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A Turkish court
indicted 196 people on Monday, among them retired military commanders,
over an alleged plot to overthrow the government, which has its roots
in political Islam, state-run Anatolian news agency said.

Revelations this
year of an alleged 2003 plot codenamed “Sledgehammer” shocked Turkey
and aggravated simmering tensions between the government and the
secularist armed forces, as scores of retired and serving military
officers were arrested.

According to
Turkish media, the plot was said to involve bombing historic mosques
and provoking Greece into shooting down a Turkish war plane to create a
war-like situation and destabilise the AK Party government, in power
since 2002.

Among those named
in the indictment are Cetin Dogan, former head of Turkey’s prestigious
First Army, and retired air force commander Ibrahim Firtina, both of
whom were first arrested early this year.

The indictment,
prepared by Istanbul prosecutors, included calls for jail sentences of
15 to 20 years for the alleged perpetrators, Anatolian said. No date
has been set for a trial.

Turkey’s military,
the second largest in NATO, has overthrown three governments since 1960
and pressured Turkey’s first Islamist-led government into resignation
in 1997.

The military has
said there was no conspiracy and operation “Sledgehammer” was merely a
war game exercise presented at a seminar.

The arrests of
former military top brass highlight a major social transition in
EU-membership candidate Turkey, as power shifts from traditional
secular elites such as the armed forces and judiciary, to a new
political class of conservative Muslims, epitomised by Prime Minister
Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party.

REUTERS