Read in
Turkey’s highest legal authority, the Constitutional Court, issued a landmark ruling on Dec. 4 that not only sheds a negative light on the country’s judicial bureaucracy, but is also causing discomfort among members of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The ruling concerns main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) deputies Mustafa Balbay, a prominent journalist imprisoned since 2009, and Mehmet Haberal, a well-known academic and doctor who founded Baskent University in Ankara and was also detained in 2009. Both were accused of being members of the Ergenekon, the shadowy group that allegedly planned to topple Erdogan and his government through unconstitutional means before it was discovered.
