Kenan Evren

Kenan Evren was born in Alaşehir, Manisa Province, on July 17, 1917. His father was an imam of Albanian origin and his mother was from a Turkish Bulgarian background. He attended military high school in Maltepe, Ankara, and graduated from army school in 1938 and from military academy as a staff officer in 1949. He served in the Turkish Brigade in Korea from 1958 to 1959 and was promoted to general in 1964. He became the commander of Operation Gladio's Turkish branch, the Counter-Guerrilla, an anti-communist "stay-behind" guerrilla force set up with the support of NATO. He became the Chief of General Staff in March 1978 and was selected by then Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit for not being a member of any political group inside the Turkish Military. On September 12, 1980, Evren led a military coup that overthrew the civilian government amid a violent conflict between the far-right and the far-left factions. He dissolved the parliament, banned all political parties, suspended the constitution, and declared martial law. He became the head of the National Security Council, which ruled the country until 1983. He oversaw the drafting of a new constitution, which was approved by a referendum in 1982 and made him the president for a seven-year term. He also initiated a campaign of repression against the Kurdish minority, the left-wing activists, and the Islamists, resulting in thousands of arrests, tortures, executions, and disappearances. He justified his actions by claiming that he saved the country from anarchy and chaos. Evren retired from the presidency in 1989 and withdrew from public life. He was widely criticized and condemned for his role in the coup and the human rights violations that followed. In 2010, a constitutional referendum removed his immunity from prosecution and allowed him to be tried for crimes against the state. In 2014, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and demotion of his military rank, but he was too ill to attend the trial or serve his sentence. He died on May 9, 2015, at the age of 97, in Ankara. He was buried in the Turkish State Cemetery with full military honors.