Another shift of power in Turkey

The Turkish Court of Appeals' ruling on April 21 which overturned the convictions in the "Ergenekon" coup plot case marked an era in the country's problematic relations between politics, the military and the judiciary.

Then case was opened in 2008 in the wake of debates started before the presidential elections in Turkey in 2007, practically following a statement by the military in late April that year commenting on the presidential elections and their possible consequences. The statement had alerted (then prime minister, now President) Tayyip Erdo?an's Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) government, which took sharp measures to announce early elections and a referendum to shift from a parliamentary vote to a popular vote in electing the president. Then Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül was elected president in August 2007.

In the meantime, the first police operations had started against certain ex-military people renown for ultra-nationalist tendencies, which would in retrospect turn into the core of the Ergenekon case. Ergenekon, the Central Asian motherland of the Turkish mythology, was the name given by the prosecutors - led by a certain Zekeriya Öz - to an alleged network organized within the military, judiciary, academia and media in order to overthrow the Islamic-conservative AK Parti government.

Chief prosecutor Öz has always been linked in the media to the Fethullah Gülen movement. An Islamist ideologue living in the U.S. with an international education network, Gülen, at that time, was one of the closest allies of Erdo?an and his AK Parti. Gülenist prosecutors, judges, police chiefs and media personalities gained favoured status in key positions. Erdo?an allocated one of the Prime Ministry's armoured limousines to Öz. Erdo?an's...