The trial has shaken the foundations of Turkey’s once all-powerful military, triggering the resignations last month of the country’s top four commanders who quit in protest over the detention of their comrades.
General Bilgin Balanli, head of Turkey’s military academies who has been in prison since his arrest in May, is the highest-ranking serving officer among nearly 200 serving and retired officers charged with involvement in the alleged coup conspiracy known as “Operation Sledgehammer.”
Their trial is a milestone on European Union candidate Turkey’s journey of democratic reform, political analysts say.
“Turkey has been moving toward establishing the supremacy of the rule of law. Regardless of rank or position, if charged with a crime, you can stand trial. This is an important turning point,” said Lale Kemal, Ankara Bureau Chief of Taraf newspaper.
In what was an often animated courtroom, friends and relatives of the accused applauded as the officers were led into the heavily-guarded court at a top security prison in Silivri, west of Istanbul. The hearing was closed to television cameras.
Relatives whistled in support when Balanli dismissed the trial as an “ugly slanderous campaign” against the Turkish military, prompting the judge to briefly adjourn the hearing, state-run Anatolian news agency reported.
“This is not a circus,” judge Omer Diken was quoted as telling the courtroom when onlookers whistled and clapped.
At one stage judge Diken ordered Balanli to speak “without raising your voice” to which the four-star general replied that he wanted the whole courtroom to hear what he was saying and protested at being interrupted.
“I am the one leading this trial, I will interrupt. Speak without raising your voice,” Diken was reported as saying to Balanli.
After the indictment was read out, the defendants demanded the judges presiding over the trial be changed, a topic which would be discussed at a new hearing date on Oct. 3, Anatolian said.
If convicted, the officers face jail sentences of between 15 and 20 years.
The Sledgehammer case dates back to a 2003 military seminar and centers around alleged plans by the military to destabilize the government by bombing mosques and triggering conflict with Greece.
Officers say evidence against them has been fabricated and that allegations of a coup plot arose from a war game exercise.
Long-running strains between the secularist military and the ruling conservative AK Party, which has Islamist roots, boiled over last month when Chief of General Staff Isik Kosaner resigned, along with the army, navy and air force commanders, in protest at the arrest of fellow officers.
The military shake-up was viewed as strengthening civilian control of NATO’s second biggest army. General Necdet Ozel, previously head of the paramilitary gendarmerie, was named as new armed forces chief at the Supreme Military Council meeting.
Turkey’s military carried out three coups between 1960 and 1980 and pressured an Islamist-led government from power in 1997, but its powers have been curbed in the process of EU-backed reforms designed to strengthen democracy.
Hundreds of other defendants, including military officers, lawyers, academics and journalists, face separate charges over allegations an ultra-nationalist network dubbed “Ergenekon” had attempted to overthrow the state.
