Sledgehammer (alleged coup plan)

Reports of the alleged plot first surfaced in the liberal Taraf newspaper on 20 January 2010. Journalist Mehmet Baransu said he had been passed documents detailing plans to bomb two Istanbul mosques and accuse Greece of shooting down a Turkish plane over the Aegean Sea. The plan was to stir up chaos and justify a military coup. The extensive materials received by Taraf, which were passed to prosecutors, formed the bulk of the prosecution case. ==Arrests==

On 21 February 2010 operations were carried out in nine provinces. 49 people were detained including admirals, generals and colonels, some of them retired. On 31 March and 1 April, 28 suspects in the investigation were released. A judge released 19 of the suspects due to the "existence of serious doubt regarding the crime". 9 others were released due to their "social standing." On 5 April 2010 an additional 95 people (including 86 military personnel, 70 of them on active duty), were detained in 14 provinces on the same day. Nine suspects released earlier were rearrested on 6 April. However, Istanbul's chief prosecutor, Aykut Cengiz Engin, ordered the removal of prosecutors Mehmet Berk and Bilal Bayraktar from the probe as his order "any detention decision should not be taken without my approval" was not abided by. On 6 April Engin also replaced coordinating prosecutor of the investigation Süleyman Pehlivan with Mehmet Ergül. In May and June 2011 another round of interrogations followed resulting in the arrest of 15 members of the Turkish Armed Forces. The arrests are based on documents reportedly seized in February from a house that belonged to Col. Hakan Büyük's son. The new evidence consists of written documents, video files and digital material on a flash disk, and includes plans to be put into action if the coup attempt were to fail. ==Trial==

The trial started on 16 December 2010 with the first court hearing, held in the court house of Silivri Prison. The presiding judge, Ömer Diken, was appointed only two days earlier, after the previous presiding judge was removed because of an ongoing disciplinary investigation. 187 defendants were present. Nine defendants including retired General Ergin Saygun had not appeared. Meanwhile, the court room in Silivri Prison was extended. On 20 February 2011 an additional indictment was forwarded to Istanbul Heavy Penal Court 10. It charged 28 defendants, 15 of them in pre-trial detention in connection with documents found at the home of Colonel Hakan Büyük's son with "the attempt to remove the government of the Turkish Republic" and demanded sentences between 15 and 20 years' imprisonment. In case that the indictment is accepted the case may be merged with the main Sledgehammer (Balyoz) case in which 196 defendants are on trial. On 29 July 2011 the court charged 22 suspects. On the same day the chief of the Turkish armed forces, Işık Koşaner, has resigned along with the army, navy and air force heads. Koşaner portrayed his resignation as a protest at the jailing of military officers. "It has become impossible for me to continue in this high office, because I am unable to fulfil my responsibility to protect the rights of my personnel as the chief of general staff," Koşaner said. On 15 August 2011 Istanbul Heavy Penal Court 10 held the first hearing in the second Balyoz trial. 26 defendants were present, 21 of them in pre-trial detention. Prime suspect General Bilgin Balanlı read out a 4-page defence pleading not guilty. The demand to recuse the court was sent to Istanbul Heavy Penal Court 11. The hearing was adjourned to 3 October 2011. ==Comments on the trial==

When on 5 April 2011 the Court rejected the demands for release for the second time, the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces issued a press release. Reminding that the Turkish Armed Forces repeatedly informed on the seminars in question and the expert opinion the prosecutor's office had demanded it was hard to understand why the court had ordered the continuation of pre-trial detention. Deputy President of the AKP, Hüseyin Çelik called this an interference in an ongoing trial. Hüseyin Çelik called this an interference into internal affairs. Dani Rodrik and Pinar Doğan, son-in-law and daughter of chief suspect Çetin Doğan, stated, "what lies behind the trials is an apparent effort to discredit the government’s opponents on the basis of the flimsiest evidence and often, far worse, by framing them with planted evidence and forged documents" in their personal blog page. Commenting on all investigations in the Ergenekon cases they alleged: the key evidence is typically produced by anonymous informants; they provide the "originals" of secret documents detailing criminal activities and these revelations are followed by selective leaks to the media about the "evidence". In his opinion "It is rather likely that Sledgehammer was the first coup plan devised right after AKP’s victory in the parliamentary elections on 3 November 2002." On 16 January 2013 Mr. Orhan Aykut confessed to the Aydınlık newspaper that together with Mr. İhsan Arslan (AKP deputy at the time) they received a suitcase of real Balyoz Seminar documents from Mr. Iskender Pala (who was expelled from the Turkish Navy for not being secular) at Movenpick Hotel in Istanbul in 2007 and using these documents they had created fake evidences with a group of specialists in Ankara to be used in Balyoz Case. ==Verdict==

On 21 September 2012 Istanbul Heavy Penal Court announced its verdict. Some 300 of the 365 suspects were sentenced to prison terms, while 34 suspects were acquitted. Three retired generals were sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment: Çetin Doğan (retired 1st Army Cmdr. General), İbrahim Fırtına (Air Force Cmdr. retired General) and Özden Örnek (retired Navy Cmdr. Adm.) on charges of "attempting to overthrow the government by force" but the terms were later reduced to 20 years' because of the "incomplete attempt at staging a coup". In the case of 78 defendants (including Engin Alan) the court commuted aggravated life imprisonment to 18 years' imprisonment. While 214 defendants received sentences of 16 years' imprisonment, one defendant was sentenced to six years' imprisonment. The court separated the case of three defendants and dropped charges for one defendant. Arrest warrants against 250 defendants in pre-trial detention were prolonged. In addition, six arrest warrants were issued against defendants attending the hearing and 69 decisions on apprehension were issued against defendants who had not come to the hearing. The Constitutional Court of Turkey found in 2014 that the defendants' rights had been infringed during the judicial process, which triggered to which in 2021, the Court of Cassation (Turkey) reversed the verdict because key pieces of evidence in the indictment were found to be fabricated, and the forensic experts handling the material were indicted . Certain word documents contained fonts that were anachronistic, and Süha Tanyeri's handwriting had been copied from his personal notepad to fabricate evidence. Other irregularities included a coup plan drafted in 2003 making an assignment to TCG Alanya (a navy ship), which did not exist until 2005. The plan also made references to companies that did not exist in 2003, and CCTV systems that did not exist in 2003. ==Fair trial intervention==

In 2013 the President and Board of the Istanbul Bar Association were charged with attempting to influence members of the judiciary in the trial, after they had intervened in a 2012 hearing to demand a fair trial. The European Association of Lawyers for Democracy & World Human Rights said their intervention was legal and approved by the Presiding Judge at the time. ==Key actors==

• General Aytaç Yalman (Commander of the Turkish Army, 2002 - 2004) • General Çetin Doğan (Commander of the First Army, 2001 - 2003) • Admiral Özden Örnek (Commander of the Turkish Naval Forces, 2003 - 2005) • General İbrahim Fırtına (Commander of the Turkish Air Force, 2003 - 2005) • General Engin Alan (Chief of the Special Forces of the Turkish Army, 1996 - 2000) • General Şükrü Sarıışık (Secretary-General of the National Security Council, 2003 - 2004) ==See also==