ISTANBUL, Turkey, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- A Turkish court ordered the arrest of a colonel as part of longstanding allegations the military secretly plotted to overthrow civilian rule, a prosecutor said.
The active-duty colonel, whose name was not released by the state-run Anatolia news agency, was jailed Monday by the 10th Istanbul High Criminal Court on a charge of attempting a secularist military coup, said Istanbul Public Prosecutor Huseyin Ayar, who'd argued before the court for the colonel's arrest and imprisonment.
The imprisonment brings the number of jailed suspects in the suspected 2003 coup plot to 55, the English-language Turkish daily Today's Zaman reported.
The suspected plot, known as Sledgehammer, allegedly involved plans to bomb two Istanbul mosques and to shoot down a Turkish plane over the Aegean Sea, then blame neighbor Greece for the attack. The plan allegedly sought to stir up chaos and justify a military coup.
Prosecutors have arrested dozens of military and former military officers in the past few years as part of their investigation into the suspected plot, which prosecutors assert sought to overthrow the Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan after his Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002.
Leaders of Turkey's armed forces deny any such plan existed.
