ANKARA: Police rounded up 26 people nationwide on Wednesday and investigated whether they were linked to an alleged plot to topple Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Earlier media reports said the arrests were part of a widening investigation into Ergenekon, a shadowy gang of secularist ultranationalists opposed to Prime Minister Tecep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

But a senior police official said investigators had yet to establish a definite link.

“Everything will become clear once the four-day questioning of the suspects is over,” Salih Tuzcu, the police chief of the central city of Konya where most of the suspects were detained, told Anatolia.

He described the arrests as an “operation against a terrorist organisation”, but gave no details.

Apart from Konya, police detained suspects in Istanbul, neighbouring Kocaeli, Mersin on the Mediterranean coast and Elazig in the east, Anatolia said.