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Ankara (AFP) May 11, 2010 A Turkish court has decided to merge the trial of a general and a prosecutor over an alleged plot to topple the Islamist-rooted government with that of a colonel accused of drawing up the plan, the Anatolia news agency reported Tuesday. The ruling was made late Monday by the court in the eastern city of Erzurum which last week began the case against General Saldiray Berk, head of the Third Army, and prosecutor Ilhan Cihaner, along with 12 co-defendants, accused of planning to discredit and topple the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The court said the case was "legally and physically linked" to another one launched last month in Istanbul, in which Colonel Dursun Cicek stands accused of preparing the purported plan against the AKP, Anatolia said. The alleged plan, published in a newspaper in June, outlined a strategy "to break popular support" for the AKP and the powerful brotherhood of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a major government supporter, on the grounds they sought to undermine Turkey's secular system. It called for planting drugs and weapons in the homes of the cleric's student followers and then seizing them in operations aimed at blacklisting the brotherhood as a terror group. The suspects on trial in Erzurum are accused of putting the plan into action in the city. Cicek, whose signature is on the plan, insists the document is a fake. The trial in Istanbul is scheduled to begin on June 28. Both cases are tied to a larger investigation into an alleged secularist network which planned to foment political chaos and prompt a military coup against the AKP, the moderate off-shoot of a banned Islamist party. The probe, which began in 2007, has sharply divided the public, with some hailing it as a boost to Turkish democracy and others seeing it as a tool used by the government to bully and intimidate opponents. Many secularists suspect the AKP of a desire to increase the influence of Islam and erode the strict separation of religion and politics in Turkey -- a charge the party categorically denies.
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