Retired Turkish general to go on trial

The former Turkish general Kenan Evren, who served when the Turkish military dominated the country's politics, is to go on trial for his role in leading a coup in 1980. The military takeover shaped the country for three decades until reforms cut back the power of the "pashas". Fifty people were executed, 500,000 were arrested, hundreds died in jail and many more disappeared in the three years of military rule that followed the 12 September 1980 coup, which was Turkey's third in 20 years. An Ankara court is now set to begin hearing the case against 94-year-old Evren, who went on to serve as president, as well aagainst the former air force commander Tahsin Sahinkaya (87) who aided the coup. Evren is reportedly unlikely to appear in court due to his bad health. The prosecutor's office has said it could hear the testimonies of Evren and Sahinkaya via video link. Evren recently had intestinal surgery, and also has broken an arm, according to Turkish media reports. A recent constitutional amendment ended Evren's immunity from prosecution over the coup. Evren's trial - almost 30 years after the coup - will be watched closely by hundreds of military personnel, including top serving and retired commanders, and by civilians being tried now as members of the alleged Ergenekon and Sledgehammer coup conspiracies against the current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The generals, known widely by the Ottoman title of pasha, saw themselves as the guardians of a secular order set up in 1923 by the soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal Atatürk amid the ashes of the Ottoman empire. They mounted a coup in 1960, which saw the hanging of the prime minister and two other senior ministers, and then again in 1971 and again 1980 to oust governments they saw as a threat to that order. Each time, the coups restored a revised form of democracy; as recently as 1997, the army forced Turkey's first Islamist-led government to resign. For some, the military's constant interventions have stunted the development of a mature political class, while the 1980 coup bequeathed a constitution viewed by many as an additional brake on democratic development. However, some secularist conservatives in military and civilian circles see Erdogan's moves to cut back the power of the military, reform the judiciary and rewrite the constitution as a move to establish an Islamic order. Erdogan, first elected to power in 2002, denies such ambitions. Erdogan's government, the opposition and parliament have joined at least 350 individuals and groups applying to be co-plaintiffs in the trial as aggrieved parties, meaning their grievances will be taken into account during the prosecution and possible sentencing phase. Erdogan said the government had decided it should join the long list of those wronged. "The first and most important injured party of the coups in Turkey have been the government legitimately representing the nation," Erdogan said in his weekly speech to his parliamentary party. "We will follow the case closely." Evren says he does not regret the coup, arguing it restored order after years of chaos in which 5,000 people died in left-right street violence. "Should we feed them in prison for years instead of hanging them?" he asked in a speech in 1984, a year after the army handed back rule to a civilian government. After the revolution in Iran, the coup leaders were also worried by what they saw as the rising Islamist threat to the secular republic. Citing the ruling AK party's spokesman, Hüseyin Çelik, the Turkish newspaper Radikal on Tuesday said the authorities were removing the names of key figures in the 1980 and previous military coups from schools, streets, stadiums and military barracks "in a coup house-cleaning". "We need to erase the names of coup plotters from public institutions and from the names of places," Çelik said. "They have already been struck from people's hearts."