Alleged military coup plotters appear in court in Turkey

A four-star General and dozens of other Turkish officers appeared in court on Monday, charged with plotting to overthrow Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government in a coup.

Reuters

General Bilgin Balanli and 27 others are accused of planning to stage a series of attacks to cause panic across the country and create conditions which would allow them to launch a coup to unseat the government, which was elected in 2002.

They face between 15 and 20 years in jail if they are convicted.

In the courtroom, Balanli, who was formerly head of the country's military training academies, dismissed the charges as a "cowardly plot" which he said was intended to discredit Turkey's military.

NTV news channel said the presiding judge had to suspend the court session briefly because of loud applause for Balanli from the public gallery.

The trial was adjourned to 3 October.

The alleged plot leader, retired General Cetin Dogan has said that documents from a seminar on a contingency plan based on a scenario of tensions between Turkey and Greece, coupled with domestic unrest, had been tampered with, to make them look like plans for a coup.