Hundreds protest as mass Turkey coup trial nears close

Hundreds of protesters clashed with police on Monday outside a prison complex where the mass trial of almost 300 people accused of scheming to topple the elected Turkish government drew to a close.

Police used water cannon and pepper spray to disperse the crowd as demonstrators, including many relatives of the accused and army supporters, tried to breach the security barricade outside the compound in Silivri, a small town on the outskirts of Istanbul.

The 275 defendants of the four-year-long trial stand accused of having ties to an ultranationalist "terrorist network" known as Ergenekon and of trying to instigate an uprising against the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, in power since 2002.

A verdict in the trial involving top military figures, army officers, lawyers, academics and journalists, is expected within weeks as the defence wrapped up its final arguments on Monday.

Pro-government groups have praised the trial as a step toward democracy that will end a tradition of political interference in Turkey, where the once omniponent army incapacitated four governments in 50 years.

Both attacks were initially blamed on Islamists, but the state prosecutor believes they were instigated by the then army command with an eventual goal of toppling the AKP government and restructuring Turkey on a nationalist framework.

In a separate case, more than 300 active and retired army officers, including three former generals, received prison sentences of up to 20 years in September after the same court ruled that a military exercise dubbed "Sledgehammer" in 2003 was an undercover coup plot.