A statement from the press office of Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin on Friday announced that his ministry had denied a request to initiate an investigation into prosecutors working on the case of Ergenekon, a neo-nationalist gang believed to be the extension of a clandestine network of groups with members in the armed forces that planned to overthrow the government.

The possibility of launching a probe into the prosecutors conducting the Ergenekon investigation had raised concerns in Turkey, where legal proceedings against courageous judges and prosecutors fighting shadowy dealings within the state structure are commonplace. However, the statement released yesterday said the ministry had completed a review of complaints filed against the prosecutors on the case and found no reason to start an investigation. The statement said there was no evidence indicating that the prosecutors have abused their duty, authority or powers during the course of the investigation, and thus no need for an investigation into any of them.

Ergenekon gang suspects currently in jail pending trial include ex-army generals, academics, journalists and bosses of the crime world.

In the past, another prosecutor in a similar situation, Van prosecutor Ferhat Sarıkaya -- who was investigating a bookstore bombing on Nov 9. 2005 in the township of Şemdinli in the southeastern province of Hakkari, perpetrated by two-noncommissioned officers and a Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) member-turned-informant -- was disbarred by a higher judicial body supervising judges' and prosecutors' dealings after indicting Yaşar Büyükanıt, the then-land forces commander who was later promoted to chief of general staff.

Several legal figures had expressed concern earlier that the review of complaints for a probe by the ministry might lead Ergenekon prosecutors to the same fate as former Van prosecutor Sarıkaya.


What is Ergenekon?
The existence of Ergenekon, a behind-the-scenes network attempting to use social and psychological engineering to shape the country in accordance with its own ultranationalist ideology, has long been suspected, but the current investigation into the group began only in 2007, when a house in İstanbul's Ümraniye district that was being used as an arms depot was discovered by police.

The investigation was expanded to reveal elements of what in Turkey is called the deep state, finally proving the existence of the network, which is currently being accused of trying to incite chaos and disorder in order to trigger a coup against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.

The indictment made public in July claims that the Ergenekon network is behind a series of political assassinations carried out over the past two decades. The victims include a secularist journalist, Uğur Mumcu, long believed to have been assassinated by Islamic extremists in 1993; the head of a business conglomerate, Özdemir Sabancı, who was shot dead by militants of the extreme-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) in his high-security office in 1996; secularist academic Necip Hablemitoğlu, who was also believed to have been killed by Islamic extremists, in 2002; and a 2006 attack on the Council of State that left a senior judge dead. Alparslan Arslan, found guilty of the Council of State killing, said he attacked the court in protest of an anti-headscarf ruling it had made. But the indictment contains evidence that he was connected with Ergenekon and that his family received large sums of money from unidentified sources after the shooting.

Eighty-six suspects, 47 of whom are currently under arrest, are accused of having suspicious links to the gang. Suspects will start appearing before the court on Oct. 20 and will face accusations that include "membership in an armed terrorist group," "attempting to bring down the government," "inciting people to rebel against the Republic of Turkey" and other similar crimes.

The indictment also says Veli Küçük, believed to be one of the leading members of the network, had threatened Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist slain by a teenager in 2007, before his murder -- a sign that Ergenekon could be behind that murder as well.

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