The first 15 days of the trial, which has been taking place in Silivri, an outlying-suburb of İstanbul, was involved with the reading of the nearly 2,500-page long indictment upon a request made by some of the lawyers of the defendants. Now, the process of cross-examining the defendants has started.
This week was assumed to be critical, since retired Gen. Veli Küçük, accused of being one of the masterminds behind Ergenekon as well as for being responsible for decades-long extrajudicial killings that have taken place in the mainly Kurdish-dominated Southeast, was cross-examined.
Küçük is also accused of founding the secret gendarmerie unit JİTEM, which has been blamed for many extrajudicial killings in Turkey.
His name is also familiar to the public due to the links drawn in a parliamentary report to the Susurluk affair. A fatal car accident which took place in Susurluk on Nov. 3, 1996, when a truck collided with a car, revealed ties between the state and the mafia for the first time in Turkish history.
Küçük, who at the time refused a demand from Parliament to explain his knowledge of the incident, was promoted instead to the rank of general by the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) around the same time.
The public reaction of several former senior commanders to a verdict by a civilian court on the Susurluk affair in May 2002, over five years after the traffic accident, can explain how Küçük managed until recently to get away with all of the accusations leveled against him by civilian courts as well as well as by Parliament.
Seven top former generals publicly described Korkut Eken soon after he was put in jail for his involvement in the Susurluk affair as a "hero" who "did his job perfectly and was never disobedient."
Eken, a former official in the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and a former officer of the Special Operations Department of the TSK, was among those who were sentenced to various prison terms for "leading a criminal gang" in the Susurluk trial.
However, as a sign of political determination in going after gangs, as well as a sign of the Turkish military's greater willingness to help civilian courts prosecute criminals, Küçük was caught and held in custody early this year, 12 years after the Susurluk scandal, on charges that focused on the alleged major role that he played within Ergenekon.
It was not surprising that during the hearings earlier this week, Küçük denied all allegations that had been leveled against him. But time will tell if the prosecutors will be able to prove the charges against Küçük, as well as those of the other defendants.
However, in a development on Tuesday this week, the Supreme Court of Appeals overruled a local court's decision over a 2006 shooting that killed a senior Council of State judge and demanded that links between the shooting and Ergenekon be investigated. This has the potential to open a new phase in the Ergenekon trial. This is in the sense that the Silivri court may now be able to start proving illegal activity by those using the state for dirty operations while intimidating citizens.
The Council of State attack was, at the time, portrayed as if it had been carried out with religious motives. But some parts of the Ergenekon indictment have revealed that some things, such as the bombing of the staunchly secular Cumhuriyet daily's offices as well as the Council of State attacks, might have been the work of the Ergenekon network to engage in illegal acts to weaken the current Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
Another promising event this week has been the Silopi prosecutor's decision to launch a probe into executions allegedly carried out by JİTEM.
The prosecutor launched the probe after a criminal complaint had been filed by the Şırnak Bar Association following recent statements by Tuncay Güney, who has alleged that a number of people were executed by JİTEM in the 1990s and that the bodies had been burned with acid and buried in wells located near facilities owned by the state-owned Turkish Pipeline Corporation (BOTAŞ) in Silopi. The prosecutor's office has authorized investigators to locate and open these wells.
The two events have raised hopes once again that justice may be done in purging illegal elements from within the state, even if it comes late.
