A total of 475 defendants were prosecuted in a high-profile case focusing on the events of Akinci Air Base in Ankara, which the prosecutor said was the main command center for the coup.
The majority of the defendants received at least one life sentence. Nineteen people were sentenced to 79 life sentences after parole after being accused of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order, assassinate and assassinate the president, according to the Anadolu State News Agency.
Seventy people have been fired, the state news agency said.
“Turkish justice continues to hold traitors accountable,” Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul told Twitter after the court handed down the verdicts.
“No one should doubt that justice will take place and that law and democracy will win,” he added.
More than 250 people were killed in the July 2016 coup attempt, many of them civilians. Tanks rolled onto the streets of Istanbul and Ankara, the two largest cities in the country. Soldiers blocked the famous Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul while bombs crashed into the parliament building of the country’s capital, Ankara.
Turkey’s current defense minister, then-chief of staff Hulusi Akar, was taken hostage at the base during the coup attempt.
Erdogan accused Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric living in the United States, of directing the events. Gulen vehemently denied the allegations.
Gulen was a close ally of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, its supporters helping to apply bureaucratic ranks, but the partnership became hostile in 2013.
According to the Interior Ministry, nearly 100,000 were arrested and 150,000 fired from government work, including the military, as a result of the coup attempt. Turkish courts have already held several mass lawsuits over the alleged act.
The attempt to overthrow and the government’s use of violence against the media, political opposition, academics and security forces was a divisive force in the country.
