In 1951, some thirty-three years after the end of the Great War and twenty-three years after first referring to the ‘living dead’ prisoners of war, Dr Mazhar Osman passed away at the age of sixty-seven. Despite the fact that in this book we have encountered his harsh views on prisoners of war, war neurotics, malingerers, women and other groups, he had done a great deal during his lifetime to advance the science of psychiatry and public hygiene in Turkey. Among other accomplishments, he created the first modern psychiatric hospital, founded the Green Crescent (Temperance Society) to curtail alcohol use, and played an important role in the establishing of serology, neuro-pathology and experimental psychology labs. On 27 May 1960, nine years after Mazhar Osman's death, the Turkish republic witnessed its first military coup, which toppled the Demokrat Party in power since 1950. This coup started a chain reaction of events that brought to positions of great power and influence three generals of the Turkish military. Had he lived to see the coup, it is possible that Dr Mazhar Osman may have noticed something familiar about those three generals.

Because the coup was planned and led by colonels, some generals were not happy at all about a group of subordinates attempting to take charge. It was rumoured that upon receiving the news of the coup, General Ragıp Gümüşpala (1897–1964), the commander of the Third Army in Erzurum – the same army which had fought against the Russians during the Great War and gave up many of its own as prisoners of war – threatened to march his soldiers to Ankara and to crush the coup.