ERGENEKON

   During 2010, the continuing Ergenekon trial of ultranationalists and retired military officers charged with planning violent campaigns to destabilize the AK Party government in Turkey continued. Indeed, the massive indictment of 2,455 pages described an incredible plot connecting some 86 military, mafia, ultranational-ists, lawyers, and academic figures supposedly attempting to weaken the country's administration and justify an illegal intervention against the AK Party government. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself was said to be on the alleged hit list. Further arrests of active and retired military officers occurred in February 2010 as a result of the related Balyoz (Sledgehammer) Operation. Critics, however, accused the AK Party of simply trying to take revenge on its Kemalist opponents with all these charges.

   The term Ergenekon refers to the Turks' legendary ancestral Asian homeland. It also is in effect simply another name for the Turkish Deep State.

   See also Jitem; Susurluk.