Mustafa Yeneroğlu, a lawyer and independent member of the Turkish Parliament, has revealed the plight of three female former air force cadets who have been serving life sentences for allegedly participating in a 2016 coup attempt.
Yeneroğlu on Monday visited former military cadets Nimet Ecem Gönüllü, Nagihan Yavuz and Şüheda Sena Öğütalan at Istanbul’s Bakırköy Women’s Prison, where they have been incarcerated for the past nine years. In a social media post the same day, he said the young women are serving life sentences despite having no involvement in the crime they were accused of.
“These young women were not involved in the coup attempt, yet they have been incarcerated and serving life sentences for nine years. I am trying to get to know them personally, and I have reviewed their case files. These young people have had their lives and dreams put on hold. No matter how hard they try to stay strong, there is a deep tragedy they and their families are living through. As a society, we must confront these injustices and, even if it’s very late, we must put an end to them,” he said.
In a previous letter published by the Euronews website, the girls said their “lives had been cast into darkness.”
“Over these years we have been worn down. Longing, loneliness, helplessness, being accused despite our innocence, being insulted, being excluded from society, and — if that weren’t enough — having to constantly explain ourselves have left deep wounds in us. Despite everything, we try to keep our hope alive and hope to be useful citizens to our country, loyal soldiers to our uniforms and worthy children to our families, even though it becomes harder as time goes on.”
The three female cadets were from Turkey’s Air Force Academy and were arrested following a coup attempt in July 2016. They were sentenced to life in prison on coup-related charges in May 2018.
Their sentences were upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeals in July 2022.
The cadets have denied taking part in the coup attempt and said they were only acting on orders from their superiors, who told them there was a terrorist attack on the night of the attempted coup on July 15, 2016.
Dozens of other military cadets were also sentenced to life on coup charges. Some of them were released in 2022 after their sentences were overturned.
Human rights advocates claim that the legal proceedings of former cadets did not abide by the fair trial principle.
A documentary telling the stories of military cadets in Turkey, hundreds of whom were unjustly convicted due to their alleged involvement in the failed coup in 2016, premiered on YouTube several days before the sixth anniversary of the coup attempt in 2022, drawing more than 1 million viewers.
Immediately after the abortive putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the faith-based Gülen movement. The movement, inspired by the views of the late Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, denies the accusations.
Following the coup attempt, 16,409 military cadets were expelled from their academies by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny, and 355 of them were given life sentences, with some of them overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeals, according to figures revealed at the end of the video. As of July 2022, 209 cadets were still behind bars.
