1961: Fatin Rustu Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan
September 16th, 2009 Headsman
On this date in 1961, two former Turkish ministers of state were hanged together on the island of Imrali.*
A ten-month trial on the island of Yassiada had ended just the previous day, condemning 15 to death; 12 sentences were commuted, leaving only the biggest fish to fry.
Zorlu, the former Foreign Minister, and Polatkan, late the Finance Minister, were both implicated in the financial crimes often characteristic of high office. Zorlu was also condemned for helping instigate a notorious 1955 anti-Greek riot. The two were helicoptered to Imrali for a pre-dawn hanging.
Zorlu, at least, was reported to have died game. He helped slip the noose over his own neck, and at his hanging “asked that he be allowed to kick away the chair himself. Permission was granted.” (Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1961)
* Tangentially, the prison on Imrali is the one American drug-smuggler Billy Hayes subsequently escaped from. Hayes went on to write Midnight Express, later adapted for the silver screen by Oliver Stone.
Part of the Daily Double: Turkey’s “Left-Wing Coup”.
On this day..
- 1599: Celestino da Verona - 2020
- 2011: Li Lei, of whom much was expected - 2019
- 1581: Peter Niers - 2018
- 1996: Youssouf Ali, the first in independent Comoros - 2017
- 1776: Robert Harley and Edward George, tea smugglers - 2016
- 1723: Hermann Christian von Wolffradt, Chancellor of Mecklenburg-Schwerin - 2015
- 1846: Andrew Kim Taegon, the first Korean priest - 2014
- 1931: Omar Mukhtar, Libyan revolutionary - 2013
- Feast Day of St. Euphemia - 2012
- 1938: Albert Dyer, sex killer (presumably) - 2011
- 1870: Jacob Wallace, Henry Coston, and Moses and Peter Newby - 2010
- Daily Double: Turkey's "left-wing coup" - 2009
- 1560: Arnaud du Tilh, alias Martin Guerre - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,History,Politicians,Posthumous Exonerations,Power,Theft,Treason,Turkey
Tags: 1960s, 1961, coup d'etat, fatin rustu zorlu, hasan polatkan, imrali, istanbul pogrom, september 16
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