Fifty-eight alleged Ergenekon members are currently in jail pending trial

According to news reports, the indictment in the investigation into Ergenekon, a gang allegedly plotting to overthrow the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), government, has been completed by the prosecutor and will be submitted to court this week. Fifty-eight alleged Ergenekon members are currently in jail pending trial, and the indictment is reported to charge 85 suspects, including retired Gen. Veli Küçük and Workers' Party (İP) leader Doğu Perinçek -- both currently jailed as part of the investigation -- with various crimes.According to the press, 60 of the document's 2,500 pages are devoted to evidence linking the Council of State attack to Ergenekon. According to press reports Osman Yıldırım, a key suspect in the Council of State shooting, confessed to having taken a gun used in the attack by hit man Alparslan Arslan from ex-army officer Muzaffer Tekin, who is currently in jail over alleged involvement in Ergenekon. Regarding a separate attack that is also related to the Council of State shooting, Yıldırım confessed that hand grenades thrown at the Cumhuriyet daily's offices in 2006 were provided to him by Tekin.
In operations earlier this week that resulted in the detention of more than 20 people in connection with Ergenekon -- including three retired senior army generals -- police seized documents showing that the ultranationalist group planned to begin a bloody campaign in the first week of July. Handwritten by retired Gen. Şener Eruygur, the former gendarmerie commander who now heads the staunchly secularist Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD), the documents speak of a four-stage plan that was supposed to begin with unauthorized anti-government rallies as early as July 7, eventually leading to a coup and the establishment of a new government.As part of the campaign of chaos, public confidence in the government and its economic performance was to be undermined. According to news reports, a search of Eruygur’s house last week yielded a document detailing a plot to assassinate Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, who in March filed an indictment against the AK Party at the Constitutional Court, demanding that it be shut down for promoting Islamism. The AK Party denies the charges.Among other Ergenekon suspects currently in jail pending trial are controversial ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, who has filed countless suits against Turkish writers and intellectuals at odds with Turkey’s official policies; Fikret Karadağ, a retired army colonel; and Sami Hoştan, a key figure in the 1996 Susurluk affair in which close links between a police chief, an internationally sought-after mafia boss and a southeastern Kurdish tribe leader whose people are funded by the state to fight separatist terrorism were exposed.Prosecutors are to submit a separate indictment for retired senior generals Hurşit Tolon and Eruygur and the powerful Ankara Chamber of Trade (ATO) Chairman Sinan Aygün, as well as four others arrested later in the course of the Ergenekon investigation.İstanbul chief prosecutor to announce Ergenekon indictment
İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin said yesterday that he would announce the indictment of the Ergenekon operation at the courthouse in Beşiktaş. Engin said the indictment was ready but is currently being transferred to the National Judicial Network Project (UYAP). The prosecutor also denied responsibility over the news appearing in the media about the content of the Ergenekon indictment, declining to comment on their factuality.
Meanwhile, an İstanbul court yesterday rejected a request from public prosecutor Zekeriya Öz to detain eight Ergenekon suspects after their release following interrogation.