Two senior former generals were formally arrested under a broad police investigation into coup allegations, the state Anatolian news agency said on Sunday.

Former head of the paramilitary gendarmerie Sener Eruygur and former first army commander Hursit Tolon were sent to prison in Istanbul. Turkish media said they were suspected of being members of a shadowy, ultra-nationalist, hardline secularist group known as Ergenekon, which was already under investigation.

Twenty-one people were detained last week in a police investigation into allegations of a coup.

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