By Can Sezer
ISTANBUL, Dec 26 (Reuters) – The full report of an autopsy
on late President Turgut Ozal, who led Turkey out of military
rule in the 1980s, should be released for public scrutiny, the
former leader’s son said on Wednesday.
Ozal’s body was recently exhumed after years of rumours that
was murdered by militants of the “deep state” – a shadowy group
within the Turkish establishment of the day. He had angered some
with his efforts to end a Kurdish insurgency and survived an
assassination bid in 1988.
The body of Ozal, who died of heart failure in 1993 aged 65,
was exhumed in October on the orders of prosecutors
investigating suspicions of foul play.
But the summary this month of the forensic medicine
institute report said the exact cause of death could not be
determined because no autopsy was conducted immediately after
Ozal died.
The former president’s son, Ahmet Ozal, who like other
members of his family believes his father may have been
poisoned, wants the full scientific autopsy report published.
“The scientific findings … should not be disclosed only to
the council of forensic medicine but also to universities so
specialists and professors can also evaluate the results,” Ahmet
Ozal, a former lawmaker, told reporters.
He said he would also file legal cases against people
involved in organising his father’s removal to hospital on the
day of his death once a full report by the state inspection
committee was released. So far only parts of the report have
been released to the public.
Ozal, the eighth president of the Turkish Republic, died in
an Ankara hospital while still in office.
Viewed as helping to shape modern Turkey with free market
economic policies, Ozal also supported the U.S.-led coalition
which expelled Iraq from Kuwait in 1991.
After a period of military rule following a 1980 coup, Ozal
dominated Turkish politics as prime minister from 1983-89 and
parliament then elected him president.
While prime minister, Ozal was shot by a right-wing gunman
in 1988 at a party congress, but survived with a wounded finger.
After a triple heart bypass operation in the United States
in 1987, he kept up a gruelling schedule and remained overweight
until he died.
Ankara prosecutors are continuing their investigation into
Ozal’s death and state prosecutors elsewhere have started
investigating the deaths of other public figures from the 1990s.
Turkish political history is littered with military coups,
alleged anti-government plots and extra-judicial killings. A
Turkish court is trying hundreds of people suspected of links to
a nationalist underground network known as “Ergenekon” accused
of plotting to overthrow the current government.
(Editing by Jonathon Burch/Ruth Pitchford)
