Former noncommissioned officer Timur Özgen, who was dismissed from the Turkish military by a government decree and later imprisoned following a 2016 coup attempt, has died of pancreatic on Sunday cancer after his belated release from prison, the TR724 news website reported.
Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a human rights defender and opposition lawmaker from the People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) who had publicized Özgen’s worsening condition in 2023, said the 52-year-old former officer was denied timely release despite being bedridden and dependent on fellow prisoners for basic care. “He was left to die in prison,” he wrote on X, recalling repeated but unanswered appeals for parole.
Özgen was detained on July 16, 2016, one day after the failed coup, and later sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment by the Ankara 4th High Criminal Court. He spent six-and-a-half years in the Sincan and Bolu T-Type prisons after being discharged from the army under a state of emergency decree.
While in prison Özgen was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, in April 2023. He underwent major surgery at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University Hospital, where he was reportedly kept under guard and at times handcuffed to his bed after the operation.
Despite two medical reports stating he was unfit to remain in prison, authorities delayed his release until August 10, 2023, nearly four months after his diagnosis. He was freed only after the second report from Turkey’s Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) confirmed his condition had become terminal.
The ATK frequently comes under criticism over its questionable reports that find ailing inmates fit to remain in prison. Rights advocates slam the agency over its lack of independence from political influence and its role in compounding the persecution of political prisoners.
Every year, rights groups report the death of dozens of sick prisoners, either while behind bars or shortly after their belated release, which often comes at the end-stage of their illnesses.
Özgen’s death underscores the lingering toll of Turkey’s post-coup purges.
Following the failed coup in 2016, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as more than 24,000 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
Former public servants were not only fired from their jobs but also banned from working again in the public sector and getting a passport to seek employment abroad. The government also made it difficult for them to work formally in the private sector. Notes were put on the social security database about dismissed public servants to deter potential employers.
In recent years, some of the people fired have been reinstated, yet this process has often come too late. Numerous cases have surfaced where dismissed individuals, facing severe emotional and financial strain, have died by suicide or otherwise passed away before their reinstatement.
