A Turkish court sentenced 337 people, including military officers and jet fighter pilots, to life sentences on Thursday over the 2016 failed coup attempt in one of the most important mass trials relating to the conspiracy.
According to the indictment, the orders to bomb government buildings including the parliament and to assassinate President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were given from Akinci Air Base.
Turkey’s current defense minister, then-Chief of Staff Hulusi Akar, was held hostage at the base during the coup attempt.
The prosecutors charged the defendants with attempts against the state and the constitutional order, attempt to assassinate the president, leading a terrorist organization, and murder, among other charges.
Air force pilots and army commanders were among the nearly 500 defendants accused of trying to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Sixty other defendants were also given sentences for various other offenses, while 75 were acquitted.
Mr. Gulen, who was in the United States at the time of the coup, and another civilian, Adil Oksuz, who was detained outside the Akinci air base on the morning after the coup but later released, were also indicted in the case. The court ruled for Gulen, an alleged top operative in his movement, and four other defendants still wanted by the Turkish authorities to be tried separately over the charges.
Four ringleaders, dubbed “civilian imams” over ties to Gulen’s network, were given 79 aggravated life sentences for charges of attempting to assassinate the president, murder, and seeking to overthrow the constitutional order, Anadolu said.
Of the most prominent military commanders sentenced was Brig. Gen. Bekir Ercan Van, commander of the Incirlik air base where U.S. forces are also stationed and from where they fly missions in Iraq and Syria.
More than 250 people were killed and thousands injured in the attempt as rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, helicopters and tanks in a bid to take control of key state institutions. While some 30 coup-plotters were also killed.
The trial, which opened on Aug. 1, 2017, was part of a post-coup crackdown that has imprisoned around 77,000 people and seen another 130,000 fired from their government jobs. The detained included political opponents of the government, Kurdish activists and human rights defenders, among others.
The courts have now concluded almost all of the 289 trials related to the coup attempt and have convicted more than 4,000 people.
Legal professionals have criticized the use of mass trials against thousands accused of even vague involvement in the coup, including convictions handed down to army cadets and others who were ordered out on to the streets that night with little knowledge of what was going on. But supporters of the process point out that it is the first time in a history of military coups that Turkey has conducted extended legal proceedings into what happened.
