Enver Aydın, a former road maintenance worker who was dismissed from public service and convicted on terrorism-related charges over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, died of cancer in Van on Wednesday at the age of 49, the TR724 news website reported.
He had been battling thyroid cancer for three years and was undergoing treatment at the time of his death. He is survived by a wife and three children.
A video showing his final moments in the hospital in which he is seen praying circulated widely on social media after his death.
Aydın was fired from his job at the Van Regional Directorate of Highways by an emergency decree in sweeping purges that followed a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, on the grounds of depositing money in the now-shuttered Bank Asya.
Although the prosecutor’s requested his acquittal, a Turkish court later sentenced Aydın to more than two years in prison for aiding a terrorist organization.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, 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 coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the attempted coup 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.
