Asım Akkaya, who resisted FETÖ’s putschists at the TURKSAT building on the night of July 15th, secured satellite broadcasting and succeeded in keeping the traitors busy until President Erdoğan connected to live broadcasting. Playing a significant role in preventing the coup attempt from succeeding, Asım kept the broadcasts on and helped people stay informed about the coup and to go out on to the streets.
“I risked everything”
Asım, a Technical Support Specialist describes that night; “Thinking that my friends could have been martyred at the helicopter rake, I risked everything. They put a gun against my head and asked me to cut the lines. I only cut local TV channels. Then I told them that we should go to the satellite dishes and took them away from the building. I spent about 20 minutes at the satellite dish area. I cut some cables there too, but I didn’t touch broadcasts,” said Akkaya.
Fighting death face to face
When the putschists unsuccessful in shutting down the broadcasts, they brought specialists from Samanyolu TV. However, those terrorists were caught by the police three minutes before they arrived. When putschists came back to the building, they understood, with the phone call they received, that the TV broadcasts were still on. Asım, who delayed putschists for one hour, had a close brush with death. He talked about what happened there as follows, “They relaxed a bit when they thought that the broadcasts were shut down. They weren’t smart enough to check the TV. The group then started waiting. About an hour later, when they turned on the TV at the waiting room, they saw A Haber’s broadcast. A soldier walked in and said, ‘Sir, A Haber didn’t go off the air.’ The commander and I locked eyes. ‘Stand up,’ he said. I stood up. Then a soldier said, ‘there are still broadcasts on air.’ ‘There are channels broadcasting in Cyprus.’ I told them, ‘They are broadcasting through Cyprus, we cannot do anything about them.’ Then, after he texted someone, he stood us all up and said, ‘walk.’ Then he stopped and said, ‘I have to do it.’ At that moment, we thought that he was going to execute us all.”
