Turkish police deny reports of plot to kill PM

ANKARA, June 2 (Reuters) Turkish police today said they had arrested nine people, including two soldiers, in a raid this week on a house in the capital Ankara, but denied media reports the men had been plotting to kill the prime minister.

Police spokesman Ismail Caliskan told a weekly news conference that guns had been found at the house in the suburb of Eryaman.

Turkish media say police also seized explosives, a time bomb, dynamite sticks and hand grenades at the house.

Some Turkish newspapers have reported that police found sketches showing the route Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan uses to go to his home in Ankara, triggering suspicions that the group planned to assassinate him and possibly other top officials.

''Reports of an assassination plot are certainly wrong. Our probe is continuing. We have not even taken testimonies yet,'' Caliskan said.

Turkish newspapers have said the arrested men were members of an ultra-nationalist gang called ''Atabeys' Guerrilla Army''.

They said the group included a an airforce captain, a non-commissioned officer and a retired army officer.

Caliskan declined to comment on any possible political aims the group may have had, but he said the police were coordinating their probe with Turkey's military General Staff.

The arrests come amid increased political tensions in Turkey following the slaying of a top secularist judge in a crowded Ankara court by a suspected Islamist gunman earlier this month.

Erdogan, who has Islamist roots, has hinted at the possible involvement in that shooting of hardline nationalist elements in Turkey's security forces who oppose his government's efforts to ease curbs on religious symbols such as the Muslim headscarf.

Caliskan said police had unearthed no connection between the men arrested this week and the attack on the court.

''There is no concrete link with the attack on the Council of State (Turkey's top administrative court),'' he said.

The slaying of the judge triggered the biggest secularist rallies seen in Turkey for more than a decade. The head of the General Staff, General Hilmi Ozkok, annoyed Erdogan by urging secularists to keep up their protests over the incident.

Secularists, who dominate the powerful armed forces and judiciary, fear Erdogan is trying to undermine Turkey's strict separation of politics and religion. Erdogan, a pious Muslim whose wife wears the headscarf, denies any such plan.

Reuters DKS DS1616