Ekrem Balkı, a former air force colonel who was under house arrest pending retrial over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, has died of a heart attack in Ankara, the TR724 news website reported.
Balkı, 59, was dismissed from the military in November 2017 in sweeping purges that followed a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey and was arrested and put in pretrial detention in May 2018, where he spent seven months.
The Ankara 18th High Criminal Court sentenced him to more than seven years in prison on charges of membership in a terrorist organization based on allegations including sending his children to a Gülen-affiliated school and a witness statement claiming he listened to a religious radio station. He was subsequently released pending appeal.
Balkı was detained again in October 2023 while awaiting a ruling from Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals, which overturned his conviction in January 2025. Despite the ruling, he remained in prison until October 2025, when he was released under judicial supervision and put under house arrest pending retrial.
According to family members, Balkı was repeatedly asked whether he wanted to benefit from Article 221 of the Turkish Penal Code, also known as the “effective remorse” clause, which offers sentence reductions in exchange for confessions and cooperation. He refused, insisting he would be acquitted.
He is survived by three children.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and later designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after the failed coup in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency that remained in effect until July 19, 2018. During this period, the government carried out a purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight by issuing a number of government decrees. 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.
