Turkish police clash with protesters at coup trial

Turkish police fired water cannon, teargas and pepper spray on Monday as they clashed with thousands of activists protesting outside a court in support of 275 people accused of plotting to topple the government, forcing a delay in the hearing. Defendants in the trial of the "Ergenekon" group, an underground network of secular arch-nationalists, were expected to begin their final defences on Monday after prosecutors last month demanded life sentences for 64 of them. Retired armed forces commander Ilker Basbug is among the defendants, including other military officers, politicians and academics, accused of attempting to stage a coup against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party government. Demonstrators outside the court at the high-security Silivri jail near Istanbul waved Turkish flags and banners of left-wing and nationalist groups as they fought to break through police barriers.
 
"We are Mustafa Kemal's (Ataturk) soldiers," the crowd chanted, referring to modern Turkey's founder, who is a figurehead for Turkish secularists.
 
Police fired teargas, water cannon and pepper spray in an attempt to disperse the crowd. Strong winds blew the pepper spray into the court, affecting defendants, journalists and dozens of opposition lawmakers who were among the spectators.
 
Chief judge Hasan Huseyin Ozese declined to launch the hearing given the chaotic scenes. It was not clear when the session would begin.
 
The process of defendants making their final defences is expected to take at least another two months, before a verdict is announced.
 
Prosecutors have demanded aggravated life imprisonment for a number of suspects including Başbuğ, Balbay and Haberal as part of their final opinion in the Ergenekon case on March 18.
 
The main opposition Republican People’s Party CHP was represented at the hearing with 50 of its deputies, including the deputy leader of the party, Umut Oran, and deputy group chairman Muharrem İnce.
 
Ergenekon is allegedly behind much of the political violence, extra-judicial killings and bomb attacks which have troubled Turkey in recent decades - embodying anti-democratic forces which Erdogan says he has fought to stamp out.
 
Investigation of the alleged conspiracy, which surfaced in 2007 when police discovered a cache of weapons in Istanbul, was initially welcomed by a public eager to see an end to the "Deep State" - a shadowy network of militant secularists long believed to have been pulling the strings of power.
 
But dissenting voices have grown over the last four years, with the European Commission expressing concern about the handling of Ergenekon and other conspiracy trials.
 
Last September, a court in Silivri jailed more than 300 military officers in another trial for plotting to overthrow Erdogan's government.