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Mehmet Ali Ozcan / Anadolu Agency via EPA
Former Turkish army chief Ismail Hakki Karadayi, center, is surrounded by police and journalists as they arrive at a court in Ankara on Jan. 3.
ISTANBUL -- Turkey's former armed forces chief was detained Thursday in an investigation into the military's role in the so-called "post-modern coup" of 1997, which pushed the country's first Islamist-led government out of power, local media reported.
On Thursday state prosecutors investigating the case ordered the arrest of Ismail Hakki Karadayi, chief of general staff from 1994 to 1998, Turkish television stations said -- the latest humiliation for the formerly all-powerful military.
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Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, who pioneered Islamist politics in Turkey, resigned in June 1997, months after the military-dominated National Security Council warned him over policies it perceived as undermining the secular constitution.
The episode was dubbed Turkey's "post-modern coup" as the generals used pressure behind the scenes to force Erbakan from power rather than the direct intervention employed in three outright coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), which was partly founded by members of Erbakan's Welfare Party after it was outlawed, has sharply curbed the influence of the military since coming to power in 2002.
It has launched investigations into coup plots by a military elite which long saw itself as guardian of the secular ideals of Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish secular republic.
Read more about Turkey on NBCNews.com
More than 300 military officers were sentenced to jail in September for plotting to overthrow Erdogan almost a decade ago, while nearly 300 other people -- including politicians, academics, journalists and retired army officers -- are on trial, accused of orchestrating political violence.
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Turkey has prospered and modernized since Kemal Ataturk. It would be a shame for the Turkish people and an additional headache for us if the influence of Ataturk's secular vision of government is further weakened. While military rule is anathema to some, many Turks welcomed the military intervention. Westernized Turks in the cities are very wary of the Islamist direction taken by the government of Tayyip Erdogan and they will not applaud this action.
Turkey under PM Erdogan's AKP party has been on the road to totalitarian Islamic government incrementally. The arrest of Turkey's former Chief of Staff of Armed Forces Ismail Hakki Karadayi in the ERBAKAN conspiracy plot in 1997 in tandem with the Sledgehammer Conspiracy amongst armed forces (former NATO Head included) is more than reminescent of Stalin's Great Purges. It is not only Turkey's Armed Forces that PM Erdogan is accusing of conspiracy and plots- it is also secular Academians, Jurists, newspapers,reporters- anyone can become an enemy of the State. Latest is PM Erdogan's wanting to get rid of Checks and Balances impeding him on the road to totalitarianism. Islam at schools mandatory- headscarves for women in vocational schools. Istanbul's Mayor said NO to PM Erdogan wanting to dispose of Ataturk's statue in Istanbul. Anyone reading Hurriyet Daily News can keep oneself informed- see Erdogan's pictures while addressing Syrian Refugees glad in Arab garb,that he kept changing. Turks do not deserve the fate under PM Erdogan's party (AKP).They deserve a secular Turkey living in today- not PM Erdogan's Turkey regressing backwards- with the Ottoman Empirette.