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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and UEFA President Michel Platini discussed a match-fixing investigation which has overshadowed Turkish football in talks ahead of UEFA meetings in Turkey this week, newspaper reports said on Tuesday.

Erdogan, himself a former footballer, met Platini at the ruling AK Party’s headquarters in Ankara on Monday ahead of the UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday and Wednesday.

ISTANBUL, March 20 (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan and UEFA President Michel Platini discussed a
match-fixing investigation which has overshadowed Turkish soccer
in talks ahead of UEFA meetings in Turkey this week, newspaper
reports said on Tuesday.

Erdogan, himself a former footballer, met Platini at the
ruling AK Party’s headquarters in Ankara on Monday ahead of the
UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday and
Wednesday.

SILIVRI, Turkey (Reuters) – Two former heads of Turkey’s armed forces were called as witnesses on Friday in the trial over an alleged conspiracy to overthrow the government in 2003, starkly demonstrating the battered image of a once all-powerful top brass.

While the generals’ influence has waned dramatically over several years, the summoning of two ex-chiefs of staff from NATO’s second largest army to give evidence on the same day was unprecedented.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – State prosecutors have abandoned an attempt to question Turkey’s spy chiefs over past secret contacts with Kurdish militants after government moves to curb their investigation of the intelligence agency (MIT), state media said on Monday.

In his first comments on the affair, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who had pursued concession to end a 28-year-old conflict, rejected talk in media and political circles of a power struggle drawing in police, judiciary and the MIT.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A prosecutor’s investigation of Turkey’s top spy has exposed a deep rift between police and the intelligence agency which could scupper efforts to end a Kurdish separatist insurgency and damage the government’s democratization efforts.

The crisis, driven by police concern about the activities of National Intelligence Agency (MIT) spies uncovered by police operations against Kurdish militants, has also fed speculation, denied by both sides, of a row between the government and an influential Islamic movement.