Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
reuters.com
reuters.com
The F-16s had him locked in, and never fired. Which was odd.
It all doesn't really make a ton of sense, but it's possible.
The military that were holding areas were told it was a drill. It was by far one of the worst coups from an organizational standpoint I've ever seen.
That leaves you with either
1. A extremely poor, unfocused, and uncoordinated coup that had real intentions, but was rushed and ultimately had no chance of succeeding.
2. Erdogan knew a coup was going to happen, and pushed them to go forward with it while he was safe, with protection from fighter jets, etc.
3. A staged coup, and the fighter jets were always part of Erdogan's attempt, at the beginning flying low as a show of support, and at the end, validating he can land safety with no lucky/unlucky coup member getting to take him down.
And, I don't really know. It's one of those, but there isn't enough evidence in any direction to really make a claim of anything in my view.
I will say, none of it makes any sense. Erdogan telling everyone to take the streets to stop this felt ridiculous during it, but afterwards makes a ton of sense.
Most of the military didn't know they were in a coup. And the only shutdowns were things that could potentially alert the military on what was going on, facebook, cellphones, etc.
But I think you have to take it at face value, and go with option 1 unless other evidence comes.
It was already pretty shaky that they had a list of judges to immediately sack 2 hours after the coup. I mean, that's incredible timing.
Edit: I'd also like to add,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cia-officials-turkey-cou...
Ignore the tone, but it was incredible during the coup,
Robert Baer, a veteran former CIA officer said
“I have been involved in coups before,” he said. “They should have taken CNN Turk and closed it down the first minutes, the radio station, social media, the internet. Even if they didn’t arrest [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, they should have taken care of all of that right at the beginning.”
Baer also revealed that he had discussed the possibility of a coup with Turkish military officers in the past few months.
“I’ve been speculating with Turkish officers a couple months ago about a coup and they said, ‘Absolutely not,’” he said. “And clearly they’re not involved, so there’s limited support for this.”
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At the time when we said it, everyone focused on how inappropriate it was to be giving the coup leaders advice, but if you remove that from the equation, what you have is legitimate criticism as to the plan, and more questions that don't have answers regarding who actually started this in the Turkish military.
Apparently, Early on, a "coup" F-16 dropped bombs near the presidential palace.
The Blackhawk (possibly with door gunners) and Cobra attack helicopters were "coup" controlled. One Blackhawk was shot down by a "loyalist" F-16. The sonic booms heard later in the morning were likely loyalist F-16s. An F-16 can't stay in afterburner, or fly supersonic at low altitude for very long even with external tanks. The loyalist F-16s were refueled in the air from a Turkish AF tanker.
If there were coup controlled F-16s anywhere near Erdogan's aircraft, it would be stupid to fly in circles. The F-16s could shoot it down from over 20 miles away. It was more likely they were waiting for ground forces to secure the runways before landing.
Note: This is based on my opinions, and available public news sources.
21:15 - Statement read on state-owned TRT says military has "completely taken over the administration of the country to reinstate constitutional order". - That's when I started following it on CNN and similar
2126 - President Erdogan facetimes people to take to the streets to protest. Speaking to a CNN Turk reporter via a cellphone video link he says it will meet a "necessary response". He says he is returning to the capital Ankara. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/turkey-timeline-coup-a...
Erdogan is spoken to by various media and photographed at his hotel http://qz.com/733810/after-the-military-seized-state-media-t...
Some time later 3 helicopters turn up to get Erdogan at the same hotel he's been photographed at and then left "after about 1.5 hours after Erdogan's departure from the hotel is by the soldiers in the coup attempt was made here attacks. " http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yerel-haberler/mugla-haberleri/er...
You'd think the normal timing would be try to detain Erdogan, then announce coup then press turn up, not announce coup, allow global live press coverage for a couple of hours, then try to catch Erdogan. I realise there may have been confusion but phones, the internet were working normally. They could have whatsapped 'got him yet?' or phoned or whatever. Or turned on the TV and watched CNN and seen his flight on flight24 before going to his hotel.
Odd.
Update - the daily mail says they went to the wrong hotel http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3695470/The-luxury-s...
But also the soldiers were looking for Erdogan at 3.30am, long after he'd gone. And presumably after the photographers had packed up and gone home. Maybe they don't bother checking the news or AlJazeera's twitter feed? Or just coup theatre perhaps. Mail's account from some hotel guests:
>But they were woken at 3.30am by the popping of guns – which they thought at first were fireworks – and his wife Theresa went to the door to see what was going on.
>She was met by the sight of military rebels running around the hotel armed with machine guns.
>'You want to see what is going on, but she found herself face to face with a soldier with a machine gun in his hands,' continued Mr de Graaf.
>The soldiers were shouting in broken English: 'Where Erdogan stay? Erdogan stay?'
There's actually a great scene in the end of the Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown Istanbul episode where someone close to the ruling class (a business owner), makes the following comment[1]:
> "Fear works. Fear gets votes."
Beyond that, I can't find a clip, but it was the most real-life foreshadowing I have ever seen in my life.
[1] http://www.eater.com/2015/11/8/9684640/parts-unknown-recap-i...
We've seen stuff on Reddit, but the conversation they had at the end of the episode with the business owner was just scary. He was basically just like, "yeah, we're going to take power right from under everyone's noses, and it's going to make me rich"
That much is obvious. Erdogan didn't start laying blame for problems on the "parallel structure" only after the coup attempt, he's been doing it for years. The coup attempt provided the political pretext for stronger action against the group (and, potentially, others that the regime can use the pretext of going after the group to deal with at the same time) than the regime thought it could get away with before.
Governments frequently use crises as pretexts for actions which they wanted to do previously but didn't find political support for, both against specific internal or external targets and in terms of general, non-specifically-targeted policy.
Edit: changed "quite likely" to "possible" to address valid criticism.
It is imaginable that the coup was staged, but it is not more likely than the other, more realistic explanations. In fact, it is still rather unlikely, even if one cannot rule it out completely.
That being said, as another commentator mentioned: These lists have existed before, since tensions have been going on for years. So now Erdogan just had to pull them out of the drawer.
Kind of how the 342-page US Patriot Act was introduced days after the September 11th terrorist attacks?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Counterterrorism_Act_o...
How are they gonna find replacements? How are the students gonna cope without teachers? What is Erdogan trying to do..
In his convoluted thinking, he's trying to stop the spread of an anti-establishment political organization that has infiltrated all levels of the Turkish military and civil service.
Or, you know, they're reasonable people who are concerned about the dimming of their country's democracy.
http://www.craveonline.com/design/869309-north-korean-defect...
> Well, it's hard to say. Yes and no. Because if you're talking about nowadays North Koreans, it's a little bit hard for me to say that a majority of North Koreans believe propaganda. But I do think that older generations definitely believe government propaganda, because in the 1970's, economically the North Koreans were better off than South Korea, but after the 1990s famine, things have proven that it is not the best country in the world as the government or state claim, because how can you accept the propaganda when your best friend dies of starvation? So I think nowadays more and more people are critical of government propaganda, but I can't say what all North Koreans do now.
I think you are thinking a century. Like pre Kemal.
http://www.reuters.com/article/turkey-security-judges-idINKC...
http://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-dismisses-8000-police-...
This looks very much like a real-world version of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's "Execute order 66":
Quoted from https://fullfact.org/europe/turkey-likely-join-eu/
Turkey first applied to join what was then the EEC in 1987. It was declared an eligible candidate in 1997. Negotiations were formally opened in 2005.
Now, in 2016, negotiations have closed on just one out of 35 chapters—‘science and research’, which was completed in 2006, the year after it was opened.
Of the remaining 34 chapters, 14 have been opened for negotiation.
In 2006, the EU decided that until Turkey agrees to remove obstacles to free movement of goods (including transport restrictions) between it and Cyprus, no more chapters will be provisionally closed. Eight chapters (including areas fundamental to EU law, such as free movement of goods and right of establishment and freedom to provide services) will not even be opened.
The narrative that makes more sense to me is that Erdogan used membership talks to maintain a moderate reputation, creating a retort to both domestic and international critics. It weakened the position of moderate Kemalists at home, and effectively silenced EU criticism (what were they going to say, "he's a dictator and we'd like him in our club?"). The EU was reluctant to back off that course because it would have alienated an approximate ally well-placed to deal with Iraq and the refugee crisis.
At this point the game is played out; Erdogan has his state control, EU membership is less appealing, and the refugee crisis is, if not fixed, at least no longer new. Everyone got their short-term gains, and the talks can go nowhere just like they were before.
However, it would require Erdogan to be quite an intelligent, long-term thinking person. Which, in my eyes, has to be questioned considering how he is so emotional and short-tempered that he picks any tiny, meaningless war he can get, even if it means suing teenagers who "offend" him.
That's what, based on my limited understanding, is what distinguishes him from Putin. Putin is in many ways similar to Erdogan, but he actually knows that many minor fights are not worth pursuing. Which is why we the Internet can create cartoons and collages ridiculing Putin without being sued by him :)
Seeing Erdogan lacking essential personality traits of a good leader, I somehow have a hard time seeing that he is capable of that type of long-term planning. But who knows. He nevertheless managed to get quite far.
Erdogan confuses me for the same reasons as Trump - he's a petty, immature strongman who has no sense of proportion, but somehow he makes enough clever moves to advance his position. I'm not sure if they're political savants, depending on good advisers, or just lucky and grabbing hold of domestic anger.
Erdogan seems to be a joke of despot compared to the likes of Putin or even Assad, and "he's not competent" is probably the best counterargument to any claim of a big, long-term plan. I just wish I understood how he managed to get this far without the abilities that dictatorship usually requires.
That they were recently is surprising to many. IIRC the main bargaining chip that kept them in contention was consideration for the current collection of refugee crises where certain actions by Turkey could help a lot and other could further exacerbate the problems (both from an administrative PoV within the EU and a humanitarian PoV).
For example I saw some posts from turkish people on reddit, where they concluded that the few reaming Kemalists (there was a kemalist purge in 2011, with most of them replaced by Gulenists after some false accusations), would attempt a coup during EU-join talks, because they thought joining EU was a better deal than risking a coup.
When Brexit happened, it became clear the EU was a pointless effort, thus everyone waiting on the EU to put their plans forward, now didn't had to wait anymore, so all the corked schemes will now suddenly go forward.
People I talked with, many told me it wouldn't surprise them if we keep seeing a festival of coups, counter-coups and political manuevers now that EU is not in the way anymore.
That 'pointless effort' has a population larger than the United States and much of the highest standards of living and productivity on Earth. The daft vote by the least educated and deliberately, cynically manipulated and misled half of one country does not make or demonstrate the EU pointless. If the vote was held today it would not pass.
It's possible that EU expansion is over. We ran out of neighborhood democracies.
If Trump wins in a similar democratic fubar, will the US be pointless?
This kind of attitude towards that half is maybe part of the reason they voted that way, education level aside. Not everyone benefited from EU membership.
How can you possibly know that?
Additionally, "no benefit for some people" is such a weak statement that you're bound to observe some contrary cases even if they aren't typical or representative. So at the limit I don't think you're making the right bets. But I would agree that the more evidence should be given. I would disagree that this evidence can't be empirical; it's obvious that it's a statement with empirical consequences, as we're speaking about elements of the world (people who live under EU policy in the UK).
At this point, with EU membership looking less inviting and Turkey looking downright autocratic, it's hard to imagine it will happen. But the talks did their job, helping to shore up Erdogan's standing after Tahrir Square while he consolidated his power.
It's one more consequence of the slow. late reaction to Iraq and Syria: the EU had to sell out to anyone who could offer them some kind of damage control.
Cuba is in the shape it's in because the industrialist, knowledge workers, business owners, all left. I honestly believe the revolution started with good intentions, then began to turn more authoritarian. And finally, stacked the ranks with incompetent loyalists.
That being said, how does a successful military coup increase a country's democracy in any conceivable way? How is this a "last ditch effort for democracy" as so many people here seem to be thinking? And why is the answer always "oh it was a fake"? How does it work in the first place? Do you think people will suddenly stop voting for their favorite party and ideology (opposing the ruling secular elite) after 14 years?
A conceivable way is they overthrow a dictator and hold elections.
In practice through research finds "though democracies are occasionally established in the wake of coups, more often new authoritarian regimes emerge, along with higher levels of state-sanctioned violence." http://rap.sagepub.com/content/3/1/2053168016630837
I don't think a coup would have been a good idea in this case - Erdogan was elected and fairly popular so the argument for a coup would be weak. One reason to think it may not have been a real coup attempt.
See, e.g., 9/11 truthers.
Political correctness. Turkey is defacto ruled by a brutal dictatorship now, the failed coup was the last chance of restoring actual democracy in Turkey. The Turkish constitution is actually good and acknowledge the danger of an Islamic theocracy. The role of the Turkish army is/was to prevent it.They failed.
This was completely set-up to round up popular support / not make it look suspicious when Erdogan did exactly this.
Do you think it was a setup orchestrated by Erdogan ?
It makes me think that the coup was Turkey's Reichstag fire moment.
All of them!?
Doctors are next
A healthy combination of SIGINT, HUMINT, and homicidal madness has brought us here.
But with the latest purges you've got to wonder where they want to get the replacements from. Any sane person will probably try to leave the country rather than being clubbed to death by AKP fans.
Moral of the story: NEVER trust or vote for a party that has the word "justice" in its name.
I suppose they'll have to settle for a Kurdish insurgency...
It kind of shuts down the potential for any real coup to happen.
The military in Turkey has been infiltrated for decades, but I'm sure some of the military are now just biding there time. It wouldn't be hard for even a few lone actors to take out the president. AKA two jet pilots and an informant.
Unfortunate that we're just hearing crickets on the international level though. It's a damn shame that a systematic rebuke of Erdogan's official narrative isn't anywhere in the mainstream media.
Putin did all of this on a much slower timescale, and gave the society time to adapt. Erdogan is not doing that. He's taking all the power all at once, and throwing out all the opposition out all at once, too.
This might backfire badly, although the "failed coup" certainly gives him a break to do all this, while the rest of the "normal" population is left confused and not knowing what to do and who to support next.
By the way, what's happening in Turkey is also an excellent real-world example of this:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
That's why the "failed coup" was so critical in allowing him to do all of this. Even if there would've been some of those "good people" that would've opposed him (although not that much evidence of that in the past few years, it would seem), they are now paralyzed by this event.
Still, I believe that that this purge is way too sudden and way too large to not have an "opposite and equal reaction" coming back at Erdogan. But it may take a while to happen.
I've met a lot of Turkish students in New York over the last 10 years who have absolutely no plans to go back to their country ever.
The friends I had growing up whose parents were Turkish diplomats all have no plans to go back (their parents/family included) and from what I heard most of their colleagues found ways to stay as well.
I think many who would react are finding ways to leave instead.
Now he is digging his heels in.
I guess that line gets blurry, anyway. If you find someone with a legitimate grievance and then encourage them to rebel and give them support, is that real or fake?
According to the FBI, that would be real.
Probably the most misused term/epithet in international relations. At its worst Turkey is no more repressive than Russia or China and less repressive than Iran. Once you use "totalitarian" to describe authoritarian regimes, you run out of room to describe those that actually qualify as totalitarian, such as North Korea or Eritrea.
Well, neither is on the North Atlantic or in Europe.
Okay well, Russia sort of is, but...
This is what is called "setting the bar so low that a mouse could trip over it."
There's already a term for that. Authoritarian.
In a dictatorship, it doesn't even matter who you vote for because the results can be falsified. Last Turkish election was stolen by Erdogan's AKP. And no one in western media said anything about it.
Erik Meyersson, prof at Stockholm School of Economics, did the analysis of turkish election data and he found the evidence of falsification:
https://erikmeyersson.com/2015/11/04/digit-tests-and-the-pec...
You are so right on this. Last elections in Poland (EU member) were won by "Law and Justice" party and it is authoritarian party.
Also see Poland's "Justice" Party. Almost the same story there, too.
Not a scientific experiment by any means, but I've also noticed that leaders who have been lawyers, also tend to presume themselves "above the law", and they usually try to interpret the law to suit them.
This might be because from their point of view the "law" is not something set in stone, and therefore being a "criminal" is all "relative". That law can be changed on a whim. And they've been dealing with legal loopholes their whole careers as well. Knowing that, they can probably excuse various crimes much more easily in their heads.
Look at Syria. The civil war is still on-going. This is not Thailand. There is no King / Emperor to bless.
https://pulsemedia.org/2009/02/02/aldous-huxley-the-ultimate...
edit:
>Perhaps next time they should consider assassination
Perhaps you should consider the possibility that this coup was staged by Erdogan himself in order to purge all critically thinking people in prominent positions.
The coup members execute the constitional military idioligy/law of the Turkish military, that is to prevent both ousider and insider enemies. Here insiders are islamic nuts. Take control, establish Ataturk's 6 (iirc) main points; united republic, secularism, Turkish state, etc. Then they leave. Thece principle are almost same as modern western priciples in ethnic countries like Spain or France, but not like Switzerland or UK.
Sadly Turkey is not only geographically between Europe and Middle East but also idiologically. Ataturk was from Europe. AKP supporters are from eastern parts of the country.
http://theataturksocietyofcanada.ca/mka/revolutions/ataturks...
Related: These tweets by Turkish journalist https://twitter.com/ikoker/status/755104366235901952
At least Obama is threatening to throw Turkey out of NATO, but knowing Obama's ABC policy (Always-Be-Compromising), it's just an empty threat, and Erdogan likely knows it.
The people had little choice in deciding their fate, now they have no choice. Erdogan is here to stay -- he will either eventually pass away of old age (see: Zimbabwe's eternal president, Mugabe) or be assassinated.