An İstanbul court sentenced Air Force Academy cadet Selahattin Kılıç to aggravated life in prison in a trial over events during Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt, in a verdict that also acquitted dozens of lower-ranking soldiers.
The İstanbul 25th High Criminal Court announced its ruling at Silivri Prison, where many high-profile post-coup trials were held.
Of 143 defendants in the case, 99 received varying prison sentences, while one second lieutenant and 43 privates were acquitted of all charges.
Kılıç was convicted of “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” and sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment.
The court also sentenced him to 198 years in prison for the “attempted premeditated murder” of 14 people.
Kılıç’s case drew public attention because of his father, Veysel Kılıç, who joined the Justice March led by Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and later held a one-person vigil at a metrobus stop near the courthouse.
The Justice March was a 2017 opposition protest from Ankara to İstanbul against what the CHP described as politically motivated prosecutions and the erosion of judicial independence.
The verdict was part of a wider set of post-coup trials involving military academy students, cadets and lower-ranking soldiers, many of whose families argued that young defendants were punished without adequate examination of command responsibility, intent or the orders they had received that night.
The acquittal of 43 privates in the same case underscored one of the recurring disputes in Turkey’s coup-attempt trials: whether courts sufficiently distinguished between senior officers accused of directing events and lower-ranking personnel who said they acted under military orders.
For families of convicted cadets, the sentences became a symbol of what they described as collective punishment in cases where defendants’ individual conduct and criminal intent were not adequately established.
