A Turkish court has ordered the arrest of a senior military officer on the suspicion of involvement in an alleged army plan to discredit the ruling AK party.

A criminal court in Istanbul arrested naval Col. Dursun Cicek Wednesday evening on the suspicion of membership in a terrorist group, following interrogations conducted by the prosecutors tasked with the Ergenekon case.

The senior military officer had earlier been arrested following the publication of a document in the liberal Taraf newspaper last month which argued that Colonel Cicek had drafted a plan meant to discredit Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), as well as the Fethullah Gulen movement, through media campaigns and provocation of public anguish. He was released shortly as his lawyer appealed his arrest.

Cicek's arrest comes amid tensions between the AKP government and the secularist military. The detention of the senior military officer is poised to cause a wide controversy and stir heated debates in Turkey, a candidate for the European Union membership.

The Ergenekon case has been filed against more than 200 people on charges that they sought to establish an unlawful organization to provoke a series of events that would pave the way for a military coup against the current administration in Turkey.

The clandestine Ergenekon organization has been indicted of at least two violent attacks -- the bombing of a secularist newspaper in 2006 and an attack on a court in the same year that led to the killing of a judge.

MP/MB