Internal Turkish military records show that the General Staff obtained intelligence and police checks on 4,813 cadets and collected information about their families before Turkey’s 2016 coup attempt. The records contrast with the government’s later expulsion of all 16,409 students enrolled in military schools without individual review.
The documents were first made public in 2019 and have returned to attention as former cadets and their families continue to challenge the expulsions and coup convictions.
A classified briefing note dated April 2016 and signed by Major General İzzet Çetingöz, then commander of the Turkish Military Academy, describes a committee created to collect information about military students and assess reports alleging Gülen movement links.
The documents reveal that the committee met with the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office and judges, and recommended working in coordination with the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and police units to collect intelligence on the students and their families.
Preparations date back to before July 15
According to the documents, the General Staff requested MİT and the police to conduct background checks on a total of 4,813 registered military students in 2014 and 2015. The resulting reports were submitted to the General Staff, and comprehensive intelligence files were compiled on the students.
Military schools were closed within 10 days
Through a statutory decree issued on July 25, 2016, shortly after the coup attempt, military academies, military high schools and other military training institutions were shut down. They were replaced by the National Defense University.
With the decrees published during the state of emergency, ties were severed with a total of 16,409 military students, including:
- 4,090 military high school students
- 6,140 non-commissioned officer vocational school students
- 6,179 students from military academies, GATA and nursing schools
Purges continued
In a statement made in August 2019, then-Defense Minister Hulusi Akar announced that in the period following July 15, more than 17,000 military personnel, including 150 generals and 7,595 officers, had been dismissed from the Turkish Armed Forces.
Sentences handed to military students continue to spark debate
A significant portion of the 259 military students detained on the night of July 15 were arrested. Following indictments prepared nearly a year later, 187 military students received aggravated life sentences on charges of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order and other related offenses.
In court, the defendant students maintained that their commanders had told them there was a “terrorist attack” and that they were entirely unaware of the coup attempt.
Students who lost their lives on the bridge
Military students Murat Tekin and Ragıp Enes Katran, who were deployed to the Bosphorus Bridge on the night of July 15, lost their lives during the events.
Debates surrounding Decree No. 696
Statutory Decree No. 696, published on December 24, 2017, also caused public controversy. The regulation stipulated that civilians who acted to “suppress the July 15 so-called coup attempt and subsequent acts of a similar nature” would not bear legal, administrative, or criminal responsibility under certain conditions.
