The trial of 47 defendants accused over the raid on the hotel where President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had been staying in Marmaris on the night of Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt began before the Muğla 2nd High Criminal Court.
The defendants include 37 soldiers accused of taking part in the operation, one of them a fugitive.
The case concerns the raid on the hotel after Erdoğan had left Marmaris.
Brig. Gen. Gökhan Şahin Sönmezateş, who led the team sent to the hotel, acknowledged taking part in the operation but said the unit had been misled.
“It was said that the Turkish Armed Forces had taken control of the government,” Sönmezateş told the court.
“It was said the order came from the General Staff,” he said.
Sönmezateş denied any link to the Gülen movement, a transnational civic initiative inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
“We were sent into a trap,” he said. “Who kept us waiting for four hours before the uprising?”
His remarks pointed to one of the central disputes in the Marmaris case: why the team was kept waiting before being sent to the hotel, who gave the orders and whether the soldiers knew the real nature of the operation.
Ankara blames the coup attempt on the Gülen movement and designates it as a terrorist organization. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
The Marmaris case is one of the most closely watched trials related to July 15 because Erdoğan’s departure from the resort town and the subsequent raid on the hotel form a key part of the government’s account of the night.
