Balyoz Davası ve Gerçekler

Nearly two years ago in the early days of the Sledgehammer affair, we asked a long-time Turkish analyst who could be behind the fake documents on which the case rests.  He replied without batting an eyelid: “It’s the cemaat [Gülenists].” “How can you know?” we asked.  “It’s as obvious as the sun rising from the [...]

As many times as you want, but Turkish courts will still not listen. The evidence behind the Sledgehammer mass trial has already been thoroughly discredited. To any but the most jaundiced mind, it is patently obvious that the coup plan called Sledgehammer never existed, and that it was concocted by forgers to frame the officers [...]

In view of the mountain of evidence pointing to forgery in the Sledgehammer case, it is amazing that we can still read this from a leading Turkish intellectual Etyen Mahçupyan, who writes for the Gulenist daily Today’s Zaman: “Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan first learned about the Sledgehammer coup plan in 2004 ….” Erdoğan knew [...]

There is a story today in the Chelsea Record about Arsenal Consulting, the forensic firm that identified the digital forgery in the Sledgehammer CDs. Here is Mark Spencer, the president of the company: “Those responsible for forging these documents went through a significant amount of effort trying to be consistent. It was the consistency that [...]

It’s nice to see the New York Times catch up to the reality of the Gulen movement and what it is up to in Turkey.  In a long article, the Times discusses the cases of Ahmet şık, Hanefi Avci, and Zeki Ucok, among others – all victims of Gulenist defamation and bogus court cases. The [...]

Zaman’s columnists have raised the act of making up facts as they accuse others of lying to a fine art form.  The latest example comes from Markar Esayan. Esayan accuses Umut Oran, a CHP deputy, of lying in a letter he sent to the European Parliament on the Sledgehammer case: “Oran is trying to deceive [...]

Well, we already knew that the documents used by Turkish prosecutors to charge more than 300 officers in the infamous Sledgehammer coup plot trial were bogus.  We now have independent confirmation of the forgery from an American digital forensics team that has dug up new evidence on the forgers’ digital foot tracks.  You can download [...]

Paul Krugman has posted a piece by Dani on his New York Times blog that updates the situation with respect to the Sledgehammer trial.  Here is an excerpt: “Erdoğan has recently distanced himself from the Gülenists, in part because of his party’s discomfort with their judicial manipulations. But he has yet to withdraw his support [...]

Two important articles were published last week on Turkey, both of them making amply clear that the Sledgehammer case is based on fabricated documents. The first one, a long piece in the New Yorker by Dexter Filkins, doesn’t mince words as to what he calls the “dark side” of Erdogan’s Turkey’. “[Erdogan is conducting] an [...]

Gareth Jenkins has a very nice piece on the arrest of İlker Başbuğ, which places this latest move in the context of the ongoing Ergenekon-Sledgehammer prosecutions: “For many, the arrest of Başbuğ on terrorist charges will be regarded not so much as demonstrating that the General staff is no longer untouchable but that the Fethullah [...]