ANKARA // Turkish former junta leader Kenan Evren, regarded by many as a saviour of the nation but by others as a man with blood on his hands, died on Saturday. He was 97.
The former president died at Ankara’s Gata military hospital, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported, hours after he was placed on a respirator due to multiple organ failure.
Evren was sentenced to life in prison last June along with former air force commander Tahsin Sahinkaya, now 90, for their roles in the country’s bloodiest coup.
As head of the armed forces, Evren seized power in a pre-dawn assault on September 12, 1980, and went on to rule for the next nine years.
Fifty people were sent to the gallows in the aftermath of the coup, while dozens died from torture while in jail and more than 600,000 people of all political stripes were arrested.
“This move was made in line with the wishes of the people and the army to eradicate the blow inflicted on democracy,” Evren was quoted as saying in the days after the coup.
Evren, along with his second-in-command Sahinkaya, escaped prosecution until Ankara stripped them of their immunity in 2010 in legislation adopted 30 years after the coup.
They were the only two surviving members of the junta at the time of the trial. Evren never appeared in the dock because of his failing health but testified from his hospital bed via video link.
“If it was today, we would do the same thing and stage that coup all over again,” he said in a November 2012 hearing. “I have no remorse.”
The coup was launched as Turkey was rocked by fierce clashes between left-wing and right-wing activists and the action was at the time hailed by many as a “necessary evil” that saved the country from sinking into a state of anarchy.
After the coup, Evren came under fire from rights groups over callous comments defending the hanging of a 17-year-old convicted of killing a soldier in the unrest.
“If you do not hang those who deserve it, they will spread like a virus,” Evren said.
Evren became the seventh president of the republic after the junta introduced a new constitution that allowed him to formalise his position as head of state.
He was born in 1917 into a family of Balkan migrants in Manisa, a city near the Aegean coast.
He graduated from an Instanbul military high school in 1938.
Evren quickly climbed the military ranks and served in South Korea after the Korean War, becoming a general in 1964.
He was appointed armed forces chief of staff in 1978, and a few years later issued his first warning to the government of then prime minister Suleyman Demirel, who had been spared the gallows in Turkey’s first coup in 1960.
Evren opted out of public life after his retirement in 1989 when he moved to the Mediterranean coastal town of Marmaris.
However, public and political sentiment turned against him after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power in 2002, clipping the wings of the once-powerful generals.
Evren’s wife, Sekine Evren, died in 1982. He is survived by three daughters.
* Agence France-Presse, Associated Press