Last surviving leader of Turkey's 1980 coup dies

Turkish former air force general Tahsin Sahinkaya, the last surviving leader of the 1980 coup which led to military rule and left lasting scars on the country, died on Thursday. He was 90. 
The putsch on September 12, 1980 was the bloodiest in Turkey's coup-ridden history, overthrowing a civilian government and putting in place a military junta that ruled Turkey for three years. Sahinkaya was the last remaining survivor of the coup leaders after the death in May aged 97 of Kenan Evren, the army general who led the junta and served as president from 1980 to 1989. 

Sahinkaya died at a military hospital in Istanbul, the official Anatolia news agency said. He passed away after three days on a life support machine. 

With the powers of the military, which ardently defended Turkey's secular order, clipped under the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) which came to power in 2002, prosecutors began investigating the coup leaders on charges of acting against the state. 

But only Evren and Sahinkaya were still alive when the case was judged in June 2014. Both were given life sentences but never went to prison because of their poor health. 

The 1980 coup was justified by the military as bringing order to Turkey after a period of social and political chaos. 

It was the bloodiest in Turkey's modern history, with 50 people executed while dozens died from torture. Some 600,000 were arrested and many others went missing. 

Sahinkaya and Evren escaped prosecution until Ankara stripped them of their immunity in 2010 in legislation adopted exactly 30 years after the coup. 

Sahinkaya's death also comes less than one month after the passing of former Turkish prime minister and president Suleyman Demirel, the premier at the time who was ousted by the September 12 coup. 

Born in 1925 in the central Anatolian region of Merzifon, Sahinkaya entered a military training college and had been promoted to general by 1977 and was made head of the air force in 1978. 

He was one of the most prominent figures on the five-person National Security Council — the military junta that took power in the wake of the coup. 

With the return of civilian rule, he retired in December 1983. In a sign of how the ex-coup leaders are regarded in today's Turkey under the AKP's co-founder President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, there was official silence on Sahinkaya's death. 

The mastermind of the coup, Evren, was accorded a low-key state funeral on May 12, which was attended by the military but boycotted by the AKP. 

Demirel, by contrast, was laid to rest in a grandiose public ceremony with leaders including Erdogan paying tribute to his achievements. 

Evren remained unrepentant in the years after the coup, defending the hanging of a 17-year-old convicted of killing a soldier in the unrest, declaring his "hands didn't tremble" as he signed death sentences under his junta. 

Including Evren and Sahinkaya, the military junta had five members, all of whom are now dead. Naval commander Nejat Tumer died in 2011, ground forces chief Nurettin Ersin died in 2005 and gendarmerie commander Sedat Celasun in 1998.