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Turkish court agrees to hear coup plot case |
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Written by Reuters
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Friday, 25 July 2008 18:05 |
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A Turkish court agreed on Friday to hear a case against 86 people accused of a plot to overthrow the government, which media reports said included a plan to assassinate a top general.
The investigation into the ultra-nationalist group known as Ergenekon has rattled markets and increased political tensions in Turkey, which has also been unsettled by a legal effort to shut down the ruling AK Party for Islamist activities.
"Istanbul's penal court has accepted the indictment of 86 suspects as part of the Ergenekon investigation.
The defendants, including the head of a small nationalist party, a newspaper editor and retired army officers, face charges including incitement to armed insurrection, aiding a terrorist group and possession of explosives.
In the last 50 years, military coups have ousted four elected governments in NATO-member Turkey, a predominantly Muslim but officially secular country seeking to join the European Union.
CNN Turk television, which broadcast footage showing pages from the near-2,500 page indictment, said the court would hold its first hearing on October 20 in Silvri prison, near Istanbul.
It reported the indictment as saying the group had planned to assassinate the current head of the armed forces General Yasar Buyukanit in 2005 when he was the head of the Turkish land forces. It said there was no evidence of a link between the group and the army.
It said Ergenekon had also planned to attack Turkish novelist and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party.
Pamuk is loathed by Turkish nationalists for saying Turkey was responsible for the deaths of more than a million Armenians during World War One and of 30,000 Kurds in recent decades.
POWER STRUGGLE
A power struggle between rival elites, one made up of the militant secularist establishment and the other of government supporters, seems to be playing out in the Turkish courts.
The shadowy Ergenekon group first came to light a year ago when a cache of explosives was discovered in a police raid on an Istanbul house.
Two senior retired generals, businessmen and journalists -- all critical of the AK Party -- have been arrested as part of the investigation but have not yet been charged. A further 26 people were detained on Wednesday on suspicion of involvement.
Media reports say Ergenekon had planned to trigger a coup by inciting civil disobedience and stirring doubts among citizens about the health of Turkey's economy.
Some analysts see the investigation as revenge for the legal attempt to close the AK Party in the Constitutional Court, which will begin its deliberations on Monday. Analysts expect a verdict in that case by early August.
The AK Party rejects suggestions that it brought any pressure to bear in the Ergenekon investigation.
A prosecutor has accused the Islamist-rooted party of seeking to introduce Islamic rule in Turkey and is trying to ban Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul and 69 leading party members from party membership for five years.
Hardline secularists dismiss the AK Party leadership's arguments that it has abandoned its Islamist roots and point to an attempt to allow the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in universities as just one proof of its intentions. |