Ankara - The trial of 86 people accused of conspiring to overthrow Turkey's moderate Islamic government continued Thursday. The defendants, who include former military officers, a best- selling author and the leader of a small left-wing party are alleged to have conspired to organize a series of attacks to destabilize Turkey.
They are also accused of creating the conditions that would allow a planned coup in 2009.
Prosecutors accuse the defendants of belonging to the so-called Ergenekon group, named after a mythical homeland of ancestral Turks.
They claim that the group is a terrorist organization that has had links to various murders in the past and had plans to carry out assassinations of political and social leaders, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, former Chief of General Staff Yasar Buyukanit and Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk.
It was through these assassinations and other types of destabilizing attacks that the group hoped to create the chaos necessary to allow the military to launch a coup in 2009 on the basis that it was bringing order back to society, according to the 2,455- page indictment.
Due to the small size of the courtroom inside the Silviri prison complex just outside Istanbul, Thursday's session was limited to 46 defendants who are currently being held in custody.
Thursday's session was predominantly procedural, with the court officially identifying the defendants and going through other official business. The trial was adjourned until Monday.
The trial is expected to shed a light on shadowy relations between staunch secularists, who accuse the government of attempting to bring sharia, or Islamic law, into Turkey, and their supporters in the military and state institutions.
Opposition figures have described the trial as a witch-hunt carried out by the government as revenge for a failed attempt to have the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) closed down or as a way to take attention away from its alleged attempts to undermine the secular state and implement sharia.
