AAnkara  - Turkey's chief prosecutor on Tuesday argued before the Constitutional Court that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) should be closed down on the grounds that it was actively undermining the secular nature of the state, the Anadolu news agency reported.

"It is found that it is clear there is a very close danger that (the AKP) wants to impose sharia (Islamic law)," Anadolu quoted Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya as saying to judges hearing the case.

In the court session that was held behind closed doors, Yalcinkaya repeated claims made in an indictment presented to the court earlier that attempts by the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan to allow women to wear Islamic-style headscarves at universities were proof that the party's aim was to impose Islamic-style law.

Yalcinkaya is seeking to not just have the AKP closed down but also to ban 71 members of the party, including Erdogan, from joining another political party.

Yalcinkaya's address to the court came on the same day that police took into custody two former generals, the head of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce and more than a dozen others suspected members of a shadowy group of right-wing nationalists who are accused of plotting to bring down the government.

One of those arrested was Mustafa Balbay, Ankara bureau chief of fiercely secular Cumhuriyet newspaper.

Balbay's colleague Sukran Soner told the NTV television station that the timing of the arrests was designed to take attention away from the closure case.

The court has a history of closing down political parties; the AKP itself was born after the closure of the Virtue Party in 2001.

Whilst AKP officials have refused to be drawn, most political analysts believe that the AKP is already preparing to launch a new party and that Erdogan would continue to pull the strings behind the scenes.

Any such new party would most likely easily win a fresh general election that could be called if the AKP is closed down.

At elections in July last year the AKP received 47 per cent of the vote, giving it a massive majority in parliament.

According to a poll published in the Milliyet newspaper on Monday, 53.3 per cent of those surveyed oppose the court banning the AKP with 34.3 per cent in favour. (dpa)