Battling cancer since his childhood, 31-year-old Sedat Kaplan was martyred during the coup attempt on July 15th in Ankara, where he had gone to receive chemo treatment.
He contracted bone cancer in the previous months after having defeated his stomach cancer he had had since childhood. Traveling from his hometown Trabzon to Ankara, Kaplan found out about the coup attempt on the night of July 15th from the TV. He went out on to the streets at midnight after President Erdoğan’s call and headed to the parliament building. He spoke with his brother Murat Kaplan at 12:35 am. During their 35-second phone conversation, Kaplan said that he was in front of the parliament building and that he was fine. Murat called him back three minutes later but couldn’t reach him anymore. Kaplan was targeted by bullets from the malicious putschists, with whom he fought in front of the parliament building.
From hospital guest house to martyrdom
Sedat’s mother Esen, an administrator at the AK Party Ortahisar Youth Branch, who lives in the Oymalı Neighborhood of the Yomra Discrict in Trabzon, stated that she had five children, three of whom were deaf and speech-handicapped. She went on to say that Sedat was born as her second child and added that her son had been battling cancer since his childhood. She also noted that her son went to Ankara for a medical check-up with his brother on July 10th and that they stayed in the hospital guest house on the night of July 15. She was ill at heart with her children not calling. She continued to describe the night as follows, “That day, I cut some grass and came home. I had never heard of the events. The next day, in the afternoon, my brother called me over to his house. I went there. I saw that everyone was there and I said, ‘What is this? Did something happen to my children?’ First, they said, ‘your children are fine,’ and after a while, they told me about what happened. I was devastated as soon as I heard the news.”
Sedat Kaplan’s funeral was in Yomra, Trabzon. The name of the martyr was given to a street by Trabzon Yomra Municipality, and to Trabzon Yomra Oymalıtepe Martyr Sedat Kaplan Middle School.
