5,000 pages, whereas the attached documents of evidence number more than a million. And the suspects — most of them now convicts — include a staggering scope of people ranging from retired generals to journalists, from university professors to mafia celebrities.
In Turkey, there are broadly three different views about this case:
