The detainees -- members and supporters of group known as the Revolutionary Headquarters -- were arrested earlier this week in five provinces, including Turkey's biggest city Istanbul and the capital Ankara, the Anatolia news agency said, quoting a police statement.

Documents seized with the suspects showed that they planned to carry out "sensational attacks" such as hijacking planes and assassinating a former political party head and businessmen, the police statement said.

They also planned to torch the warehouses and delivery trucks of a national media organisation, set fire to luxury cars and yachts in Istanbul and the Aegean city of Izmir.

The aim of the attacks was to sabotage a government plan to introduce democratic reforms to improve the rights of the country's sizeable Kurdish community and secure an and to a 25-year bloody insurgency, the statement added.

The Revolutionary Command, whose aim is to install a socialist regime in Turkey through armed struggle and a workers' uprising, is believed to have links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party which has been fighting for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

The Revolutionary Headquarters first hit the news in August last year when it claimed a mortar attack in Istanbul that injured three workers outside a municipal building. The group said its intended target was a nearby military barracks.

In December 2008, the group said it was behind a bomb attack on the Istanbul offices of Turkey's ruling party that left one person dead and nine others injured.

In April, a member of the Revolutionary Headquarters, a police officer and a civilian were killed in a six-hour shootout in Istanbul that began police launched a raid on the militant's flat.