In my June 4 article for Al-Monitor, I reported a Turkish government decision to close down all police academies on the grounds they have come under the full control of the Islamist Gulenist organization. The higher echelons of the state — President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Chief of General Staff Necdet Ozel, National Intelligence Organization (MIT) chief Hakan Fidan as well as ministers and senior bureaucrats — all agreed on the threat the Gulenists pose. The government said the Gulenists had entrenched themselves within the state in a secret hierarchy of their own.

No objections came to the decision from the opposition parties either, for they had long claimed that a secret Gulenist structure existed within the intelligence services, the military, the judiciary and the police. The opposition had also maintained that some high-profile judicial cases in recent years had been fabricated by Gulenists and harshly criticized the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on the issue.

The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) had argued that a considerable amount of evidence presented in the Ergenekon coup case was fabricated by Gulenists. Similarly, the second-largest opposition force, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), had argued that the digital evidence used against scores of soldiers in the Sledgehammer coup case was a Gulenist fabrication. (MHP parliament member Engin Alan, a retired three-star general, was convicted in the Sledgehammer case and remains behind bars.) The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), for its part, had maintained that the massive case against the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) was also trumped up by Gulenists out of their enmity against Kurds. All three opposition parties were proved right to a large extent. Though the essence of the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases was justified, they eventually became devoid of meaningful content. The Turkish public today overwhelmingly believes that trumped-up evidence was planted in both cases.

And in a major development this week, the Constitutional Court ruled that the rights of Sledgehammer defendants were violated, meaning that more than 200 officers convicted in the case will now be retried. The defendants are likely to be released this week, pending a retrial. The court issued a similar judgment in the case of former police chief Hanefi Avci, sentenced to 15 years on highly controversial charges after publishing a scathing book about the Gulenists.