Retired general Cetin Dogan turned himself in after a court ruled Friday that 163 of 196 acting and retired soldiers, on trial since December over an alleged plan to overthrow the Islamist-rooted government, should be kept in jail while the trial proceeds, Anatolia said.

The ruling sparked fresh criticism over the handling of the case, already marred by serious doubts about the authenticity of key documents incriminating the suspects.

It was followed by a surprise meeting between army chief Isik Kosaner and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Saturday.

Speaking shortly before he was sent to prison, Dogan raised the prospect of defence lawyers quitting the case in protest.

"The only thing we can do now is to submit applications to the court (to annul the arrest ruling)... Then, depending on the reply, we will ask our lawyers to walk out... and we will not defend ourselves at the (next) hearing on March 14," he said in televised remarks.

The 133 suspects who attended Friday's hearing -- among them Turkey's former air force and naval chiefs -- were immediately sent to jail.

The remainder have been turning themselves in, with lawyers simultaneously appealing the ruling.

The defendants face 15 to 20 years in jail if found guilty.

The plot -- codenamed "Operation Sledgehammer" -- was allegedly drawn up and discussed at the First Army base in Istanbul shortly after the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in November 2002 amid fears it would undermine Turkey's secular system.

In a related development Monday, police detained a well-known opposition journalist as part of a separate probe into a purported secularist network, Ergenekon, which allegedly plotted to foment political unrest and pave the way for a military coup, Anatolia said.

Soner Yalcin was detained after police searched his home and the office of his popular website, odatv.com, in Istanbul, it said.

A prosecutor has issued a detention order for three other journalists working for the website, it said.

Under Turkish law, the final decision over detainees is up to judges, who can either release them or send them to prison, pressing charges.

Dozens of people, among them soldiers, academics and journalists, are already on trial under several indictements the Ergenekon probe has produced since 2007.

The coup investigations were initially hailed as a success in a country where the military has unseated four governments since 1960.

But critics say they have degenerated into a government-backed campaign to bully the opposition and discredit the staunchly-secularist army, which has often clashed with the AKP.

The "Operation Sledgehammer" documents raised doubts of fabrication after it emerged they mentioned entities that either did not exist or had different names in 2003.

They were first published last year by the Taraf daily, which said an anonymous source had brought them to the newspaper in a suitcase.

Dogan says papers from a contingency plan based on a scenario of tensions with Greece and domestic unrest had been doctored to look like a coup plan.

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