MUGLA, Turkey

A Turkish court on Tuesday sentenced 36 members of a hit squad which attempted to assassinate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the night of the 2016 coup attempt.

The court in the southwestern province of Mugla handed 18-year prison terms to 30 members on 18 counts of robbery. Five others were given 15-year jail time on 15 counts. One was given 18 years on 15 counts.

All of them were soldiers who had infiltrated the armed forces to carry out the 2016 coup bid orchestrated by the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO).

On the night of the coup, they robbed Erdogan's bodyguards.

The president, who was vacationing in southwestern Mugla province at the time, had departed for Istanbul after being alerted about the coup bid and narrowly escaped an armed attack on the hotel he was staying in Marmaris. The hotel was bombed 15 minutes after his departure.

FETO and its US-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, in which 251 people were killed and 2,734 injured.

Ankara also accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.

*Writing by Zehra Nur Duz in Ankara