Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that freezing the assets of defendants accused of involvement in a 2016 coup attempt does not violate property rights, the T24 news website reported.
The court reviewed applications from 14 defendants whose assets were frozen under precautionary measures as part of a lawsuit filed by the Ministry of National Defense in 2017, seeking compensation for damages to Akıncı Air Base, which was at the epicenter of the coup attempt.
The defendants argued that the measure violated their property rights under Article 35 of the constitution. But the court ruled that the asset freezes did not impose a disproportionate burden on the defendants.
The ministry filed the compensation case on December 7, 2017, at Ankara’s 26th Civil Court of First Instance against 500 defendants. Under the Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law, the asset freezes were imposed, while the ministry was exempted from posting collateral.
Turkey experienced a controversial military coup attempt on the night of July 15, 2016, which, according to many, was a false flag operation aimed at entrenching the authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by rooting out dissidents and eliminating powerful actors such as the military in his desire for absolute power. The abortive putsch killed 251 people and wounded more than a thousand others.
A total of 289 coup-related trials have been concluded, with 4,891 people convicted. Of those, 1,634 received aggravated life sentences, 1,366 were sentenced to life in prison and 1,891 received sentences of varying lengths. Courts acquitted 2,870 defendants, while finding that 964 others had committed acts constituting a crime but required no sentencing. The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld 224 of the concluded trials.
