Former Turkish president on trial

Fifty people were executed, half a million arrested, hundreds died in jail, and many more disappeared in three years of military rule following the 12 September, 1980 coup, Turkey's third in 20 years.

More than 30 years later, an Ankara court will begin hearing the case against 94-year-old Evren, who went on to serve as president, as well as against the other surviving architect of that military takeover, former air force commander Tahsin Sahinkaya, 87.

The now frail Evren is unlikely to appear in court. The prosecutor's office has said it could hear the testimonies of Evren and Sahinkaya via video link. Evren recently underwent intestinal surgery and Turkish media reported on Tuesday that he had also broken an arm.

The generals, known widely by their Ottoman title of "Pasha", traditionally saw themselves as the guardians of a secular order set up by soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. They mounted a coup in 1960, which saw the hanging of the prime minister and two other senior ministers, and then again in 1971 and 1980 to oust governments they saw as a threat to that order.

Each time the coups restored a revised form of democracy, and as recently as 1997 the army forced Turkey's first Islamist-led government to resign.

For some, the military's constant interventions have stunted the development of a mature political class, while the 1980 coup bequeathed a constitution viewed by many as an additional brake on democratic development.

Some secularist conservatives in military and civilian circles also see Erdogan's moves to cut back the power of the military, reform the judiciary and rewrite the constitution as a move to establish an Islamic order. Erdogan, first elected to power in 2002, denies such ambitions.

It was a recent constitutional amendment that ended Evren's immunity from prosecution over the coup.