Staff Col. Osman Kılıç, a former personal aide to then-chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar, presented his defense in the main trial over events at Turkey’s military headquarters during the July 15, 2016 coup attempt.
The case, heard by the Ankara 17th High Criminal Court at the Sincan Prison Campus, involves 221 defendants, including people prosecutors accuse of being members of the “Peace at Home Council,” the name used in the case file for the alleged military group behind the attempted takeover.
After Kılıç completed his statement, his attorney, Hakan Tunçkol, addressed the court.
Tunçkol first said he was satisfied with the court’s handling of the proceedings so far, then described what he said was the mistreatment of his client after the coup attempt.
“You may execute him, but you cannot insult him, spit in his face or curse him,” Tunçkol said.
The lawyer said Kılıç had been subjected to degrading treatment by enlisted soldiers who were below him in rank.
According to courtroom accounts, journalists were able to record only one sentence from Tunçkol’s description of the abuse: that enlisted soldiers had urinated on Kılıç, their commanding officer.
The rest of the lawyer’s account was not reported in detail from the courtroom.
The allegation shifted attention from the charges in the indictment to the treatment of defendants after the coup attempt, an issue defense lawyers have repeatedly tried to raise in post-coup proceedings.
Kılıç’s defense came during a hearing in the trial examining what happened inside the General Staff headquarters in Ankara on the night of the attempted takeover.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is listed in the indictment as a victim-complainant, while then-chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar is listed as a victim.
Tunçkol’s remarks raised the question of whether defendants were subjected to humiliating or abusive treatment before appearing in court.
