Turkey's former army chief and president, Kenan Evren, who led a 1980 coup and came to symbolise the military's decades-long dominance over politics, has died at 97, the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Saturday. Evren, who had been receiving treatment at a military hospital in Ankara, suffered multiple organ failure as a result of old age and was pronounced dead late on Saturday, Anadolu said, without citing its sources.
Evren was sentenced to life in prison last June for leading the 1980 coup that resulted in widespread torture, arrests and deaths. He was too frail to attend court sessions, and age and sickness spared him from serving time behind bars.
Fifty people were executed and half a million arrested, hundreds died in jail, and many more disappeared in the years after the coup. Political parties were shut down and Evren went on to serve for seven years as president from 1982.
The coup left Turkey with a constitution drafted by the generals and viewed by many to this day as a brake on democratic development in the European Union candidate nation.
Evren never expressed regret for the coup. He said it saved Nato member Turkey from anarchy after thousands were killed in street fighting by militant left-wingers and rightists.
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