The swoop, one of the largest in the European Union candidate country against the secular armed forces, follows reports of several alleged plots in the past year, which have strained relations between the ruling AK Party and the military.
NTV said former Air Force Cmdr, Ibrahim Firtina, former Naval Cmdr. Ozden Ornek and several other senior retired military officers were detained in the cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir in connection with the "Sledgehammer" plot.
Broadcaster CNN Turk said seven serving officers and seven retired officers had been detained, and the current armed forces chief Gen. Ilker Basbug had canceled a trip to Egypt as a result. There was no immediate official comment on the reports.
Such detentions would have been unthinkable in the past for the military, which has ousted four governments in the last 50 years. However, its powers have waned in recent years due to democratic reforms aimed at securing EU membership.
Other senior military officers have been indicted on charges of planning a separate plot to overthrow the AK Party.
According to previous media reports on the Sledgehammer plan, denied by the military, the army had plotted to provoke Greek fighter jets into shooting down a Turkish military jet and planned to plant bombs in mosques and museums in Istanbul to stir chaos.
Last month Taraf newspaper said it had obtained 5,000 pages of documents and tapes on the Sledgehammer plan, which was aimed at showing the AK Party was unable to protect the public and to justify an army takeover in 2003.
The military has said documents quoted by the paper were part of a military training seminar but were never meant to be carried out and were not part of a conspiracy.
The latest detentions coincide with rising political tensions due to a clash between Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government and the secularist judiciary over the arrest of a prosecutor who had investigated Islamic groups.
That row has unsettled financial markets, but there was little sign of political tensions affecting market sentiment on Monday.
