Former Turkish president Kenan Evren, symbol of military era, dies at 97

Kenan Evren, the Turkish general who led a 1980 coup that ended years of violence but whose rule unleashed a wave of arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings, died on Saturday. He was 97. The ailing former general who later ruled as president for seven years, died at Ankara’s GATA military hospital, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported, hours after he was placed on a respirator and his family was called to his side. Last year, he was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of crimes against the state, becoming the first general in Turkey to be prosecuted for carrying out a coup.

We did what was right at the time and if it happened today we would carry out a coup again.

Kenan Evren, from his hospital bed

Evren was hailed as a hero at the time of the coup for ending fighting between rightists and leftists that had left some 5,000 people dead and put the country on the brink of a civil war. But he soon became one of the country’s most controversial figures, remembered more for the torture of former militants and their supporters and for introducing a constitution that restricted freedoms and formalized the military’s role in politics.

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