Dozens charged in phony terrorist coup plot in Turkey

A Turkish prosecutor has filed charges against 86 people involved in an alleged "deep state" coup plot in a move that provides the ruling party a legal front in its power struggle with the secular establishment. A retired general plus a raft of ex-military officers and nationalist politicians were accused of conspiring to depose the AK Party, which has Islamic roots, and restore a rigorously secularist regime in the majority Muslim country. Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engi said the conspirators had plotted a destabilization campaign, assisted by allies in the security forces and civil services. By masquerading as Islamic extremists carrying out attacks on government buildings and leading newspapers, the plotters hoped to created a pretext for the military to depose the government. "The indictment covers crimes such as forming an armed terror group and attempting to overthrow the government by force," he said. Investigations launched after the discovery of a cache of grenades in an Istanbul flat last year has so far resulted in the detention of 46 of the alleged conspirators. Turkey faced months of constitutional uncertainty even before the announcement of charges against the group. The country's constitutional court is preparing to determine if the government's efforts to relax a ban on the Islamic headscarf on government premises violates the principles of a secular state laid down by Turkey's modern founder, Kemal Ataturk. Turkey's prime minister Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly accused hard-line nationalists of plotting his demise from the shadows but there has never been enough evidence to table charges. The powerful armed forces have regularly unseated governments on the grounds of incompetence or religious extremism. But the generals have so far been deterred from leading a putsch by strong public support for Erdogan's six-year-old government.