Years after they paved the way for the imprisonment of hundreds of people on trumped-up charges and forged evidence, some 200 judges from a chamber of Turkey's Supreme Court of Appeals will be in the dock themselves on Monday.
The adjudicators are charged with aiding sham trials, which were orchestrated by infiltrators of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) in the judiciary. FETÖ, which is accused of masterminding three coup attempts between 2013 and 2016, planted its members everywhere, from law enforcement to the judiciary, bureaucracy and military according to prosecutors.
Using its clout in the judiciary, the terrorist group plotted to imprison its critics, according to investigators.
The accused judges had issued final verdicts in the Ergenekon, Balyoz (Sledgehammer) and other trials that later turned out to be sham trials. Ekrem Ertuğrul, former head of the chamber, is among the defendants in weeklong hearings.
The case involves former senior judges from the Ninth Chamber of the highest legal authority, the Supreme Court of Appeals or Yargıtay as it is called in Turkish.
Ergenekon, an infamous case where hundreds were tried and jailed on allegations of scheming to plot to overthrow the government, had nearly came to a conclusion last year after a Supreme Court of Appeals ruling.
The court had overturned the convictions of 275 people, ranging from the former head of the Turkish Armed Forces to lower-ranking military officers, journalists and academics in the case.
The court said in its ruling that convictions by a local court were invalid, as it lacked concrete evidence pointing to the existence of the "Ergenekon terrorist organization" – a concoction of FETÖ-linked prosecutors and judges – and cited a number of violations in the case such as illegal wiretapping, dubious statements of secret witnesses and unlawful searches.
The suspects, held in pretrial detention for years without tangible evidence, were released in 2014 after new legal amendments limited such detentions.
The sham trials were the work of FETÖ to stifle the opposition to the ubiquitous group that evolved into a politically motivated juggernaut from a simple religious congregation and later, a terrorist group that killed 249 people during last year's coup attempt.
Prosecutors from the Ergenekon case mostly remain at large in separate cases regarding the terrorist group. Zekeriya Öz, the most famous prosecutor in the case, is reportedly hiding in Europe after he fled Turkey in the wake of an arrest warrant in a FETÖ-related case.
The Sledgehammer case was similar to the Ergenekon. It involved an alleged plot to seize power by the First Army Command between March 5 and March 7, 2003 in an attempt to overthrow the Turkish Republic's elected government.
All 236 suspects in the case, mostly military officers, were acquitted in 2015, including former First Army Commander, retired Gen. Çetin Doğan, asserting that the digital data in the file, which was presented as the key piece of evidence in the case, cannot serve as proof because an expert report revealed its falsity.
After the coup attempt in 2016, thousands of people linked to the terrorist group were detained or arrested, while others fled abroad. FETÖ faces its biggest crackdown with authorities launching almost daily operations to capture its members.
Fetullah Gülen, the U.S.-based leader of the group, remains at large while Turkey is actively seeking his extradition along with dozens of other senior group members.
Evidence found in investigations against FETÖ shows the terrorist group orchestrated last year's coup attempt and committed other crimes, ranging from illegal wiretapping, blackmail and organizing sham trials in the past decade.
