An Ankara court on Wednesday sentenced 12 defendants to aggravated life imprisonment and handed down life imprisonment for another 80 in a trial on the 2016 coup attempt.
The 19th High Criminal Court handed down the verdict in the final hearing of the trial inside a massive courthouse-prison complex in the capital's Sincan district that houses those involved in the attempt by the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ).
A total of 132 defendants were accused of involvement in a takeover attempt of the military's Land Forces Command. Among those on trial since 2017 were former generals and other high-ranking officers. Twelve were sentenced to life without parole, including Brig. Gen. Adem Boduroğlu, former head of the Land Forces Command Control department, and Serkan Vurdem, a colonel who was in charge of a personnel department at the command. Along with the coup charges, the accused were convicted of violating freedom and attempt to manslaughter.
Erhan Caha, a former brigadier general who was already sentenced to 141 terms of aggravated life imprisonment in another coup-related trial, was also sentenced in Wednesday’s hearing, this time for an attempt to murder and depriving an individual of his or her freedom. Caha was a member of the putschists' so-called Peace At Home Council and was accused of planning and executing the takeover of Land Forces Command headquarters during the coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
The general had instructed fellow generals to start the Ankara leg of the coup bid and Serkan Vurdem to abduct Fahri Kasırga, then secretary-general of the Turkish Presidency, according to investigators and based on testimonies in other trials. His name was on a written order to military units across Turkey that called for following "martial law directives." He commanded troops taking over the Operations Center of the Land Forces Command, declaring a "takeover" to the staff inside. He then ordered the kidnapping of a general, who was the head of a personnel department at the Land Forces Command.
When the coup attempt was quelled, thanks to strong public resistance, Caha ditched his military uniform and fled the Land Forces Command. He was arrested soon after. He was among a few defendants in the hundreds of coup trials who admitted to his involvement in the attempt but claimed that he only joined it thinking it was "a martial law declaration held inside the chain of command."
Tens of thousands of people were arrested or detained following the coup attempt, and FETÖ, which used its military infiltrators to stage the attempt, faced heightened scrutiny. So far, only nine trials remain inconclusive while verdicts have been handed down in nearly 300 trials. The remaining trials are expected to conclude next year.
Last month, 310 military officers and civilians involved in the attempt were sentenced to life in one of the biggest trials in Ankara.
