The death of Bülent Adıgüzel, a 48-year-old former academic dismissed from his job at a public university and put in pretrial detention for six months in the aftermath of a coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, reveals the lingering human cost of the government’s post-coup purge.
Adıgüzel was hospitalized last week in the Black Sea town of Tirebolu after his flu-like symptoms worsened. He died of multiple organ failure caused by a fast-spreading infection, according to the Bold Medya news website.
Bülent Adıgüzel and his wife, Ayşe Adıgüzel, were both dismissed from Karadeniz Technical University under emergency decrees issued after the coup attempt. They were convicted on charges of membership in a terrorist organization over their alleged links to the Gülen movement, citing their use of the ByLock messaging app. Each received a prison sentence of more than six years.
Although the European Court of Human Rights has ruled in several cases that using the ByLock messaging app does not constitute a criminal offense, the Turkish government has treated the app — once publicly available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play — as evidence to identify and arrest alleged followers of the Gülen movement on terrorism charges following the 2016 coup attempt.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the faith-based Gülen movement, inspired by the late cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began targeting its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following the failed coup in 2016, which he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
While Ayşe Adıgüzel served 44 months in prison and lost her license to practice law, her husband tried to keep the family afloat by working in survival jobs. He also took care of their two children during her incarceration, all while facing the looming threat of his own sentence being upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeals, which, as of the time of his death, had not been decided.
His death was met with sorrow and tributes from colleagues and friends. At a memorial held outside the Tirebolu Courthouse, Giresun Bar Association President Soner Karademir praised his character, saying, “Even in his darkest days, he was a beacon of hope to those around him. He never lost his grace or his will to fight.”
Adıgüzel was laid to rest in Kurucakale Cemetery in Tirebolu. He is survived by his wife and two children.
Following the abortive putsch, 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; they were also banned from working again in the public sector and getting a passport. 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.
