Landmark Trial of 1980 Turkish Coup Leaders Opens in Ankara

Turkey's landmark trial of the two surviving leaders of the 1980 military coup began on Wednesday at an Ankara court.

Turkey's 94-year-old former general Kenan Evren and his co-conspirator Tahsin Sahinkaya, 86, are charged with ousting the civilian government on September 12, 1980. The pair are absent from the trial due to their poor health.

Hundreds of demonstrators, mostly made up of left-wing political parties, staged a protest in front of the courthouse, chanting slogans demanding justice for the victims of the coup and brandishing banners.

Several parliamentarians also joined the protest.

The military, which has long seen itself as the guarantor of secularism in Turkey, staged three coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980 as well as pressuring an Islamist-rooted government to relinquish power in 1997.

But the 1980 coup was the bloodiest of them all. Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested, about 250,000 were charged, 50 were executed, dozens more were tortured to death and tens of thousands were exiled.

The trial of Evren and Sahinkaya is seen as another episode in the current Islamist-rooted government's campaign against the once untouchable top brass.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government is a party to the prosecution as one of the alleged victims of the 1980 coup.

The pair face life imprisonment if convicted of committing crimes against the state -- the heaviest punishment available since Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2002.

Evren served as Turkey's seventh president from 1982 to 1989.