Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a series of televised appearances overnight in which he disclosed dramatic details of his survival on the night of a failed coup and raised the specter of reintroducing the death penalty to punish conspirators.
He told US broadcaster CNN he narrowly escaped death after coup plotters stormed the resort town of Marmaris where he was vacationing.
“Had I stayed 10, 15 additional minutes, I would have been killed or I would have been taken,” he said in the interview broadcast late on Monday.
Addressing hundreds of supporters outside his Istanbul residence in the early hours of Tuesday, Erdogan responded to calls for the death penalty with the simple statement: “You cannot put aside the people’s demands.”
Turkey’s state-run news agency says courts have ordered 85 generals and admirals jailed pending trial over their roles in the failed coup attempt. Dozens of others were still being questioned.