Trial against ex Turkish General starts.

Retired Turkish General Kenan Evren, symbol of an era when the military dominated Turkish politics, went on trial on Wednesday for leading a 1980 coup that shaped the country for three decades until reforms cut back the power of the "Pashas", Reuters reported.

Fifty people were executed and half a million arrested, hundreds died in jail, and many more disappeared in three years of military ruleafter the coup, Turkey's third in 20 years.

More than 30 years after the September 12, 1980 military takeover, an Ankara court began hearing the case against 94-year-old Evren, who went on to serve for seven years as president, as well as the other surviving coup architect, former air force commander Tahsin Sahinkaya, 87.

"The trial will become a very important reason for a change in mindset for our future," President Abdullah Gul told reporters. "We are living through a period where our political history will serve as a warning."

The case is a landmark in the steady erosion of military power begun by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoganas part of democratic reforms aimed at bringing Turkey closer to European Union membership. Until the last decade, the army regularly intervened in politics in moves it said were meant to safeguard the secular order set up by soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk from 1923.
Hundreds of mainly leftist protesters gathered outside the court, waving flags and shouting slogans demanding justice and the prosecution of more than just the coup ring-leaders.

The names of hundreds of those killed during military rule were read out through loudspeakers on a nearby bus.