WORLD NEWS

ANKARA: Two retired Turkish generals were charged on Friday over an alleged 2003 plot to overthrow the government, raising the stakes in a potential stand-off between the ruling party and armed forces.

Cetin Dogan, the former head of Turkey's First Army, and Engin Alan, a former special forces commander, are the most senior of 33 suspects so far charged over the alleged plot.

The military has denied any coup plot, but the case has increased tensions between the government and the armed forces.

Dogan had occupied a position traditionally seen as a step towards becoming head of the Turkish Armed Forces. Alan led a successful operation to bring captured Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan back to Turkey, according to Turkish media.

Turkish markets, weakened by five days of tension since the first wave of detentions on Monday, had begun to recover on Friday on hopes that the likelihood of a confrontation between the government, in power since 2002, and the secularist military was receding with the release of three other retired generals.

However, reports police had detained 17 more serving military officers and one retired officer in an operation stretching across Turkey, sparked renewed selling, and fresh concern over a possible standoff.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused the media of fanning alarm among investors, who were unnerved by the detention on Monday of some 50 officers suspected of participating in the alleged plot.

"I am talking to the media bosses," Erdogan told a gathering of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in a televised speech. "No one has the right to turn a country's economy on its head. We won't allow it, because it's clear the state to which the economy has come."

Erdogan's party, which denies accusations it has a secret Islamist agenda, is banking on an economic recovery after last year's deep recession to win over voters ahead of an election due early next year