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Turkish protestors holding national flags chant in front of police barricade on August 5, 2013 while police and gendarmerie block the way to a courthouse in Silivri, near Istanbul/AFP

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Turkey’s ex-army chief sentenced to life at coup trial

The verdicts come after Turkey was rocked in June by mass protests that presented Erdogan’s government with its biggest public challenge since it came to power in 2002.

Police had earlier chased away a few dozen demonstrators waving Turkish flags and chanting “How happy is the one who calls himself a Turk,” referring to a saying by modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

“I came here so that those people who have been behind bars for five years with no real proof against them are not left alone,” said Dogan Muldur, a retired Turkish Airlines pilot.

“There are a lot of fictitious crimes in the case but no proof,” he said.

“I came to fight injustice, to defend our rights. I am an ordinary Turkish citizen, I have no ties with the suspects,” added housewife Ebru Kurt.

“I am not saying that all the people in jail are innocent, but I am convinced that most of them have spent years in jail even though they have done nothing wrong.”

The 2,455 page indictment accuses members of Ergenekon an alleged shadowy network of ultranationalists trying to seize control in Turkey of a string of attacks and political violence over several decades to stir up unrest.

Turkey’s secular opposition has denounced the lengthy trial, which began in 2008, as a witch hunt aimed at silencing government critics.

Pro government circles have praised the Ergenekon trial as a step towards democracy in Turkey, where the army violently overthrew three governments in 1960, 1971 and 1980.

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