Fevzi Katran, the brother of Ragıp Enes Katran, who was brutally killed on the Bosporus Bridge in İstanbul on the night of a failed coup on July 15, 2016, has said his brother was not killed by the people who took to the streets to oppose the coup but by a group of violent people, Bold Medya reported.
The military cadet, Ragıp Enes Katran, 20, was one of the students at the Air Forces Academy who were taken to the Bosporus Bridge in İstanbul by their commanders, who allegedly told them a terrorist attack was underway. The cadets reportedly had no knowledge that a military coup attempt was in progress.
The cadets were attacked by an angry crowd on the bridge that wanted to end the coup and punish the soldiers whom they thought were putschists. Two cadets were killed by unknown attackers, while dozens of others were injured, video footage later showed.
Fevzi Katran, 33, who was a noncommissioned naval officer removed from his post by the government in a massive post-coup purge, said: “They killed my brother monstrously. There was a group there. I won’t call them our people. Our people would not commit such acts.”
Katran’s remarks came during an interview with Bold Medya in Germany, where he moved with his family 16 months ago.
According to an autopsy conducted on July 16, 2016, one day after the coup attempt, Katran’s face and head were swollen and there were numerous knife wounds on his body.
Katran’s family claimed their son was killed by a knife that slashed his throat, and the autopsy report confirms the family’s allegation.
The eighth article of the autopsy report says,” A 6-centimeter injury was seen on the throat, on the thyroid cartilage, over the 5,6,7 lesions, which exposes parts of the throat.”
Ragıp’s body was found by his family at the İstanbul Council of Forensic Medicine 10 days after his death.
“Our people should think about this. The incidents are not as they are presented to us. Some people made up a scenario [on the coup night] and would have us believe it. We need to talk about this in order to leave a footnote in history. All the families of the military cadets should speak up,” said Fevzi Katran.
More than 300 military cadets from the Air Forces Academy are serving life sentences in Silivri Prison in İstanbul on the grounds that they attempted a coup.
Thousands of people took to the streets on the night of July 15, 2016 following a call from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on TV to face the putschists. Two hundred forty-nine people were killed while hundreds of others were injured on the night of the coup, which was suppressed overnight.
Following the coup, Erdoğan’s government launched a massive purge in the country under the pretext of an anti-coup fight as a result of which more than 130,000 people have been removed from state jobs and more than 600,000 have been investigated and 30,000 others are still in jail over terrorism or coup charges.