1980 coup case should continue despite Şahinkaya’s death, says MP

ANKARA

CİHAN photo

The prosecution of the Sept. 12, 1980 military coup should continue despite the recent death of the last suspect, Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Şenal Sarıhan has said at an emotional press conference in Ankara, during which she burst into tears. 

“We do not give our blessings to the deceased,” Sarıhan said on July 10, one day after Tahsin Şahinkaya, the last remaining suspect of the coup prosecution, passed away at the age of 90. 

With the death of Şahinkaya, a former Air Forces Commander and member of military echelon that staged the harshest coup in Turkey’s history, the legal process in the case has now closed.

At a joint press conference with two other CHP lawmakers, İbrahim Özdiş and Nefi Kara, Sarıhan described the 1980 military intervention as a “crime against humanity” that ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Turkey.   

“I was also a victim of the 1980 coup. I was detained and imprisoned over an article I had published in a magazine,” she said, also recalling that she was the lawyer of left-leaning writer İlhan Erdost who was killed in prison after the coup. 

Sarıhan stated that she was now planning to make an individual application to the Constitutional Court for the continuation of the legal process into the intervention.