As Turkey contemplates the reintroduction of the death penalty to punish those responsible for the coup attempt, the mayor of Istanbul has allocated space for a “graveyard for traitors,” where people will have a chance to “curse” those responsible, Eurasia Review reports.
Following the failed July 15 coup attempt that left 246 people dead, including many members of the security forces and civilians, cemeteries across the country are refusing to bury those who plotted against the government.
In an attempt to remedy the situation, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Kadir Topbas said that he has ordered the allocation of space for the final resting place for “traitors” where “the passersby will curse the ones buried there.”
“I ordered a space to be saved and [for it to be called] … ‘the graveyard for traitors’,” Topbas told a group of pro-government protesters in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. “Everyone visiting the place will curse them and they won’t be able to rest in their graves.”
The decision to provide space, Topbas said, came after the mayor of Ordu, a port city on the Black Sea coast did not provide burial plots. As a result, the family of one of the dead took a body and buried it in their garden.
“I congratulate the mayor,” Topbas said as quoted by Anadolu Agency, adding that coup plotters “won’t be saved from hell.”
The mayor of Istanbul, a city of some 15 million people, also said that even the cemetery of the nameless was not a suitable place for the coup plotters to be buried with religious people.
