ISTANBUL -- Turkish prosecutors, conducting an extensive investigation into longstanding allegations that the military secretly plotted to overthrow civilian rule in 2003, ordered a police raid Monday on a news Web site that is critical of the pro-Islamic government and ordered four of the site's top officials detained.
Police officers from Istanbul's organized crime and cybercrime units searched the five properties of the Web site, OdaTV, for more than 11 hours. But there was no word on what they were seeking or what they may have found. Nor was it clear what type of formal charges might be filed against OdaTV's owner, Soner Yalcin, an investigative journalist, or his colleagues.
Mr. Yalcin and Baris Terkoglu, the OdaTV news editor, and the writers Ayhan Bozkurt and Bar{inodot}s Pehlivan were detained later in the day, waiting to appear in court before the arrests could be considered official.
The Republican People's Party, the main opposition, said the detentions of the journalists were connected to their reporting on government misdoings rather than any involvement in the military coup allegations. The party largely considers the accusations a pretext for what it has described as a witch hunt against government opponents.
"What is the fault of that Web site?" said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the party chairman. "It's reporting on facts and truths, which the government is uncomfortable about."
Prosecutors have arrested dozens of military and former military personnel over the past few years as part of their investigation into a suspected plot, called Sledgehammer, which they said was aimed at overthrowing the Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan after his Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002. Leaders of Turkey's armed forces have denied that any such plan existed.
On Monday, an Istanbul court ordered the arrest of three retired generals, as well as Lt. Gen. Nejat Bek, the highest-ranking officer still in uniform to be arrested as part of the investigation, which began in 2007.
In a hearing on Friday, a state court in a high-security prison in the town of Silivri, near Istanbul, ordered the arrest of more than 160 military personnel in connection with the suspected plot.
Cemil Cicek, a government spokesman, said in a news conference on Monday that the government had no influence on the arrests or the investigation.
First Published: February 15, 2011, 5:00 a.m.
