Azernews.Az

(Newswires, August 9) – A court in Turkey has issued arrest warrants against 14 military officers for campaigning against the government. The move shows the civilian government gaining the upper hand over the army after decades of power play.

A court in Istanbul ordered the arrest on Monday of seven military generals and seven lower-ranking officers who stand accused of campaigning against the Turkish government.

Among the highest ranking of the suspects were Nusret Tasdeler, the newly-appointed head of the army's educational command, and Ismail Hakki Pekin, the intelligence chief of the general staff, according to Turkish news channel NTV news.

The 14 officers are accused of using the Internet to try to undermine the Islamic-oriented government.

The order comes 10 days after Turkey's four top generals stood down in a dispute over the detention of other top officers for allegedly plotting a military coup.

'Defenders of secularism'
Those resignations, of the chief of general staff and three colleagues, were hailed as a victory for civilian rule in a country with a history of military coups.

Four Turkish governments have been deposed in the last 51 years by the military, widely seen as the prime defender of Turkey's secularist constitution. Among them was a government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's mentor, Necmettin Erbakan, in 1997.

About a tenth of the army's generals are already in police custody related to a coup plot in 2003 dubbed "Operation Sledgehammer."