AN investigation into an alleged coup plot is testing Turkey's ability to reform its military and courts, seen by hardline secularists as shields against political Islam but blamed by others as a barrier to change. Nearly 200 people, including retired generals, lawyers and politicians, have been charged in a case viewed by many as part of a battle for the soul of European Union candidate Turkey. “This case has brought a fundamental change of perception of who can be put on trial in Turkey,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, researcher on Turkey for Human Rights Watch. Prosecutors say a right-wing group was planning to sow chaos through bombings and attacks across Turkey to force the army to step in and topple Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government. Critics of the investigation into the “Ergenekon” coup plot see it as revenge by the ruling party for an attempt to ban it in court last year. The AK Party denies it is pushing the judiciary to conduct a witch hunt against opponents. The investigation was welcomed by pro-democracy advocates as a chance to break taboos on the military and to disband anti-democratic elements in the state bureaucracy long involved in activities to destabilize the country. But as police rounds up journalists, human rights activists, artists and academics in an ever-expanding case, some question whether the AK Party has seized the judiciary, once a bastion of the secularist elite, to punish its political opponents. “Ergenekon has reached a critical stage and the legal system needs to prove this is a serious case against anti-democratic elements in Turkish society,” said Sinan Ulgen of the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies think-tank in Istanbul. “We will have to wait until the end of the legal process to see if Ergenekon will polarize Turkish society even more or will be good for democracy in Turkey, but in this case perceptions of the public are more important than reality,” Ulgen said. Ergenekon has implications for investors in Turkey, an investment destination because of its prospects of joining the EU, but where bouts of political and institutional instability have also weighed negatively on its $800 billion economy. Untouchables For many in Turkey's increasingly robust middle class, the case offers an opportunity to open the lid on unresolved murders, corruption and illegal operations blamed on a “deep state” – hardline nationalists in the security forces and state bureaucracy that oppose liberal and democratic reforms. The arrests of retired generals and active officers is unprecedented in Turkey, where the army has removed four elected governments in the last 50 years and has long enjoyed an untouchable status because of its popular support. The military denies any link to the group, and has criticized prosecutors for sullying its image. In a rare news conference last month, armed forces chief General Ilker Basbug mounted a vigorous public defence of the institution and denied it had been plotting a coup. Some judges and prosecutors, a professional layer in the powerful elite that sees itself as the guarantor of Turkey's secularism, have also criticized the investigation, accusing the government of wanting to take on the judiciary. Judges have marched in protest, donning their robes, to the tomb of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of secular Turkey, after a prosecutor who initiated legal action against the AK Party had his house searched by police. “Many of the people implicated in the case were untouchable before. They ran the country. They were the state,” researcher Sinclair-Webb said. Human rights groups and the EU have raised the issue of suspects' legal rights and fair trial, a common complaint in Turkey. Many suspects have been pulled from their beds in the dead of night, only to be freed without charges days later. Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish centre at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and who has often criticized the government, said the AK Party has “replaced the old Deep State with a new one of its own.” Opponents who led street protests against the government in 2007, including union leaders, have for instance been arrested. Raids of offices belonging to NGOs and media critical of the government have also fed criticism of a witch hunt. The AK Party, which ended the secularists' decades-old grip on power by winning elections in 2002, has insisted the judiciary is independent. Erdogan has said the AK Party, which opened EU accession talks in 2005, wants to reform an old state bureaucracy holding back democracy and political debate.
