A Turkish court has ordered the release of a colonel, who had earlier been detained on charges of membership in the Ergenekon terror organization.

Colonel Dursun Cicek was set free late Wednesday from a military detention center in Turkey's biggest city, Istanbul, following an appeal by his lawyer.

The senior military officer was arrested late Tuesday 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 Gulen movement through media campaigns as well as provocation of public anguish.

Cicek's arrest came amid tension between the AK Party government and the secularist military. Several retired and serving officers have been arrested in Turkey over the Ergenekon case.

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 in which a judge was killed.

MP/HGH/AA