As Turkey still reels from last summer's bloody coup attempt, it marked Tuesday the 20th anniversary of another coup that drastically changed the lives of thousands. The first "bloodless" coup of Turkey in 1997 did not directly kill anyone but shattered the dreams of the country's headscarf-wearing women and men adhering to their religious beliefs. Two decades later, women forced to quit their jobs and schools remember what the secular elite – comprised of top military brass aided by a like-minded judiciary and the media - did to their lives by using a headscarf ban and blacklisting anyone they deemed too conservative.

The coup on Feb. 28, 1997 stands out among several other coups in the short history of the Turkish Republic in terms of how it unfolded. Nevertheless, it was as hurtful as the others for its impact on the public, especially the conservative segments of society. Unlike other coups – including the first one in 1960 – so-called "postmodern" coup did not involve a violent takeover of power and on Feb. 28, 1997, tanks were not rolling out on the streets like previous coups. It was the day when a military junta issued an ultimatum to the country's coalition government, which collapsed a few months after the ultimatum.

Both before and after the coup, thousands of people were blacklisted, dismissed from their public duties and forced to drop out of schools simply for their adherence to the Islamic faith. Women who wore headscarves had to quit their public sector jobs while men, from military officers to academics, were targeted by the secular elite in a barrage of investigations and trials, which were part of a witch-hunt against the faithful or anyone viewed as faithful.

The impact of the coup is still resonant in the country, which, mere months ago, managed to quell another putsch bid thanks to an unprecedented public resistance against the putschists. Its victims had only recently managed to resume their lives prior to the coup period and some still struggle for justice for the coup-related crimes. A series of events for remembering the coup victims were held in the country on Tuesday that was dramatically changed after the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came to power in 2003. The AK Party's founders, former members of the Welfare Party (RP) whose leader Necmettin Erbakan had to step down while he was coalition partner during the 1997 coup, have been among the victims of a string of conspiracies during the coup period. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who now serves as president after leading the AK Party in successive elections, was briefly jailed by a judiciary dominated by the secular elite in 1998 while headscarf-wearing lawmakers of the AK Party faced obstacles in their careers for their refusal to remove the headscarf.

Kübra Y. was a 23-year-old law student at Istanbul University during the coup process. Kübra, who asked for her surname not to be published, told Anadolu Agency (AA) how she was forced out of her education and saw her promising career put on hold until 2011, when the AK Party ended the ban on headscarves in universities.

"We are a lost generation with our hopes and dreams stolen," she said. "I had always wanted to study law as I believed I could help establish the justice that society needed. It was my biggest dream."

The block on her academic career was a serious blow for a young woman from Istanbul whose poor family had struggled to send her to university.

"Words cannot describe the happiness of a poor teenager who achieved getting into university," she said.

"And words cannot describe the injustice, humiliation and despair of a university student who was thrown out of classes because of her beliefs."

Tuba K. was another of the thousands of young women whose dreams of a career were interrupted by the coup.

Now aged 42 and teaching at a private school in the central province of Konya, she graduated from university eight years late because of her refusal to remove her headscarf.

"It was such a humiliating moment," she said of the time she was banned from final year classes at the geography teaching department of Selçuk University in Konya.

"We were asked to submit new photos showing us uncovered during the final year registration in 1998," she told AA. "Some friends found female photographers, while others photoshopped their pictures to make themselves look bareheaded."

"But the problems were just beginning. One day, a lecturer came in and asked all the covered students to leave the classroom. He, however, promised that he would not record us as absent. And he was the most tolerant one. All the other lecturers just took the minutes that would inform the administration that we were not obeying the rules."

Official warnings were followed by reprimands, which later turned into weekly and monthly suspensions from the university, Tuba said.

"You do not have another option - you will either take off your headscarves or we will interrupt your education," she quoted lecturers as telling covered students.

Those who refused to abandon their religion and remove their headscarves were forced to attend "persuasion rooms" as the authorities attempted to break their resistance.

"They were all afraid for their own careers," she said of the teachers who tried to enforce the ban.As in Istanbul and other cities, police were soon a regular sight on campus and officers were ordered to prevent covered students from entering university buildings.

"After a month-long suspension from school, I went to see what my friends like me were doing," Tuba said. "To my surprise, I saw that most of them were taking off their headscarves at the entrance to the campus and others were wearing wigs.

"Police were shouting to them to be quick and treating them in an inhuman way. What a horrible and shameful situation this was!"

Tuba dropped out of university until 2005, when Parliament passed a law allowing those who had been excluded from university to return to their studies - although she still had to remove her headscarf.

However, she remained unable to pursue a teaching career until 2013, when the ban on headscarves in public institutions was lifted.

Like many other women whose careers were put on hold, Tuba now wants some form of restitution for those charged with offenses such as terrorism or making religious propaganda during the post-1997 period.

Hatice Dudu Özkal, a headscarf-wearing lawmaker from the AK Party, had to quit her teaching job during the coup period. "They [the coup leaders] primarily targeted imam-hatips [schools with a theology-heavy curriculum] and people wearing the headscarf. A great number of people were oppressed and a generation lost their right to an education," she told AA. "It did not end there unfortunately. Just when we thought we won't see any new coups in the 2000s, we saw April 27," she said, referring to notorious ultimatum published on the army's website that warned the government in 2007 and interpreted as a new intervention by the all-too-powerful army into politics. "Thankfully, we overcame it but then, we saw more coups in 2013 and last year, this time by FETÖ [the Gülenist Terror Group]," she added.Ravza Kavakçı Kan is the sister of Merve Kavakçı, who became a symbol of the coup for a defamation campaign she faced when she attended the oath-taking ceremony after her election as a member of Parliament, wearing a headscarf. Kan, who serves as an Istanbul lawmaker from the AK Party, joined other lawmakers from her party at a press conference on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the coup. "Women wearing the headscarf and those supporting them were members of a passive resistance against the coup mindset and I hail these sisters and brothers who stood against illegal actions they faced during the coup. I hope we will never see another coup like that in the future and we will fight for the rights of all people so that they would not face discrimination for their faith, ethnicity and other differences," she said.Like Merve Kavakçı, the capital Ankara's Sincan suburb is one of the most associated names with the Feb. 28 coup. It was where tanks rolled in February 1997, days before the army's ultimatum.

Commanders have downplayed the parade of tanks from the suburb simply as a military exercise but it was apparently no coincidence that Sincan's mayor was targeted in a witch-hunt days before after his municipality sponsored an Islamic-themed play. Mayor Bekir Yıldız was later jailed for "inciting the public to hatred," a common charge where the courts of that period resorted to in order to jail anyone they deemed a threat to secular order.

A group of activists gathered on the Sincan street on Tuesday where tanks passed 20 years ago and left a black wreath to condemn the coup. "Sincan became synonymous with the tank incident and people were scared to tell they lived in Sincan for a long time," Fatih Omaç, one of the activists, said. The district's incumbent mayor Mustafa Tuna says locals in the suburb were "intimidated" during the coup period as the local population were "mostly conservative and nationalist people."