ISTANBUL, May 17 (Reuters) – Turkey said on Thursday it had scrambled military jets to intercept an Israeli plane that violated northern Cypriot airspace this week, and demanded an explanation for the incursion.

An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment on the accusation. But the incident marked a fresh source of tension between the former allies.

Relations between Turkey and Israel fell apart after Israeli commandos raided the Mavi Marmara aid vessel in May 2010 to enforce a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and killed nine Turks in clashes with pro-Palestinian activists.

Monday’s reported air incursion coincided with tensions on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus over oil and gas exploration plans there, which could hinder U.N.-backed efforts to reunite wthe island.

“A plane belonging to Israel, the model of which could not be identified, violated KKTC (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) airspace (above its territorial waters) five times,” the Turkish military said in a statement posted on its website.

“In response to this situation, our 2XF-16 plane based at Incirlik was scrambled and our planes carried out patrol flights in KKTC airspace, preventing the said plane from continuing to violate KKTC airspace,” said the statement.

Turkey’s foreign ministry said it had contacted Israel’s mission in Ankara, seeking an explanation for the incursion.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A journalist’s fable portraying the Turkish military as a spoilt, overfed dog has provoked a rare show of unity by top generals and the Prime Minister seen by many as their nemesis.

“This is an individual whose pen always drips with filth,” Erdogan said of columnist Bekir Coskun, whose account of a privileged military that puts comfort and security before freedom drew on a fable from ancient Greek writer Aesop.

Erdogan has radically cut back the power of a military that toppled four governments in the last five decades. Hundreds of serving and retired officers face accusations of coup plots in trials unthinkable only a few years ago for a long-privileged army that kept politicians on a short leash.

Writing in the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper at the end of April, Coskun retold the ancient Greek story with a twist by naming the tame dog “Pasha”, the honorary Ottoman title given to generals and to secular state founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

“I think the Pashas should now seek legal redress over this matter,” said Erdogan, who himself once sued a cartoonist who had depicted him as a cat.

Some 100 journalists are currently in jail in Turkey, attracting international criticism of the European Union candidate’s record on freedom of expression. The government says few of them are in jail due to what they have written.

ARMY STATEMENT

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was drowning in waves of arrests of military officers accused of coup conspiracies and called for the investigations, which his government has backed, to be wrapped up more quickly.

Around 50 retired and serving officers, some very senior, have been held over the last month in raids linked to the 1997 toppling of Turkey’s first Islamist-led government. The arrests run parallel to trials of hundreds of officers, businessmen and academics accused of involvement in other alleged coup plots.

“These (waves of police raids) disturb the social peace. We too are seriously uneasy about this,” Erdogan told reporters on Tuesday night on his return from a visit to Italy.

“The necessary steps should be taken and finished before moving on. But when these waves come one after the other, the country is drowned in those waves. I don’t think this business should be dragged out this much,” he added.

Erdogan, viewed in the army and old secularist establishment with suspicion because of his Islamist past, has promoted the trials as part of the process of ending the political power of the generals, who toppled four governments in the second half of the 20th century. He has also set about reforming a conservative judiciary, in part hostile to him, since first elected in 2002.

Critics accuse him of persecuting the armed forces and ‘settling scores’, undermining the secular foundations of the country. Many suspects have been held for months or even years in pre-trial custody.

INTERNATIONAL OPINION

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Born of a 1960 coup, Turkey’s OYAK army pension fund has become a potent symbol of military economic power with interests from cement to car production. Now, as the generals’ political influence dwindles with arrests and coup trials, OYAK is attracting unwanted attention.

OYAK chairman Yildirim Turker, a retired lieutenant-general, languishes in jail awaiting trial on accusations dating back before his chairmanship to a 1997 ‘soft coup’ that forced an Islamist-led government from power. An OYAK security firm’s employees stand charged in connection with another coup plot and a parliamentary sub-commission has begun scrutinizing its activities after complaints from OYAK members.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has cut back the powers of a military that had toppled four governments in the last half century, has shown no overt interest in storming this symbolic bastion of NATO’s second biggest army. But the general pressure on the military, long seen as a bedrock of stability in Turkey, inevitably takes its toll on OYAK.

Some parliamentary deputies back revision of the 1961 law setting up OYAK, arguing the conglomerate has an unfair competitive advantage, enjoying exemptions in areas of taxation and auditing – a contention OYAK denies.

“For some time it has been evident that efforts are being conducted against OYAK to mislead the public…whether this is done deliberately or based on insufficient or incorrect information,” OYAK said on its website.

The group has power commensurate with the past might of the army that supports it. It controls a privately-owned pension fund with 260,000 members, and a business arm with 30,000 employees and interests in some 60 companies ranging from steel to cement and the automotive sector. Its sales total some $15 billion.

Security analyst Gareth Jenkins said a flurry of activity around OYAK reflected moves to further undermine the military’s power, pointing to the prosecution of hundreds of military officers, including top serving and retired commanders, in the alleged “Ergenekon” and “Sledgehammer” coup plots.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Former Turkish armed forces commander General Ilker Basbug failed to appear among defendants in a mass trial over suspected coup conspiracies, witnesses said, in an apparent protest at the merging of his case with other coup investigations.

The court held the first hearing on Monday combining a series of trials into suspected members of an alleged arch-nationalist network called Ergenekon.

Police say the Ergenekon network, uncovered in 2007, was trying to destabilize, discredit and ultimately overthrow Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party government.

A total of 16 indictments have been prepared against the defendants and they have now all been combined in a single case being heard at a court in Silivri, west of Istanbul, where many suspects have been held in an adjoining high security jail.

The sprawling investigation has landed 256 defendants in the dock, overwhelming the courtroom’s capacity to accommodate them all at the same time.

Some 61 defendants have been subject to lengthy pre-trial custody, including General Basbug, whose arrest in January shocked Turks, who had otherwise become used to the sight of pashas, as commanders from the Ottoman era were known, being paraded before the courts over the past few years.

Basbug, who was chief of staff from 2008 to 2010, described the has accusation he led a terrorist organization as “tragi-comic”.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The head of Turkey’s military-run business conglomerate was jailed on Thursday pending trial over the 1997 toppling of the country’s first Islamist led government, raising a symbolic challenge to the military’s economic power.

The Ankara court order to jail retired lieutenant-general Yildirim Turker along with eight other serving and retired officers, brought the number held pending trial to 35 since prosecutors launched an investigation earlier this month.

Turker, according to media reports, had been head of personnel in the General Staff and belonged to a group within the top brass, known as the Western Study Group, suspected of being behind moves to make prime minister Necmettin Erbakan quit 15 years ago.

The episode is often referred to as Turkey’s “post-modern coup” as the generals used pressure behind the scenes rather than overt military force employed in three earlier coups.

According to the pro-government Sabah newspaper, Turker is likely to be questioned over alleged psychological operations to undermine Erbakan, using a television series to sow mistrust of a government that the military viewed as a threat to the republic’s secular order.

Turkey’s current prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, had belonged to Erbakan’s party. Since coming to power with a new party a decade ago Erdogan has made it his mission to curb the political power of the military, the second largest in NATO.

While his government passed reforms to cut the military’s influence, state prosecutors launched a series of judicial investigations into army takeovers dating as far back as 1980 and more recent alleged conspiracies against Erdogan’s government.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Police detained the chairman of Turkey’s army pension fund, a powerful military-run industrial conglomerate, on Wednesday in an investigation of a military intervention that drove the country’s first Islamist-led government from power in 1997.

A police sweep, which also brought the arrest of a senior retired general, brought to around 50 the number detained in the latest of a series of judicial probes calling generals to account for a history of military takeovers as well as alleged coup attempts.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, which itself has Islamist roots, has severely curbed the political influence of NATO’s second biggest army since it first came to power a decade ago.

State and private media said police raided addresses in the cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, as well as Kars on the eastern border, targeting serving and retired officers. A police spokesman said he did not have information on the raids.

The Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement they had issued arrest warrants for seven serving officers and six retired officers for seeking to overthrow the government and search warrants for 12 addresses.

Among the first to be detained was retired general Fevzi Turkeri, former head of the gendarmerie paramilitary force, broadcaster NTV said. Police searched his home before detaining him.

Media reports said police subsequently detained Yildirim Turker, the chairman of the army pension fund Oyak, an industrial group with interests ranging from steel to cement and automotive sectors. Turker is a retired lieutenant general.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Leftist student Erdal Eren was just 17 when Turkey’s military hanged him after seizing power in a 1980 coup.

His cousin Gokhan is now among thousands calling the now silver-haired, 94-year-old coup leader General Kenan Evren to account in a trial this week which many Turks hope will help heal wounds from a history of military takeovers.

The days of military intervention are long gone in Turkey. Reforms which Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has pushed through during his decade in power, as part of a bid for EU membership, have sharply reined in the power of NATO’s second biggest army.

But Evren’s trial adds a poignant twist to the sprawling prosecution of hundreds of people being tried for alleged coup plots against Erdogan’s government and will shed fresh light on a time of brutal repression 30 years ago.

“We hanged Erdal…do you think you’re going to get out of here?” Gokhan quoted one jailer as saying at the time. In the indictment, he describes being tortured for 80 days at a security complex in Istanbul where he was held after the coup.

Months earlier at 3:59 am on September 12, 1980, while most Turks slept, the national anthem blared out on state radio, followed by a presenter reading Evren’s bombshell statement.

“Glorious Turkish nation, the country which the great Ataturk entrusted to us is facing treacherous attacks … to its existence, regime and independence,” the presenter began.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Raising a clenched fist to supporters and storming at one point from the courtroom, former military chief Ilker Basbug has cut a defiant figure defending the army’s prestige at his trial for terrorism. But the extraordinary scenes have stirred mixed emotions among Turks and raised questions about the way a sprawling coup plot investigation is being handled.

“The Turkish army has never been defeated,” one fellow officer told General Basbug in court at the start of his trial this week in the Silivri high-security prison where the former commander has been jailed since January.

“Of course! All this will pass,” Basbug replied, having denounced his trial as an assault on the entire military leadership and a “black stain” on the country’s history.

The reality is that NATO’s second biggest army has already been defeated as a dominant political force in Turkey. The sight of a former Chief of General Staff in the dock on terrorism charges would only a few years ago have been unthinkable.

For the “Pashas”, there is little prospect of a return to the days when the army staged coups, some bloody, some an act of behind the scenes pressure, to unseat governments in the name of stability and defence of Turkish secular democracy.

Basbug’s personal battle to prove his innocence got off to a explosive start this week. Besides his brief exit from the court room, he refused to recognise the authority of the court and, talking to journalists expressed horror at the terrorism charge.

Besides those who demonstrated support alongside the barbed wire-topped fence of the prison, there was some sympathy on the streets of the country’s biggest city, Istanbul.

ISTANBUL, March 27 (Reuters) – Turkey’s central bank held all of its key interest rates steady on Tuesday and pointed to reductions in the volume of cheap cash it supplies to banks, also warning it can tighten policy further if need be to tame inflation.

The bank, seeking to support the lira currency while also trying to stimulate a flagging economy in a complicated policy mix, left its main one-week repo rate at a record low of 5.75 percent.

The central bank also announced a doubling to 20 percent in the amount of lira reserves which banks can hold in gold while no longer allowing any foreign exchange reserves to be held in gold – moves which should give markets a lira liquidity boost.

The decisions on rates and reserve requirements were broadly in line with a Reuters poll of analysts ahead of the meeting.

But a small minority had speculated the bank could cut the lending rate and the bank’s announcement of a low figure for upcoming repo auctions of short-term loans for banks helped to strengthen the lira.

“The central bank still maintained its hawkish bias in the near term, in particular by reducing the size in the weekly auction,” Benoit Anne, head of emerging strategy at Societe Generale.

“It was a message that for the time being the policy bias is towards a more hawkish direction.”