İbrahim Yılmaz, who died as a martyr while he was trying to resist putschist soldiers in Saraçhane on the night of the July 15thcoup attempt, was buried in the martyrs’ graveyard which he had visited only three days before he was killed and had even wished to be buried in.
After hearing the call of President Erdoğan to go to the streets, the 25-year-old Imam went outside without waiting to see his brother, who he called and said, “Maybe this will be the last time we see each other.”
2 bullet wounds in his chest
İbrahim Yılmaz joined the people gathered in Saraçhane to support the resistance. They were trying to convince pro-coup soldiers along with other citizens. However, it was at this moment the pro-coup colonel controlling the soldiers gave the order, “What are you waiting for? Shoot them!” İbrahim Yılmaz was shot in his chest by two bullets fired by pro-coup soldiers and was martyred on the scene.
İsa Yılmaz, the brother of the martyr, ran to the hospital to find his brother “We came to see my brother as soon as we heard the news. There were so many bodies but nobody was mourning beside them. It was clear that their families didn’t know yet. Meanwhile, things were still bad in Saraçhane. We heard shootouts and the sonic boom made by the planes and the hospital was even shaking. We took İbrahim to the forensic medicine institute in the morning.” 
“He chose the difficult conditions of Erzurum instead of Istanbul”
İsa said that the martyr had spent his life reading the Quran and loved it very much. He describes his brother İbrahim as follows, “He worked as an assistant for a recitation teacher for 3 years before he officially became an imam. He was a faithful guy who loved reading. The first thing anybody will say about him is how moral he was.” Yılmaz continued by saying that the city of Erzurum where his brother voluntarily went was a place with difficult conditions, “The place he worked was a terrorist region. Terrorists would stop soldiers on the road and kill them. I saw it myself. It was a place with no electricity and water. He wanted to go there. He could have stayed in Istanbul but he went to Erzurum with a love of serving his country saying, “All the land of this country is ours.”
İsa said that he and his brother used to go on every holiday to the tombs of people like Ali Haydar Efendi and read the Quran. He continued, “We visited the martyrs’ graveyard on Eid al-Fitr. İbrahim said to me ‘This must be expensive. Do you think we would end up in this place? I wish my father bought a family grave here. We would lay beside great people and lots of people would visit and pray for us.’ Interestingly enough, he was buried in the graveyard as a martyr 3-5 days after he visited it.”
İbrahim Yılmaz was 25 years old and the youngest of four brothers.
He had a 9-month-old daughter from his wife that he married in 2013. Yilmaz worked as an imam in the Yaylabaşı village of the Şenkaya district of Erzurum.
