Former Turkish army chief and president Kenan Evren has died aged 97.<br /><br /> Evren was sentenced to life in prison last year for leading a 1980 coup that resulted in widespread torture, arrests and deaths.<br /><br /> He was too frail to attend court and age and sickness spared him from serving time behind bars. <br /><br /> Fifty people were executed, half a million arrested, hundreds died in jail, and many more disappeared in the years after the coup.<br /><br /> Political parties were shut down and Evren went on to serve for seven years as president from 1982. <br /><br /> The coup left Turkey with a constitution drafted by the generals and viewed by many to this day as a brake on democratic development in the EU candidate nation. <br /><br /> Evren, who had been receiving treatment at a military hospital in Ankara, is reported to have suffered multiple organ failure as a result of old age and was pronounced dead late on Saturday.
