ISTANBUL, Feb 22, (RTRS): Turkish police detained former heads of the air force and navy on Monday among 40 people held in an investigation into an alleged plot to undermine the Islamist-rooted government and trigger a military coup.
The swoop, one of the largest in European Union candidate Turkey against the secularist armed forces, further raised tensions between the ruling AK Party and the military, which has been implicated in several alleged plots in the past year.
Former Air Force Commander Ibrahim Firtina, former Naval Commander Ozden Ornek and ex-Deputy Chief of the General Staff General Ergin Saygun, were among those held, broadcasters said.
Current armed forces chief General Ilker Basbug postponed a trip to Egypt as a result, state-run Anatolian news agency said. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on an official visit to Spain that more than 40 people had been detained in the raids.

“I don’t know what the result of this is, but after the security forces have finished this process the judiciary will make its assessment,” he told a news conference.
The suspects held in Ankara were flown to Istanbul for questioning over the “Sledgehammer” plot after police raids in the cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.
Neither police or the military had any immediate comment.
Financial markets, which earlier shrugged off the detentions, weakened slightly in afternoon trade. Shares fell 0.3 percent, bond yields rose from morning levels and the lira currency weakened more than half a percent to 1.5270 lira to the dollar.
Wolfango Piccoli from the Eurasia political risk consultancy said the detentions looked set to trigger another escalation in the tense relations between the military and the AK Party.
“The government is now embroiled in an open and bitter power struggle with the judiciary and the military, raising the risk of a head-on confrontation that would badly damage political stability,” Piccoli said.

Such detentions would have been unthinkable in the past for the military, which has ousted four governments in the last 50 years. However, its powers have waned in recent years due to democratic reforms aimed at securing EU membership.
Other senior military officers have been indicted on charges of planning a separate plot to overthrow the AK Party, which has its roots in political Islam.
According to previous media reports on the Sledgehammer plan, denied by the military, the army had plotted to provoke Greek fighter jets into shooting down a Turkish military jet.
Turkey and neighbouring Greece have longstanding territorial disputes and came close to war in 1996 over an islet in the Aegean, though relations have improved in the last decade.
The alleged plot also involved planting bombs in mosques and museums in Istanbul to stir chaos. Last month Taraf newspaper said it had obtained 5,000 pages of documents and tapes on the plan which was aimed at justifying an army takeover in 2003.

The military has said documents quoted by the paper were part of a military training seminar but were never meant to be carried out and were not part of a conspiracy.
The latest detentions follow a clash between Erdogan’s government and the secularist judiciary over the arrest of a prosecutor who had investigated Islamic groups.
That prosecutor has been accused of links to an alleged far-right militant network, “Ergenekon”. More than 200 people, including military officers, lawyers and politicians, have been arrested in the case since it came to light 2-1/2 years ago.
Critics of the government say the Ergenekon investigation has also been used to hound political opponents.