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More than four years after the attempted coup against the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a court in Ankara sentenced more than 300 people to life imprisonment.
According to the state news agency Anadolu, 337 defendants were found guilty of violation of the constitution, “attempted murder of the president” and manslaughter, according to court documents.
Another 60 defendants were sentenced to prison terms of between six and 17 years. 75 people were acquitted. Several hundred people were charged at the trial.
According to Anadolu, some civilians and military men received particularly high sentences. They are said to have organized and partly started the coup at the Mürted (formerly Akinci) army airfield near Ankara.
79 times lifetime – per person
For example, the pilot Hasan Husnu Balikci, accused of bombing the parliament in Ankara, is sentenced to 79 times life imprisonment. According to the Reuters news agency, there is no possibility of dismissal.
Four men the court had planned to assassinate the president were also sentenced to 79 times life in prison. According to the AFP news agency, the extreme sentence has replaced the death penalty, which was abolished in Turkey in 2004.
On the night of July 15, 2016, parts of the army had staged a coup against the Erdogan government. In Istanbul and the capital, Ankara, there were clashes between coup leaders and security forces loyal to the state. The coup plotters used tanks and fighter jets and fired, among other things, at civilians who opposed them, following a call from Erdogan.
The Turkish government blames the Gülen movement
The parliament building in Ankara was also shot at. The Mürted air base, near the capital, was an important base for the subversives on the night of the coup. In all, more than 250 people died and 2,000 were injured in the failed coup.
Turkey blames preacher Fethullah Gülen, who lives in the United States, for the coup attempt. Gülen rejects it. According to Anadolu, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said that to date, 292,000 people have been arrested in operations against the Gülen movement. 96,000 have been arrested. The search for those involved has continued unabated since 2016.
