More prosecutions in Turkey's 'Ergenekon' plot

Mar 10, 2009, 16:10 GMT

Ankara - Fifty-six people suspected of involvement in a secular, ultranationalist plot to overthrow the Turkish government will face trial after prosecutors in Istanbul on Tuesday released a second indictment in the so-called Ergenekon probe.

The list of suspects, which includes two former generals, are suspected of being connected to the secretive Ergenekon coup plotters.

The Ergenekon group allegedly carried out various political murders in the past and had plans to assassinate current political and social leaders, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, former Chief of General Staff Yasar Buyukanit and Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk.

The aim of these destabilizing attacks was allegedly to create the chaos necessary to allow the country's secular military to launch a coup against the mildly Islamist government and claim that it was bringing order back to society.

Ergenekon is the name the alleged group named themselves after and refers to a mythical Turkic homeland in central Asia.

Tuesday's second indictment weighed in at almost 2,000 pages and in addition to the alleged plot to overthrow the government it also lists links the suspects had as far back as the 1980s with outlawed groups such as the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) and Hezbollah, which was responsible for the murders of dozens of moderate Islamists in the 1990s.

The second indictment now brings to 133 the total number of people accused of belonging to the Ergenekon group. Retired generals Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur were named in the second indictment as being alleged leaders of the Ergenekon group.

The trial of the first 86 people arrested started in Istanbul last year. Prosecutors at the trial have said that the staunchly secularist and nationalist group was angry at what they believe is the government's watering down of secular laws and its erosion of national sovereignty in Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

Opposition figures have described the trial as a witch hunt carried out by the government as revenge for a failed attempt to have the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) closed down.