Nazire Terzi, the widow of putschist Brig. Gen. Semih Terzi, said during a hearing in a coup probe on Thursday that she was accused of helping her husband with a July 15 coup attempt by sending his orders to other putschist soldiers despite the fact that he was declared dead by 11:30 p.m. on July 15 in an official report.
Speaking during the hearing on Thursday as part of the investigation in which she was accused of “helping people attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” and arrested on Aug. 17, Terzi told the court that she sent a text to her husband at 12:30 a.m. on July 16 asking whether he had come to Ankara or not.
“He told me to go to a neighbor’s house along with the children and stay there. So, I did. According to the news and videos reported on Turkish TV, my husband was killed around 2:30 a.m. on July 16,” she said.
Underlining that she was accused of forwarding her husband’s messages on the morning of July 16 despite an official report that showed he was dead by 11:30 p.m. on July 15, Terzi said, “How could he send me messages on the morning of July 16 if he was dead on the night of July 15?”
Nazire Terzi, who is a doctor, also told the court that she visited the Gülhane Military Medical Academy (GATA) to meet with the doctor who issued her husband’s death certificate. When she visited GATA on July 23, she was told that there was nobody by the name of the person who issued the putschist brigadier general’s death certificate.
After confirming that there was no doctor by that name at GATA who issued the certificate on July 15, Terzi said she filed a lawsuit.
Brig. Gen. Terzi was killed by noncommissioned officer Ömer Halisdemir, an aide to Special Forces Commander Lt. Gen. Zekai Aksakallı. Halisdemir was also killed by coup plotters after he shot Terzi dead outside command headquarters in Ankara during a failed attempt by the soldiers led by Terzi to seize the building.