Zulal Sema“If I die, remember me like this. You won’t be sad,” Halil Kantarci wrote on social media on the evening of July 15, 2016.
Kantarci was standing on the balcony of his mother’s apartment from where he could see soldiers and tanks amassing on the Istanbul Strait (Bogazici) Bridge—now renamed the July 15 Martyrs Bridge.
Kantarci would soon learn that FETO terrorists plotting a coup against the government had raided the Cengelkoy Police Station. By then he had made up his mind: he could not stay silent.
Kantarci kissed his children goodbye, asked his wife for her blessings and left to join thousands of other citizens mounting a resistance against the putschists.
As the coup attempt unfolded, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the nation: “I call on our people to gather in the public squares of every province and at the airports. Let us come together as a nation in the squares and at the airports. I have never recognised any power above the power of the people, and we never will.”
Hours later, Kantarci was shot dead by putschists in Cengelkoy – and his final post proved hauntingly prescient. He was only 36.
He became a symbol of the sacrifice of those 253 people who were martyred while defending democracy and liberty.
Cut to the present. It is around 3.30 am in Cengelkoy.
Soldiers in combat uniforms rush towards a crowd as frightened civilians spill into the streets. Shouts reverberate through the darkness, and panic appears to spread by the second.
A decade later, the uniforms are costumes, the weapons are props, and the terror of that night is being carefully reconstructed for Asirlik Gece – a 15-part docudrama produced by TRT and now streaming on TRT 1 and Tabii.
The scenes are being recreated not in studios but on the streets where the people confronted the putschists.
Actor Kemal Ucar portrays Halil Kantarci confronting the putschists shortly before he is fatally shot, but this is only one of the many stories the series brings to the screen.
Ten years earlier, members of the Fetullah Terrorist Organisation (FETO)—a clandestine network that had spent decades embedding its followers within Türkiye’s military and state institutions—attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government.
Tanks blocked bridges, fighter jets bombed parliament, and a commando unit was dispatched to target President Erdogan in Marmaris.
The series is adapted from Huseyin Aydin’s book, Asirlik Gece: Belgeler ve Deliller Isiginda 15 Temmuz Darbe Girisimi—A Century-Long Night: The July 15 Coup Attempt in Light of Documents and Evidence.
Screenwriter Fatih Mutlu transformed the book’s extensive documentary material into a narrative that could be recreated on screen.
This is neither a crime drama nor a conventional political thriller. It is a docudrama—a hybrid form that interweaves dramatic reconstruction with archival footage, official documents and testimony from those who witnessed the coup attempt, both on the streets and from inside some of Türkiye’s most critical institutions.
Filming in Cengelkoy continues until the first light of morning, mirroring the hours of violence and resistance the production seeks to bring back to the screen.
For those who lived through them, the title can feel almost literal: a single night whose weight and consequences seemed to stretch across a century.
A living record
The docudrama traces FETO terror group’s decades-long infiltration of schools, the military and state institutions before following 15 intersecting stories from the coup attempt.
It is the first docudrama to feature an interview with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recorded specifically for the series. “Securing the President’s interview and bringing together the witnesses of that night was one of our greatest achievements on the production side,” general coordinator Muhammed Erkam Bulbul, 41, tells TRT World.
The series also explores the psychology behind the organisation, portraying how religion was used to demand obedience and control members’ lives. This history unfolds alongside key events of July 15, including the warning received by the National Intelligence Organisation and the attempt to occupy the General Staff headquarters.
The series reconstructs efforts to seize the General Staff and strategic sites in Ankara and Istanbul, the operation targeting Erdogan, and coup plotters’ failed attempt to force then Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar to lead the takeover.
More than 90 interviews form its documentary spine. Interviewees include President Erdogan; current MIT Director Ibrahim Kalin, then presidential spokesperson; Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who headed MIT in 2016; officials, security personnel, veterans, victims’ relatives and civilians who took to the streets.
Conscript Muhammet Recep Ulu recounts what he witnessed at Akinci Air Base, while dramatised scenes reconstruct the operation around him. Turgut Aslan, then head of the Turkish National Police’s Counter-Terrorism Department, revisits the attack that left him gravely wounded, with an actor recreating his experience.
Together, their testimony reveals not only events on the streets but also the decisions, confrontations and resistance unfolding inside Türkiye’s critical institutions.
“This is the story of the Turkish nation’s stand against the coup attempt and its victory, brought to the screen through the largest production ever mounted on the subject,” says Bulbul. “We can call it the biggest television series ever produced in Türkiye. In effect, we have filmed the equivalent of almost 15 feature-length films.”
“The project was developed through the testimonies of real witnesses—the people at the centre of these events,” he adds. “We have created a production that will serve as a historical record.”
Rebuilding the night
The production travelled from Ankara to Marmaris, Eskisehir and Istanbul. Except for several sensitive military sites, Bulbul says almost the entire series was filmed where the events occurred: the July 15 Martyrs Bridge, Cengelkoy, the General Staff headquarters, the Army Aviation Command, the Special Forces Command, the Gendarmerie General Command and the Police Special Operations Department among them.
By the final days of filming, the cameras had entered 342 locations. The screenplay took six months to prepare, while the shoot lasted approximately three months.
Directors Cihan Saglam, 40, and Ahmet Toklu divided the production between two units, with a filming crew of around 160 people working through an unusually compressed schedule.
The passing decade created another challenge: many sites no longer looked as they did in 2016. Production designers had to reverse later alterations and rebuild the visual texture of the night.
Bulbul says the series employed a principal cast of 192 to 193 actors and nearly 14,000 supporting performers and extras; another production representative places the wider cast at around 250 when all speaking and supporting roles are included.
The cast includes Erkan Petekkaya as Salih Zeki Colak, Ruzgar Aksoy as Omer Halisdemir, Yavuz Bingol as Adil Oksuz, Murat Aygen as Hakan Fidan, Burak Sergen as Zekai Aksakalli, Gulsim Ali as Hatice Kubra Ciftci, Seckin Ozdemir as Tolga Kilincarslan, Emir Benderlioglu as Muhsin Kose, Kemal Ucar as Halil Kantarci and Cem Kurtoglu as Hulusi Akar. The score is by composer Can Atilla.
"We based all of it on the real camera recordings from that night, the original footage and the court records," Bulbul says.
"That was already the most difficult part of the work." For a production reconstructing an event still carried in living memory, spectacle could not be allowed to displace evidence.
Accuracy extended to clothing, colour and time of day.
A production representative gives the example of Hatice Kubra Ciftci, who confronted the FETO-linked coup troops on the bridge wearing a black-and-white shirt, a black headscarf and black trousers.
Gulsim Ali was dressed in matching clothes and filmed in the same place during the corresponding time frame.
"Whoever experienced an event that night, we included everything down to the colour of what they wore and their shoes," Bulbul says.
The first reactions have reflected an appetite for precisely these lesser-known details. “People tell us, ‘We wish we could watch it all at once,’” director Saglam says.
“Because we are telling a true story, we explore many things people did not know. That leaves them eagerly awaiting the next episode.”
For some viewers, however, the series is far more than a revelation; it is a return to a night they lived through themselves.
Taha Koyuncu was just 23 on the night of July 15 and had only recently completed his military service, during which he served in a tank unit.
Drawing on that experience, he and his friends blocked the road leading to Kisikli before he later helped remove tanks from the Istanbul Strait Bridge.
“Responding to our President’s call, my friends and I headed towards the Istanbul Strait Bridge and used a lorry to block the road leading to Kisikli,” Koyuncu tells TRT World.
“Throughout the night, alongside everyone else, we resisted at the risk of our lives, helped those who were wounded, and later I helped remove the tanks from the bridge. Watching those events being recreated felt almost cathartic; I was deeply moved. This production is invaluable because it will help ensure that what happened that night is never forgotten.”
Cinematic testimony
"Many projects have been produced about the tragic events and the coup attempt of July 15, 2016, but Asirlik Gece is perhaps the most comprehensive among them," Saglam tells TRT World.
"For the first time, the testimony of people who personally lived through these events was sought on this scale. We also carried out deep preliminary work so that the real events of that night could reach the audience in the most affecting cinematic way."
In many docudramas, Saglam says, the documentary element receives most of the attention while the reconstruction can feel comparatively "flat".
His team sought a different balance, investing in performance, production design and real locations so the dramatised scenes would carry the emotional and visual force of cinema without losing their factual foundation.
One international reference remained in his mind during development: HBO's Chernobyl. He was drawn to the way that series combined the circumstances surrounding a disaster with the intimate struggle of people trying to survive it.
"From the craft side of filmmaking, managing an operation of this scale is extremely difficult," Saglam says, pointing also to filming at the General Staff, Army Aviation and Special Forces sites. "But we had a very strong production team and a very strong channel behind us."
Faces of sacrifice
Across the 15 episodes, the scale of the attempted takeover is repeatedly brought back to individual decisions.
Inside the military, Staff Sgt. Omer Halisdemir received an order he knew could cost him his life.
Acting on the instructions of Special Forces Commander Lt. Gen. Zekai Aksakalli, he shot coup-plotting Brigadier General Semih Terzi as Terzi attempted to seize the Special Forces Command in Ankara.
Halisdemir was killed moments later, but his intervention prevented the putschists from taking control of one of Türkiye’s most strategically important military units.
Hundreds of kilometres away, on the bridge now named after the July 15 martyrs, Erol Olcok—a close friend and campaign manager of President Erdogan who had helped shape the AK Party’s political campaigns—and his 16-year-old son, Abdullah Tayyip, joined the civilian resistance. Both were killed while confronting the coup troops.
Another episode follows Halil Kantarcı, who was 36 when he went out that night.
Actor Kemal Ucar has played many figures from distant history, but he says this role carried a different weight. “Asirlik Gece is unlike all of them because it belongs to a very recent history that I was part of, that all of us lived through,” he tells TRT World.
“If we can speak these sentences freely today, it is thanks to the people who truly sacrificed themselves for this country.”
“Halil Kantarci went out that night for the future of his children, his family and this country,” Ucar continues. “Perhaps he never expected that a weapon would be pointed at him. But when he saw it, he did not run, because in his world there were things more important than himself.”
Re-entering Kantarci’s last moments, he says, brought grief but also an unexpected sense of completion. “In the seconds when we filmed his final moments, my sorrow gave way to the feeling of a person who had fulfilled his duty. Perhaps I internalised it too deeply. I only hope I have fulfilled my own duty in a worthy way.”
Voices against silence
The sala prayers recited from mosques became one of the defining symbols of the night, carrying a call for unity from minaret to minaret as people were urged into the streets.
One episode returns to Polatli Carsi Mosque in Ankara's Polatli district, where coup troops tried to stop the call by threatening mosque officials and breaking sound equipment.
The wider story includes attacks on religious officials and places of worship: at the Police Special Operations complex in Golbasi, imam Mustafa Yaman was killed while helping after the first air strike, and a muezzin was injured.
The struggle over sound was also a struggle over information. The series depicts raids on TRT and other media organisations, the forced broadcast of a coup declaration and the pressure placed on journalists and broadcasting staff.
At TURKSAT's ground facilities in Golbasi, coup aircraft dropped four bombs in an attempt to halt television transmissions.
Two employees were killed and four were wounded, but the broadcasts continued. The sequence makes clear why both public and private channels had become strategic targets: whoever controlled the signal could shape what the country understood to be happening.
That multiplication of perspectives is central to the format. Military, police, political, media and civilian accounts are placed beside one another. The chain of command appears through interviews and actors, allowing testimony to interrupt, clarify and deepen the dramatised scenes rather than simply follow them.
For Saglam, directing those scenes produced complicated emotions. "July 15 was terrifying for all of us. It was a very difficult night," he says.
"But it also showed how, in difficult moments, we came together as a country and a nation and said 'stop' to the coup plotters in a loud voice for our freedom and democracy."
Some scenes were so painful, he adds, that the crew could scarcely believe the events had actually happened.
That is why he sees the series primarily as an archive for a generation that did not witness the night.
"Young people in particular do not know very much about an event that took place ten years ago," Saglam says.
"I hope this work reminds both today and tomorrow how difficult a stage our journey of freedom and democracy passed through, how great the sacrifices were and how much effort was made."
