A translation from Ahmet Altan´s daily column from daily paper Taraf (http://www.taraf.com.tr/)..
It is about ´how important this Ergenekon case for Turks´.

Hundred years of cleaning


This nation has been forced to watch silently the killings of the murderers who have been hiding in the government for almost 100 years.

The habit of killings started by the ottoman police against the freedom movements in Balkans in the begining of last century has never gone away.

Killing people for the intrest of state was almost accepted as blessed tradition

They never thought that these murders were never good for the state, on the contrary they transformed the state into a crime organization, caused malpractice, diminished the justice.

People in balkans were killed with this mentality.

People opposing Young Turks who controlled the goverment in the last years of Ottomans,were killed with this mentality.

Ermenian problem (the writer writes genocide here) was the result of this mentality.

Ali Sükrü Bey ( a politician who was killed in 1920 ) by the shadow of this tradition that started to get into the new republic.

This tradition got Communist Mustafa Suphi drawned.

This habit provoked the youth of universities and sent them to their deaths.

Because of this habbit, thousands of kurds become the victim of murders that have never been resolved

Turkish intellects were subjected to the assasinations because of this mentality.

...

From time to time, some of the murderers were taken to the courts but this mentality has never been made to sit on chairs as accuseds and all together in courts for these heavy and bloody crimes.

this mentality and the this mentality´s representetives inside the state were never held account,

Nobody even thougth that it was possible to hold these responsible

The republic which rejected the democracy and the law was made dirty

Now, it is the first time we came across with a serious court case.

It is the first time the law is bringing the heirs of young turks mentality into a court room.
Being able to open ergenekon case and arresting some retired generals are a huge step for this republic.

Maybe this nation is thinking for the first time that there could be a punishment for the murders which they always said, ´for the sake of state´.

We are just realising after 100 years that in a real proper state, there could not be a concept such as ´killings for the sake of state´ and people who work for the state have to obey the law.

We are erasing the tradition of killings of young turks from the cells of the state .

we are cleaning ourselves

It is not going to be easy of course

But the first step is the always the most difficult one and it has been done.
.....

We dont know who will be jailed or who will be freed as innocent or what the results of this court will be

But even only this court case is a proof that this state has the willpower to clean itself from the crime and there are some people in the state who desire a clean republic.

Nobody will be able to kill for the name of state so easily in this country anymore..
....
I got bored with the translation here

For the full article (Turkish) http://www.taraf.com.tr/yazar.asp?id=6

http://www.turkishclass.com/forumTitle_31407 /5. in that post I tried to explain that this is a very important case for Turkey.

I think that this is a very good sign and a great direction in which Turkey is going. Thank you for the effort of translating that article.

As I said, I think this is a very positive step for Turkey, as well as the recent trial on AKP. It looks like Turkey is really trying to clean its past and answer its questions about what directions it will go...

From what I´ve seen on Zaman, it looks like Ergenokon is being blamed for every single issue that there is in TR. Solving this issue, at the least, will not let the islamists use this as an excuse and maybe (just maybe) they will be forced by the public to answer some questions more honestly?

I save my opinion until I understand what really is going on. This Ergenekon thing is weird.