Ergenekon coup plot case marks new HSYK vote

ANKARA

A key vote held on Oct. 12 to elect new members of Turkey’s top judicial body has attracted attention, as both the most and the least successful candidates were involved in the controversial Ergenekon coup plot case.

Chief Prosecutor Metin Yandırmaz received 5,836 votes, the highest figure, from his colleagues, with almost 14,000 judges and prosecutors casting votes to elect 10 full members and six substitute members of the Supreme Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK).

Yandırmaz had been one of the many suspects in the Ergenekon case, with a surveillance ruling for him issued by a serious crimes court in Istanbul back in 2008. However, he was never subsequently prosecuted in the case.

Judge Hüsnü Çalmuk, meanwhile, who obtained the least number of votes with 35, served during the marathon Ergenekon trial.

In August 2013, in the Ergenekon trial, 275 people suspected of plotting a coup were handed sentences of hundreds of years of jail, with many high-ranking army members, journalists and academics being given aggravated life sentences by a local court.

The appeals process began last August, with the colossal detailed ruling amounting to 16,600 pages being sent to the country’s top prosecutor.