Ankara - Around 40 people were taken into custody Wednesday in the latest wave of arrests connected to a shadowy nationalist gang that prosecutors claim was conspiring to overthrow Turkey's moderate Islamic government, Turkish media reported.

Those taken into custody on Wednesday included retired generals, former police officers, academics and journalists who are suspected of being connected to the so-called Ergenekon gang which allegedly had links to various murders in the past.

The group also allegedly had plans to carry out assassinations of political and social leaders, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, former Chief of General Staff Yasar Buyukanit and Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk.

It was through these assassinations and other types of destabilizing attacks that the group hoped to create the chaos necessary to provoke the military into launching a coup in 2009 in order to restore order.

Ergenekon is the name that prosecutors allege the group called themselves and refers to a mythical Turkic homeland in central Asia.

Early on Wednesday morning police officers raided houses in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Sivas taking away boxes of documents and computer hard drives. Lawyers for a number of those taken into custody immediately said their clients had no connection to Ergenekon.

Those arrested on Wednesday included retired General Tuncer Kilinc, former secretary of the National Security Council, Kemal Guruz, former head of the Higher Education Board and Ibrahim Sahin, former head of the police anti-terrorist Special Operations Unit.

The trial of the first 86 people arrested in connection to the case started in Istanbul last year.

Prosecutors at the trial have said that the staunchly secularist and nationalist group was angry at what they believe is the government's watering down of secular laws and its giving up national sovereignty in Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

Opposition figures have described the trial as a witch hunt carried out by the government as revenge for a failed attempt to have the ruling Justice and Development Party
(AKP) closed down or as a way to take attention away from its alleged attempts to undermine the secular state and implement Sharia (Islamic) law. (dpa)