 [Al Ahram] Turkey's constitutional court ruled Thursday that the legal rights of a former army chief jugged
Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
over an alleged coup plot had been violated, a decision that paves the way for his release.
The country's top court argued that a local tribunal had not "effectively examined" a release request by Ilker Basbug before rejecting it in January, a statement said.
It also ruled that the local court had unduly banned Basbug -- convicted in a mass trial last year -- from appealing the decision, violating his legal rights.
The constitutional court referred the case back to a local court, which could release him, private NTV television said.
The ruling comes after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi only they haven't dumped him yet...
said in January he was not opposed to the idea of retrials.
Basbug was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 along with hundreds of military officers who were given long jail terms for their role in the so-called "Ergenekon" conspiracy, an alleged plot to overthrow the government.
The military, which sees itself as the guarantor of Turkey's secular principles, has carried out three coups -- in 1960, 1971 and 1980, -- and pressured an Islamist government to step down in 1997.
Erdogan, himself an Islamist, has spent the best part of his 11 years in power trying to curb the military's influence.
But he has recently sought to get the army back on his side as he fights for political survival in a bitter feud with his ally-turned-opponent Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of criminal masterminding a graft scandal to topple him.
| So hard to run a war, whether external or internal, when all your remaining officers only know how to sing "Islam, Islam uber alles". |
In a conciliatory gesture toward the army that further increases the chances of retrials for the hundreds of convicted officers, parliament in February abolished the specially appointed courts that tried them.
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