Invoking a remorse law, former army captain Burkay Karatepe, who went on the run when the 2016 coup attempt failed, explained in detail how he was associated with the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), his visits to the United States to meet its leader, and the orders he received from fellow military infiltrators of the group to capture President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the coup attempt.
Karatepe was apprehended last week in western Turkish province of Afyonkarahisar, almost exactly 10 years after he disappeared. He was brought to a courthouse in Muğla, the province where he and fellow putschist officers tried to kill Erdoğan during the coup attempt and was questioned.
He agreed to collaborate with authorities, hoping that his sentence would be reduced, and confessed how he was introduced to FETÖ in 1998, when he was a middle school student. His life story was typical of a FETÖ infiltrator, as he noted that he was supplied with questions and answers to a military school exam by FETÖ members beforehand. He confessed that FETÖ assigned him a civilian “handler” while he was at military school and he guided him and fellow military infiltrators throughout the school. He said he was later assigned another handler.
Karatepe said he was attending an official course to be a “staff officer” before the 2016 coup attempt and he joined fellow FETÖ infiltrators and civilian handlers for a meeting about one week before the attempt. He stated that they met at the residence of a handler in Istanbul. “The handler told us that there would be ‘an important activity’ soon, and Şükrü Seymen, a major, would command them for this ‘activity.’ “He ordered us to follow Seymen’s orders,” he said. Karatepe also claimed that he came across fellow students at staff officer course during the meeting and was not aware that they were also members of FETÖ beforehand. Karatepe told interrogators that he and other officers were later summoned by Col. Ahmet Zeki Gerehan (a fugitive FETÖ member now) at the military academy and Gerehan instructed him and others to “follow the orders” at the extraordinary meeting on July 15 afternoon. He said they were then ordered to leave for an air base in Izmir and boarded a military helicopter. He said Şükrü Seymen was there too, along with general Gökhan Şahin Sönmezateş, one of the planners of the assassination plot targeting Erdoğan. “Seymen asked us if any of us not from ‘hizmet’ and I found out everyone else there were also loyal to ‘hizmet’” using a Turkish name FETÖ calls itself. “Sönmezateş and Seymen told us that they were trying to locate the president and we were supposed to take him,” he said.
He also recounted how he met FETÖ leader Fetullah Gülen in his retreat in Pennsylvania, United States, while he was attending a military course in Columbus, Ohio, in 2012.
Karatepe also explained how he remained in hiding for a decade and received aid from next of kin and acquaintances. Members of the team of assassins were captured within a few days after they fled, in the countryside near Marmaris, while Karatepe disappeared and was believed to have fled abroad. Karatepe said he first traveled to Izmir when the coup attempt failed. He said he first took shelter in the residence of a couple originally from his hometown in Afyonkarahisar. He said he later contacted his father before leaving for his hometown, where he hid in a house owned by his grandfather. He said his next of kin gathered in that house and everyone was aware how he was involved in the coup attempt. Karatepe then met his father and he helped him hide in the countryside near his hometown.
He said he later moved to central Afyon and used a fake ID under the name of “Salih” and lied low there, working odd jobs, including at construction sites and as a junk collector.
