My Dear Friends,
I wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
It has been a long time since our last communicating and meeting. I missed you all.
I could not get in touch with you for a long time. Because, I had been detained since September 2011 in the political case known as Sledgehammer (Balyoz) which claims that there was an attempted coup d’état in 2003 against the current government. I call this completely political case “the Slander of the Century, Sledgehammer Case”. In
this Case, hundreds of innocent and dignified people had been
imprisoned based on fabricated unsigned digital documents whose origins
remain uninvestigated.
The Constitutional Court, the highest legal authority in Turkey, made a unanimous decision on June 18, 2014
ruling that the lower courts’ verdict — convicting retired and serving
military officers of plotting a coup to bring down the pro-Islamist
Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in 2003 under a plan
code-named "Sledgehammer" — had violated our right to fair trial. Since
this landmark decision, all 237 officers including me behind bars in
relation to the Sledgehammer case have been released on June 19, 2014.
Warm regards,
Can Erenoglu
Vice Admiral (Ret.)
Dear Can,
I
am so sorry for you! You did not deserve this! I remember how hard you
have worked at Marshall Center Course trying to convince us that Turkey
is a real democracy. What happened to you is not, for sure, democracy. A
real democracy is not in Romania also. The military pension system was
destroyed and replaced (retroactive) with a public one based on
"contribution", which was not in accordance with the law during our
military career. The consequence (in many cases, including mine) was a
severe cut of our pension. In the present time, trying in justice to
get back some money, we are getting -in some cases -judicial fees. But
our problem is nothing comparing with yours! I hope you are OK and you
are still loving your amazing country! As I love my wonderful country!
And I hope that we will be able to visit some times again, like I did a
few years ago!
I wish you all the very best! Have a real Happy New Year 2015!
God bless you Can!
Sincerely, V. Mihai
Col (ret.)
