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Dozens of former Turkish soldiers were brought to trial on Monday on charges of trying to kill President Recep Tayyip Erdoganduring a coup attempt in July, the latest in a series of trials in the plot.
Prosecutors in Mugla, a city in the southwest, sought life sentences for 47 former soldiers who officials say tried to assassinate Mr. Erdogan on July 15 during his vacation on the Mediterranean coast.
Hundreds of rebel soldiers accused of involvement in the coup attempt have been tried in several cases across Turkey in recent months, but this is the first trial to focus on the attempted assassination of Mr. Erdogan.
The charges were heard in the city’s chamber of commerce because the local courthouse was too small for so many detainees.
Mr. Erdogan and his family escaped their hotel before the soldiers arrived that night, but two members of their security detail were killed in a subsequent shootout. More than 240 Turks died in separate episodes elsewhere in the country before loyalist troops restored order in the early hours of July 16.
Turkey has blamed followers of Fethullah Gulen, an American-based cleric and former ally of Mr. Erdogan, for the coup attempt. Mr. Gulen has denied any role.
As a plaintiff in the case, Mr. Erdogan had his own lawyer, Huseyin Aydın, who said there was little doubt about the soldiers’ intentions. “They arrived at the scene with the intention of killing the president,” Mr. Aydin said, citing the evidence and the behavior of the defendants during the operation. “For the first time in our history, it is discussed that a commander in chief, a president, was subject to an assassination attempt by Turkish Army members,” Mr. Aydin told reporters outside the chamber of commerce, the semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported.
In court on Monday, one of the defendants, Gokhan Sonmezates, acknowledged involvement in the operation but denied that he or the others were trying to kill the president or that they had connections to Mr. Gulen, Reuters reported. Mr. Sonmezates, a former brigadier general, reportedly said that he and his colleagues had intended to bring Mr. Erdogan to a rebel-held air base.
The coup attempt prompted Mr. Erdogan to begin a vast purge of state institutions that has extended far beyond the military. As many as 130,000 Turks have been fired from government posts since July, and 45,000 people have been arrested.
The government accuses those purged of having connections to Mr. Gulen or to terrorist groups. But critics argue that the crackdown has also given the state cover to single out members of the political opposition and reinforce Mr. Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic rule.
The leaders of the country’s main pro-Kurdish party have been jailed, as well as at least 81 journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. No other country jailed as many journalists in the past year, the group said.
Mr. Erdogan is asking Turks to grant him further powers in an April referendum. In recent speeches, he has argued that those who vote against him will have by default taken the side of the plotters.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
