Main opposition drafts ‘Balyoz plot’ report

ANKARA

CHP Deputy Chair Veli Ağbaba. AA Photo

The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has drafted a report on the Balyoz (Sledghammer) coup plot case, which it has labeled an “embarrassing, coal-black stain in Turkey’s legal, political and military history.”

“The Balyoz case is a plot fictionalized by actors of dark eras in the history of Turkey in different bodies,” CHP Deputy Chair Veli Ağbaba said at a press conference on June 2, describing the Balyoz case as “the slander of the century.”

The report is based on a series of interviews with convicts in the case, Ağbaba said, adding that the judicial system had still not been able to expose those who plotted against the convicts. This should be an urgent item on the agenda of Parliament, he stressed.

On Oct. 9, 2013, the Supreme Court of Appeals ordered the retrial of 88 convicted suspects, while approving the convictions of 237 suspects in the case.

Former First Army General Çetin Doğan, former Air Force General Halil İbrahim Fırtına, opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) deputy and former General Engin Alan, former Navy Admiral Özden Örnek and other high-ranking retired generals were among the 237 suspects whose convictions in the Balyoz case were approved by the Supreme Court of Appeals.

During the Balyoz trial, separate reports from Naval and Air Force experts indicated the hard drive containing evidence had been modified, but their assessments were dismissed by the court.

In late January, experts from Turkey’s science watchdog, TÜBİTAK, also released a report stating that the date and time of key files on a hard drive found during searches conducted in December 2010 at the Gölcük Navy Command had been altered.

Based on the reports, lawyers of the convicts appealed to the Chief Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court of Appeals, but their appeal was rejected on May 16.