Turkey’s Justice Ministry said on Wednesday that all suspects in ongoing trials concerning a failed coup last year are going to wear identical brown uniforms during court hearings.
According to a story by the state-run Anadolu news agency, the Justice Ministry made the decision for all coup suspects to wear uniforms after Gökhan Güçlü, one of the suspects on trial for an assassination attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the night of the coup attempt, was thrown out of the courtroom on July 13 for wearing a T-shirt bearing the word “hero” on it.
More than a dozen people have been detained, with some of them arrested by the court, for wearing the T-shirts since July 13.
According to Anadolu, Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül said on Friday that if the regulations are adopted, nearly 50,000 uniforms will be sewn by inmates and then sent to prisons holding suspects in cases involving followers of the Gülen movement, which is accused by Turkish authorities of being behind the failed coup. The movement strongly denies any involvement.
The uniforms will reportedly be sewn in prison workshops to be determined by the authorities. The sewing process has already started in two prisons in the northwestern provinces of Bursa and Balıkesir as part of the test period.