Turkey's 1980's junta leader hospitalized

Ret. Gen. Evren, 92, who served as Turkey's seventh president between 1892-1989, had been earlier transferred to a hospital in the southern province of Hatay from another hospital in the western province of Izmir where he was receiving treatment for bad health.

Media reports on Thursday said his condition had improved and that he would be discharged from the hospital in Hatay on Friday.

In a1980 military coup headed by Evren, around 650,000 people were detained, 230,000 people trialed, 50 executed, and 14,000 stripped of their Turkish citizenship. All political parties, unions and foundations were closed. In addition, some 171 people died in custody, hundreds of thousands of people were tortured, and thousands are still reported missing.

The military handed power back to civilians in 1983. 

The 1980 coup still casts a shadow over politics and society in Turkey. The political and sociological consequences shaped the Turkish nation for generations and will continue to do so.

Clashes between left and right wing political groups in the 1970s had brought Turkey to the brink of civil war. Thousands of people were killed in the clashes between the leftist bloc that included communists, social democrats and socialists, and the right wingers consisting of hardline nationalists.

New evidence that emerged decades after the coup, has revealed that many assassinations, conducted from both sides in late 1970s, were carried out using the same weapons.

A member of the U.S. National Security Council later said that amid the coup the then President Jimmy Carter was informed by an aide who said, "Our boys have done it."

The coup, that took place during the peak of the Cold War, dealt a real blow to the Turkish leftist factions.

Academics and experts blame the coup for the rise of Islamization in the country in the last three decades, saying the junta completely suppressed the left wing while supported political Islam in order to prevent the strengthening of a political movement close to the Soviet Union.