86 on trial in alleged coup plot in Turkey

Charges include murders, blasts

SILIVRI, Turkey - One of the most sensational public trials in Turkish history began yesterday when a court started hearing a case against 86 people, among them retired army generals, journalists, and common criminals, charged with crimes including assassinations and bomb attacks in a plot to topple the government.

The main focus of the case is an illegal ultranationalist network, known as Ergenekon - the name is a reference to a central Asian Turkic legend. Prosecutors claim that members used violence to try to manufacture chaos in society and weaken support for the government to pave the way for the fifth coup in the history of modern Turkey.

The charges against the group, unveiled this summer in a 2,455-page indictment, include the murders of a judge, a priest, a journalist, three workers of a Christian publishing house, and the bombing of a newspaper. The group is also charged with plotting to kill public figures, including Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist who won the Nobel Prize. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of the ruling Justice and Development party has been accused of using the case to silence critics who say his party has an Islamist agenda that undermines the secularism enshrined in Turkey's founding as a democracy in 1923. The party, known by its Turkish abbreviation AKP, insists that it has moved past its Islamic roots and has a modernizing agenda that includes greater freedom of religious expression.

A powerful elite of military officers, judges, and senior bureaucrats has steered the country from behind the scenes since its inception, and has overthrown the government four times. That group's violent fringe was in effect on trial here Monday, in what appears to be the first major effort for a public accounting of state-sponsored crime.

The case involves other issues besides the suspected coup - including political assassinations, other murder plots, and possible attacks on NATO sites - that make it appear broader than a struggle between the elite and the ruling party. One of the accused is a member of the ruling party: Turhan Comez, a parliamentarian who has fled Turkey.

The case has shocked Turkish society. Criticism of the military, even of former officers, is extremely rare, and the fact that Turkey is holding the trial at all is seen by some as a victory for open society here.

The indictment states that Ergenekon "turned our country into a mafia and terror heaven."