Turkey: Coup plotters will never see ‘God’s sun as long as they breathe’

Turkish special forces have captured a group of rebel commandos who tried to abduct President Tayyip Erdogan during the July 15 failed coup.

Officials close to Erdogan said he was almost killed during the attack.

Nihat Zeybekci, economy minister, vowed that the coup plotters would regret their actions.

“We will make them beg. We will stuff them into holes, they will suffer such punishment in those holes that they will never see God’s sun as long as they breathe,” Zeybekci was quoted by the Dogan news agency as telling an anti-coup protest in the western town of Usak over the weekend.

“They will not hear a human voice again. ‘Kill us’ they will beg’.”

More than 230 people were killed in the attempted coup, many of them civilians, and more than 2,000 injured.

Since the coup bid, more than 60,000 people in the military, judiciary, civil service and education have been detained, suspended or placed under investigation, leading to concern among NATO allies about the scale of the purges.

Around 40 percent of Turkey’s generals and admirals have been dismissed. Nearly 1,400 more members of the armed forces were dismissed and the top military council was stacked with government ministers on Sunday, moves designed by Erdogan to tighten civilian control over the military.

“Our aim is that we set up such a system that nobody within the armed forces would ever consider a coup again,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told a news conference in Ankara, explaining the latest reforms.

He said a restructuring of Turkey’s intelligence structures may follow. Similar “democracy demonstrations” to the one attended by Zeybekci, rallies called for by Erdogan, have been held in squares night after night across the country of nearly 80 million since the coup.