Ankara - Almost 30 people were taken into custody Thursday in the latest wave of arrests connected to a shadowy nationalist gang that prosecutors claim was conspiring to overthrow Turkey's moderate Islamic government, the Anadolu news agency reported.

Those taken into custody in operations in 13 provinces across Turkey included a number of serving police officers and the head of the Turk Metalworkers Union.

The suspects were being questioned over the so-called Ergenekon gang which allegedly had links to various murders in the past and had plans to carry out assassinations of political and social leaders, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, former Chief of General Staff Yasar Buyukanit and Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk.

It was through these assassinations and other types of destabilizing attacks that the group hoped to create the chaos necessary to allow the military to launch a coup in
2009 on the basis that it was bringing order back to society.

Ergenekon is the name that prosecutors allege the group called themselves and refers to a mythical Turkic homeland in Central Asia.

Turkish media noted that the police officers arrested on Thursday all had connections with Ibrahim Sahin, the former head of the police Special Operations Unit.

Sahin was arrested earlier this month in connection to the Ergenekon case. Police seized a small arsenal of weapons after digging up Sahin's garden in Ankara.

The trial of the first 86 people arrested in connection to the case started in Istanbul last year.

Prosecutors at the trial have said that the staunchly secularist and nationalist group was angry at what they believe is the government's watering down of secular laws and its giving up national sovereignty in Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

Opposition figures have described the trial as a witch hunt carried out by the government as revenge for a failed attempt to have the ruling Justice and Development Party
(AKP) closed down or as a way to take attention away from its alleged attempts to undermine the secular state and implement Sharia (Islamic) law. (dpa)