The leader of the 1980 military coup in Turkey, Kenan Evren, died in hospital in Ankara yesterday. He was 97.

Kenan Evren the leader and last surviving general of the six leaders of the 12 September coup, died yesterday. Evren was eventually put on trial for his role in the military coup, but never served time in prison. His case was still at the High Court of Appeals when news of his death emerged. Kenan Evren never expressed regret for having led the coup, claiming the intervention was necessary.

Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested and tortured in the immediate aftermath of the coup, and thousands spent long years in prison, with 50 being hanged. Evren famously defended the hangings in a speech in 1984, saying: "Should we feed them in prison for years rather than hanging them?"

Although Evren was seen as having intervened to protect the secular Turkish Republic, a prerogative the Turkish army exercised three times between 1960 and 1980, it was his regime that paved the way to the introduction of compulsory Islamic classes in Turkish education, something the Generals saw as a way to counter the perceived threat of communism. It was Kenan Evren who introduced the Imam Hatip high schools as part of a strategy to counter what was seen as the pernicious influence of left-wing ideas. Evren could not have known then how the AKP government would use these schools as a means of cementing its rule and hold over society.