TURKEY CHARGES 52 MORE PEOPLE IN COUP PLOT

Reuters
Aug 5 2009
UK

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A Turkish prosecutor on Wednesday indicted 52
more people on charges of plotting a coup in an expansion of a case
that has pitted the pro-Islamist government against the secularist
establishment.

Nearly 150 people, including senior generals, are already on
trial under two previous indictments in the so-called Ergenekon
case. Prosecutors charge the ultra-nationalist network planned
assassinations and bomb attacks to stir unrest to pave the way for
a military intervention.

The Istanbul prosecutor submitted the 1,454-page indictment charging
the suspects of crimes that include attempting to overthrow Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government, forming illegal, armed gangs
and undermining the Turkish state, the state-run Anatolian news
agency reported.

Among the suspects are retired generals, including the former chairman
of the National Security Council, a labor leader, university rectors
and the former head of the Higher Education Council, which regulates
universities, Anatolian said.

They are charged with crimes that include plans to attack Turkey’s
Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II and a leader of the Alevi community,
Anatolian said.

Erdogan’s critics have said the case is a crackdown against his
political opponents who believe the government is eroding Turkey’s
secular constitution. His supporters say the Ergenekon trial is an
effort to eradicate shadowy forces that have undermined stability in
the European Union candidate nation.

The first hearing in the latest indictment is scheduled for September
7. The first trial began last year. Most of the defendants are in
police custody.