The chief prosecutor's office at the Supreme Court of Appeals, the country's ultimate legal authority, asked the court to overturn the acquittal of seven suspects, including former generals, in the Balyoz (Sledgehammer) case where former military brass were accused of planning a coup. All defendants were released and acquitted in the case after a verdict by the Constitutional Court that their right to a fair trial was violated, in a case mired with allegations of forged evidence.

The case is viewed largely as a plot to imprison senior military officers by the Gülenist Terror Cult (FETÖ), which is already accused of orchestrating sham trials to imprison its critics thanks to the cult's infiltrators within the police and judiciary.

The chief prosecutor's office cited audio recordings at a seminar where generals allegedly called for a coup as grounds for dismissal of the acquittal verdict. The case is now before the Supreme Court of Appeals, and lawyers for the defendants said they believed the top court would dismiss the request. Speaking to the Anadolu Agency, Hüseyin Ersöz, a lawyer for defendants, said audio recordings or a seminar itself cannot be used as criminal evidence as the remarks by his defendants in the seminar did not constitute a coup crime. Ersöz said they already presented their defense in earlier hearings of the trial that started in 2010. "The court has viewed expert witness reports that the Balyoz Action Plan was actually forged," he said, referring to alleged documents containing a coup plot.

All defendants in the case were acquitted last year.