ANKARA: The Turkish authorities detained at least 21 ultra-nationalists, including 2 prominent retired generals, on Tuesday in an investigation into a suspected plot against the government.
The arrests were made shortly before the Constitutional Court began hearing a legal case in which the governing Justice and Development Party, known as AK from its initials in Turkish, is charged with trying to establish an Islamic state.
Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, the top prosecutor in Turkey, has accused AK of violating secularism, which is protected by the Turkish Constitution, and has asked that the party be closed.
Yalcinkaya also has asked that President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and about 70 other party officials be barred from politics for five years.
A ruling in his favor could lead to parliamentary elections, analysts say.
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Turkish stocks and the lira fell sharply Tuesday as traders and political analysts worried that the political uncertainty would damage Ankara's hopes of joining the European Union.
Erdogan said the detentions were linked to a long-running investigation into Ergenekon, a shadowy, ultra-nationalist and hard-line secularist group that is suspected of planning bombings and assassinations calculated to trigger an army takeover.
"It is not the AK party which they cannot tolerate. What they can't tolerate is democracy, the national will, the people's feelings and thoughts," Erdogan said.
The Ankara police said that 24 people had been detained, but later the prosecutor's office told the state news agency that 21 were in detention and 3 were being sought.
The news agency said that among those detained were the retired generals Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur, the former chief of gendarmerie forces and head of a powerful secularist association.
Tolon and Eruygur were the highest-ranking former soldiers to be arrested so far, CNN-Turk television said.
Eruygur was a major organizer in anti-government rallies last year, when hundreds of thousands protested what they considered government attempts to undermine secularism.
The Milliyet daily newspaper said on its Web site that a retired brigadier general and a retired vice admiral had also been detained. The chairman of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, Sinan Aygun, also was detained, as was Mustafa Balbay, a senior journalist for the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet.
"These are prominent people and their common point is their loyalty to secularism," Mustafa Ozyurek, a senior lawmaker in the main opposition party CHP, or Republican People's Party, told the broadcaster NTV. He said the government "wants to turn society into an empire of fear."
Many see the Constitutional Court case, filed in March, as the last stand by Turkey's secular old guard - a powerful class that includes the military and judiciary - that is trying to hang onto power.
The military's attempt to stare down Erdogan last year led to pro-AK retaliation at the ballot boxes and now it is turning to its judicial allies to try to stop Erdogan. A ruling by the court is expected in the next few months.
Turkey has had four military coups in the last 50 years, only two involving armed force. The most recent was a 1997 "soft coup," when the generals, using a combination of public and behind-the-scenes pressure, edged from power a government that the military considered Islamist.
Political analysts say Ergenekon is part of the "deep state," a term used to describe the hard-line nationalists in Turkey's security forces and state bureaucracy who are ready to take the law into their own hands for the sake of their agenda.
More than 40 people, including a retired general, lawyers and politicians have been arrested over the past year for suspected links to Ergenekon. The military, which has repeatedly criticized the government, has denied any links to the group.
No formal charges have been brought against those who were detained on Tuesday, but the Anatolian news agency reported judicial sources as saying an indictment should be ready by the end of the week.
Shortly after the detentions, Yalcinkaya, the chief prosecutor, outlined his case to close the AK party, which was re-elected last year. Turkish courts have banned more than 20 parties for alleged Islamist or Kurdish separatist activities.
AK officials deny the charges and say they are politically motivated.
José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, has warned that banning the AK would have a "major impact" on relations with the EU.
In its defense, the party submitted more than 400 pages to the Constitutional Court in June, saying that closing the party would amount to overturning the results of a democratic election, which it won.
"It is not true that the party has become the focal point of activities against secularism," the party said in its defense arguments.
Source: International Herald Tribune
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