Fourteen days before the coup attempt on July 15, Senior Master Sergeant Ziya Ilhan Dağdaş, who was assigned from Erzincan to Ankara’s Military Academy’s Bando Bölük Command, rented a house and prepared to settle in it. Upon the call of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Sergeant Dağdaş went to the General Staff Headquarters in civilian clothing and lost his life to a single bullet that hit his head.
Dağdaş’s family went to Ankara from Muğla after they did not receive news from their son after the coup attempt. Bilsen Dağdaş, Sergeant Dağdaş’s mother, initially thought her son was among the soldiers taken into custody, but when she could not find his name on the list, she looked for him in hospitals. Bilsen Dağdaş, who searched for her son for six days, went to the Ankara Forensic Medicine Institution as a last resort. She had found out that there were bodies that had not been identified, so she gave a DNA sample. Eight days after the coup attempt, she received the news that her son was among the dead. Due to the circumstances, she did not immediately announce that her son had been martyred and applied to the Ankara Public Prosecutor's Office. The prosecutor's office announced that Dağdaş was martyred by FETÖ soldiers after an investigation.
Sergeant Dağdaş’s body was taken to his hometown of Muğla six months after the July 15 coup and he was buried with a military ceremony at the Martyrs Station Cemetery.
