Balyoz Davası ve Gerçekler

At long last, Turkey’s consitutional court has reversed the conviction of the more than 200 officers previously found guilty in the bogus Sledgehammer coup plot, leading to the release on June 19th of all those in jail (including Cetin Dogan). Even though a retrial is to take place, the ruling is a coda to the […]

In the Digital Forensics Magazine, computer forensics expert Mark Spencer writes about how he and his team at Arsenal discovered tampering of the digital evidence in the Sledgehammer (hard drive no.5) and Ergenekon (Çağdaş Yaşamı Destekleme Derneği (ÇYDD) hard drive) cases. Focusing on the ÇYDD hard drive and applying “relative anchor times” analysis, Spencer shows that […]

Well it has been four years, but we finally have a first-page, in-depth piece on Sledgehammer in the International New York Times that leaves no doubt about the sham nature of the trial: A series of sensational trials that shook the Turkish military in recent years achieved what many regard as the most important legacy […]

When future scholars write the history of Turkey’s present-day travails, they will no doubt puzzle over why countless intellectuals, professing attachment to the rule of law, civil liberties, and liberal values, nevertheless supported show trials based on flagrantly fabricated evidence – thereby helping to legitimize them. Among these, Etyen Mahçupyan perhaps stands out. An intellectual […]

An international human rights network representing academies and scholarly societies around the world has issued a report that takes the Turkish government to task for the prosecution and imprisonment of scientists on the basis of fabricated or flimsy evidence. Among the specific cases the report examines in detail is that of Faruk Yarman, one of […]

We have just received the finding of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), which fully validates defendants’ arguments about violations of due process in the Sledgehammer trial. What is important is that the U.N. tribunal reached this decision despite the Turkish Government’s lengthy submission attempting to justify the manner in which the trial […]

Etyen Mahçupyan’s piece directed at Dani makes rather sad reading. Mahçupyan gets his facts about the Sledgehammer case wrong (as he has repeatedly done since the coup documents first came to light – see here, here, here, and here). So he reaches conclusions that are simply flat-out erroneous. Mahçupyan begins his article with a string […]

Emre Uslu offers his usual mix of illogic and falsehoods in defense of the Sledgehammer verdict. Uslu makes two arguments. First, he says that the “discovery” of some of the evidence in a naval base proves that it is the defendants who must have placed it there.  This conclusion is comical in light of how […]

(The following is taken from Dani Rodrik’s blog.) The Turkish court overseeing Turkey’s Sledgehammer case has finally issued its much awaited reasoning behind the verdict of last September, which found 330 officers guilty of plotting a coup in 2003 against the then-newly installed AKP government.  The fabrication of evidence and the manipulation of the judicial […]

We gave snippets previously of Fethullah Gülen’s appalling views on Jews, women, and the U.S from the mid-1990s.  We also mentioned that Gülen has never come to grips or apologized for these views, even though he presents himself as a moderate religious leader interested in promoting inter-faith dialog. The Gülen movement responded to our post […]