Turkey's Court of Cassation in Ankara upheld 37 life sentences issued for a squad of soldiers accused of the attempted assassination of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the eve of the failed July 15 coup attempt in 2016.
The 37 defendants, all military personnel, were found guilty in October 2017 of attempting to assassinate Erdogan on the night of an attempted coup on July 15, 2016, as well as the murder of two policemen. They were accused of conducting a helicopter raid on a hotel in Marmaris, a resort town on the Aegean Sea, where Erdogan was on holiday.
However, Erdogan had escaped the premise unharmed.
Turkey's authorities linked the squad and the attempted coup to the Gulen Movement, headed by Fethullah Gülen. The group, however, vehemently denied having any connection to the assassination attempt or the coup.
On par with Erdogan’s policy for vilifying the Gulen movement, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Friday ordered the detention of 108 lawyers along with 18 others as part of a post-coup crackdown targeting Gulenists.
The addresses of 12 of the suspects could not be determined or records showed they had left the country, the statement issued by the prosecutor’s office said, adding that operations spread over 37 provinces to detain the remaining 114 people were continuing.
In a separate operation on Friday, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said it had ordered the detention of 18 suspects accused of links to the Gulen movement who were working as engineers for the defense industry company Havelsan.
Turkish lawyer Selçuk Kozagacli, former president of the now-closed Progressive Lawyers’ Association (ÇHD) who has been behind bars since November 2017 on terrorism charges was also handed down a sentence of 11 years, three months.
Istanbul’s High Criminal Court rendered the sentence for conviction of membership in a terrorist organization. Six other defendants received sentences of varying length.
Kozagacli angered the government by representing two academics who were fired from their jobs by government decrees as well as victims of a mining disaster in Soma and other persecuted people.
