New heavy sentences in Turkey for the failed coup attempt in 2016. An Ankara court handed down 121 life sentences in one of the 2016 failed coup trials. Military men accused of armed actions of the night of 15 and on July 16 at the General Command of the Turkish Gendarmerie. One of the episodes considered most significant among the mutinies of part of the security forces, which according to Ankara obeyed the subversive network of the magnate and imam Fethullah Gulen, director of the operation from his residence in Pennsylvania, in the United States, where he has resided in self-exile for over twenty years.
The judges issued 86 sentences to "aggravated" life imprisonment and another 35 to ordinary life imprisonment. The defendants were found guilty of the crime of "attempted constitutional violation". Among the condemned there is also the former colonel Erkan Oktem, sentenced to 9 "aggravated" life sentences and a further 20 years for first degree murder and attempted murder. Thus closes another chapter of a story that seems endless, for the duration of the trials but also for the continuous arrests, which after almost four years continue almost daily. According to the Minister of Justice Abdulhamit Gul, up to now there were still 15 trials in progress out of the total 289 opened in the context of the most massive judicial initiative in contemporary Turkey. The main proceedings, which concern the actions at the air base of Raider in Ankara, considered the headquarters of the coup leaders, it began in 2017 and is expected to end soon. In recent weeks, police operations against alleged subversive groups have meanwhile undergone a new acceleration, with hundreds of arrests of agents and soldiers. An iron fist that according to the opposition is also used to strike political dissidents not linked to the coup leaders. Since the putsch failed, tens of thousands have ended up in prison, while about 150 have been purged by public administrations, including military, judges, policemen and teachers. (HANDLE)