More than forty people have been arrested in Turkey in connection with an alleged plot to trigger a military takeover of the Islamic-rooted government. The detained include three of Turkey’s highest-ranking former generals. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said fourteen other former high-ranking military officers were also detained. The arrests have been described as one of the toughest actions against the powerful Turkish military in the history of modern Turkey. The generals are accused of plotting several plots on civilian targets, including a mosque in central Istanbul, and to provoke a crisis with neighboring Greece, with a goal of paving the way for a coup. The Turkish military has ousted four governments over the past half century.