JANUARY 14, 2024
July 15, 2016... That day which will never leave our minds. It started with unexpected news during the day. It had been only days since we arrived at the Yalova Applied Training Camp, which we attended regularly every year.
We were busy with preparations, cleaning, settling in, and similar tasks. Alongside these, of course, practical lessons such as military training and combat physical education continued without interruption.
That morning, it was announced that the Air Force and Air Training Command would visit the camp. This was strange for the normal camp schedule because we had not even fully settled into the camp area.
During lunch, the Air Force Commander gave a speech addressed to the student regiment. He stated that being brothers-in-arms was far beyond rules and procedures. He ordered that the students should not be tired further that day because they would already be tired in the evening.
After the evening roll call, everyone was ordered to go to their tents and sleep. Not much time had passed before a “scramble” warning was given. We prepared as quickly as possible and gathered in the assembly area. The entire regiment was preparing and coming out with us.
Buses had been brought to the assembly area. Later, the commanders began reading names from lists in their hands. Some cadets were ordered to leave the squadron and board the buses. My name was not among those read. Those of us who remained were ordered to wait in full gear.
After waiting for a while, the buses moved and left the assembly area with the commanders. We had no idea what was happening. The first thing that came to mind was that this might be an emergency evacuation exercise. After all, we were in an applied training camp; a drill for every war scenario could be performed.
As we looked behind the buses leaving the assembly area, we watched them all go, without knowing that some of them would never return again.
Hours had passed. It was past midnight, and they had not brought back those they had taken. We were given permission to sleep on our helmets on the dirt ground without leaving the assembly area.
Some time passed, and it was now well past midnight. Voices, conversations, and tense facial expressions began to be seen from the assembly area where our upper-classmen were. According to what one of them had heard from a small radio, a text had appeared on the official website of the Turkish Armed Forces stating that the military had seized control of the country’s administration.
As soon as we heard this, the same thought came to most of our minds: someone must have hacked the website to scare people and draw attention. Since we were staying in tents in a plain without any communication devices, we had nothing else to confirm this.
The day slowly began to dawn when permission came that we could return to our tents and sleep. This would be our last sleep where we could sleep unaware of everything.
That morning was the morning when our whole world collapsed on us and nothing would ever be the same again. July 16, around 7:00 AM... In the camp area where the internet barely worked, we looked at the news on our phones. Our blood ran cold and our eyes burned at what we saw.
In many reports, we saw videos and photos of our classmates, upper-classmen, and lower-classmen — cadets who had left for what they thought was a drill — covered in blood, lynched, and martyred. Everyone was telling each other who they saw among our classmates. We prayed that nothing had happened to those we could not see.
While we were still in shock, we were gathered in the assembly area again by an order. It was announced that the camp had been taken over by the Yalova Military Police, that no entry or exit would be made without their knowledge, and that all weapons and armories were to be surrendered.
We did so. From that moment on, we were treated as complete prisoners or detainees inside our own camp. We were told that anyone who resisted orders or showed contrary behavior would immediately be thrown into a cell.
One of the longest moments of my life began there. We waited for hours on the ground, surrounded by military police soldiers and police officers with weapons in their hands and fingers on the triggers. Even going to the toilet was forbidden. Even the slightest movement was perceived as a threat.
We were subjected to insults and psychological pressure. Meanwhile, the police searched the entire camp and student tents, looking for coup plans or appointment lists. What they found were rash cream, baby powder, personal belongings, and even a half-eaten chocolate hidden under a pillow.
During the week that followed, we only went to eat and then returned to the tent area, trying to get news about our friends. We had informed our own families that we were safe, but we did not know what to say to the families of our classmates because we did not know where they were or what condition they were in.
At the end of a week, permission was given for those whose families could come to leave the camp. The day my family came and picked me up was the last day in the Yalova camp and the last day of my life that I wore a uniform.
That morning, without knowing, I took off my uniform for the last time, folded it according to regulations, and placed it in my suitcase. We could never wear it again. Perhaps we could not even say goodbye properly, but we never disrespected our uniform, and we never engaged in an action that would not befit its glory.
A Turkish Air Force Cadet
M.D.O.
Mothers, fathers, fiancées — the families who never moved on.
For every cadet still imprisoned, there is a family that has lived these nine years alongside them. These are some of their words.
What 24 hours looks like, now.
A typical day inside a Turkish high-security prison for the cadets. Compiled from family interviews and inmate correspondence.
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06:00
Wake-up call
The lights come on at dawn. Cells are checked. Sleep is the only thing that does not need permission.
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07:00
Breakfast
Bread, olives, tea, sometimes cheese. Eaten quickly, in silence, before the day begins.
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08:30
Yard time
One hour outdoors, in a concrete yard, walking the same square. The sky is the only part of the world that has not changed in nine years.
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10:00
Reading & writing
Books, letters, study. Many cadets have completed university degrees from inside. The mind is the one place the state cannot enter.
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12:30
Lunch
Rice, beans, soup. The same plate on the same tray. Some cadets stopped tasting their food years ago.
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14:00
Visiting hours (when permitted)
A glass partition. A telephone receiver. Forty-five minutes. The first ten are spent crying. The last ten are spent saying goodbye.
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17:00
Cell time
Returned to the cell. Letters are read. Letters are written. Letters that may never be sent are written too — because the act of writing is itself a form of being alive.
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19:30
Dinner
Bread, soup, sometimes meat. The cadets eat together. They have learned to be brothers.
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22:00
Lights out
Another day, completed. Tomorrow, the same day will begin again. This is what an aggravated life sentence means — not just imprisonment, but the repetition of imprisonment, every day, until there are no more days.
The lives that were waiting for them.
Behind each conviction is a life that was supposed to unfold. These are the things they would have done — and may, one day, still do.
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A career in flight
Most cadets were two to four years from receiving their pilot wings. They had passed every exam, every physical, every psychological assessment. None of them will fly the planes they trained for.
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Weddings that didn't happen
At least 34 of the imprisoned cadets were engaged at the time of their arrest. Most engagements were broken — quietly, by mutual consent, with no anger. The few that remained have stretched into a decade.
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Children never born
The cadets who were imprisoned at 18 to 22 are now 27 to 31. Many of them had planned the lives they would build — homes, children, futures. Those children were never born. They exist now only as conversations whispered through a glass partition.
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A nation's future officers
The 16,409 students expelled in 2016 represented the next generation of Turkey's military leadership. Engineers, navigators, intelligence officers, pilots. Their absence is a hole in the country's defense for decades to come.
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University degrees abandoned
All cadets were enrolled in accredited university programs alongside their military training. Those degrees, too, were annulled. Even after release, the years of academic work disappear from their records — as if they had never studied.
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A life of public service
They had not chosen the military for prestige or salary. They had chosen it to serve. That choice was not honored. It was punished. What was taken from them was not freedom alone, but the meaning they had assigned to their lives.
Their stories now live in you. Pass them on.
A name remembered is a name that cannot disappear. A story shared is a sentence the state cannot rewrite. Take a name with you. Take a story with you. Tell someone tomorrow.