The İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court decided on Thursday to place Yıldırım and Sayın under protection in accordance with Article 20 of the Counterterrorism Law, on the grounds that “they helped the court shed light on crimes” as a witness and a secret witness, respectively, and thus became the target of terrorism.
The court made the decision upon an earlier petition filed by Mehmet Ali Pekgüzel, one of the prosecutors in the Ergenekon trial, demanding that Yıldırım and Sayın be placed under special protection while in custody.
The two defendants drew the attention of the public with their testimony to the court’s judges. Yıldırım, one of the main suspects in the 2006 Council of State shooting, which left a senior judge dead, stated that the attack was perpetrated with the purpose of dragging the country into chaos. The Council of State shooting case was merged with the Ergenekon trial in early 2009. Yıldırım and other suspects in the Council of State shooting are also accused of throwing hand grenades at the Cumhuriyet headquarters a few days before the Council of State attack. The daily was attacked three times in 2006, on May 5, 10 and 11. Yıldırım said both the Cumhuriyet hand grenade attack and the Council of State attack were carried out on the orders of retired Gen. Veli Küçük, a suspected leader of Ergenekon.
The testimony of the other Ergenekon defendant who is to be protected, Sayın, also sparked controversy throughout the country. During his testimony on Dec. 7, Sayın said that some members of the military told him that a secret formation inside the General Staff and the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) was trying to overthrow the government. Sayın said the generals he had met through his students at military academies told him that a secret group existed inside the military. “This formation, which I didn’t know was called Ergenekon, was working in collaboration with civil society organizations and was holding regular secret meetings. The commanders whom I talked to said that Turkey was not headed in the right direction; they said this group would put an end to that. They were saying the government should be served with a memorandum from the military,” he said.
