Home » Reflections: the day after the failed coup in Turkey

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Reflections: the day after the failed coup in Turkey — 49 Comments

  1. Read this about the coup:

    http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/15/turkish-coup-live-blog/

    Especially interesting is the point about the difference between the Istanbul elites and the Anatolian peasants. There are certainly similarities to the revolts between the coastal elites and flyover clingers in America and to the Brexiters and the Brusselers in Europe.

    BTW, I’ve heard about the changes that arose in Turkey as Anatolian peasants moved to Istanbul looking for work.

  2. No leader would start a coup as a trap. He’d have to be the most secure and insecure leader in the world: insecure enough to take the risk, and secure enough that he’d know it wouldn’t get out of hand. This is the kind of crazy conspiracy thinking that always leads to a bad end. It’s a conspiracy theory when none is needed to explain the facts, and it rests on unprovables.

  3. Nick:

    Those who think he “started it” think there was no risk because it was fake and staged. This is not my point of view. But what unites me and people who think it was staged is that we both think Erdogan will take full advantage of it to jail or kill his opponents and consolidate his tyrannical rule and institute more religious control over Turkey’s government.

  4. I agree that he’ll use it.

    But this kind of hidden-secrets thinking is madness.

  5. Erdogan didn’t need to stage a coup because his loyal military officers who replaced the purged military high officers, were supposed to prevent a coup. Stalin and Hitler both take pains to make use of emergencies, but their inherent paranoia means that they don’t trust anyone to start up a “fake coup”.

    My assessment is: Officers loyal to Erdogan infiltrated or informed Erdogan of the coup. The coup was begun and fell into a trap or was merely too late, given that much of the military’s command chain was replaced with loyalists to Erd.

    Thus this mimics some of the situation with Stauffenberg vs Hitler failed assassination.

    Erdogan could have delegated some of his loyal officers to stage or lead the coup, by infiltrating cells of disaffected members. However, in that case, someone could trace it back to him and Erd would have to trust in his loyal subordinates to be loyal and not double spies. It is a safer bet to allow the enemy to foment a coup, but time it so that you are ready to crush it. This allows you to use the Force of Law or precedent or might, to jail your enemies, decapitate them, or otherwise find a justification to get rid of them.

    Humans have been concocting such plots since Socrates was ordered by trial to take hemlock and the heresy trial of Jean de Arc. Nothing new.

  6. Occam’s Razor. The plotters screwed up. Not enough fire power. They didn’t anticipate all of the citizens in the street. They should have mowed them down.

  7. And Facebook and Twitter played a big role. They needed citizen support. This was a total screw up.

  8. However, in that case, someone could trace it back to him and Erd would have to trust in his loyal subordinates to be loyal and not double spies.

    Also from a different point of view, Erd’s vassals would have to trust in their dear leader enough. Otherwise, Erd could easily “sacrifice them” in an official probe, because those officers would now be in cahoots with the rebels. Erd would now “hold” that over those officer’s heads, if in the future they needed to be purged. Not something Erd’s most loyal vassals would volunteer for, and would attempt to avoid most likely.

    If, however, Erd’s most loyal military officer was found to be in cahoots with the rebels, and the rebels were executed but Erd’s loyal officer was kept safe, then I would be more likely to buy the “Erd caused the coup” theory.

    They didn’t anticipate all of the citizens in the street. They should have mowed them down.

    It would be pretty ridiculous for Constitutional patriots to mow down civilians in the streets. And that’s what the rebels claim to be for, a secular state to protect human rights in Turkey, which is against Allah, but they don’t know that.

  9. Nick Says:
    July 16th, 2016 at 3:42 pm
    I agree that he’ll use it.

    But this kind of hidden-secrets thinking is madness.

    No, it’s just something you aren’t used to. MOst people who aren’t used to this, are pretty bad at it. Although some are not, they have a talent for Byzantine plotting and solving murder mysteries.

  10. Yep, respect for rights under the constitution define the government. I did a report on the USSR’s vs the US constitution 60 years ago in high school. As a young person, I saw that the USSR’s constitution provided many more rights than our’s did, but there was no rule of law in the USSR, so the rights were imaginary. Just like in Turkey today. So sad.

  11. Watch the developments regarding both Gulen and Incirlik; this coup attempt has the potential to turn into a major diplomatic crisis for the US, on the order of the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis. I put nothing past either Erdogan or Obama….

  12. Ymarsakar – No, I’m no stranger to it. But it is literally madness, a failure to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Theories are fine, but something happens when we put them down on paper and start discussing them as if they were truthful. One of the great things about this site is Neo’s commitment to facts.

  13. The simple fact is that it is very hard to pull off a coup.

    My take, for what it is worth, is that the “people in the streets” were simply an optic. Like in the U.S., most people are not going to take to the streets under any circumstance; and particularly when the stakes are high, and the issue in doubt. So Erd got enough out–probably through the Mosques– to satisfy CNN, et al. I doubt that it reflects his overall popularity.
    The problem was that not enough of the Army, and especially the police, were committed. Unless some key players escaped, and are able to tell their story, we will never know why they believed that they had the fire power to pull it off, nor why the didn’t.

    I got caught up in anti-American riots in Istanbul decades ago. It does not take much to light their fuses. I have no good feeling for Turkey as a loyal friend. (On that note, recall their response to sending the 4th Armored through Turkey to attack Sadaam.) We have a big problem trying to dance with those people, and the fools in Washington don’t seem to appreciate that.

  14. One of the great things about this site is Neo’s commitment to facts.

    If they were facts, everyone would have them and there would be no reason to read Neo.

    No, I’m no stranger to it.

    That remains to be seen whether you are capable of deducing mysteries and/or capable of putting them into action if you wished.

  15. See my links in the comments to the previous post, especially the Berlinski one. There is a lot of stuff going on over there.

  16. Theories are fine, but something happens when we put them down on paper and start discussing them as if they were truthful.

    Theories are fine so long as they aren’t debated? What’s the point of talking about the truth then if you don’t talk about the theory.

  17. My suspicions that the coup might be a “wag the dog” scenario were aroused when I saw video of soldiers (men in khakis) apparently arrested by police (men in black jackets) walking along as if they were on a holiday outing. When you have been arrested and are in fear of what might happen to you, you don’t have a light-hearted look about you. At least that’s my take on a bit of video I saw. Anecdotal evidence and maybe wrongly interpreted, but enough to make one wonder.

  18. Huh. You’re trying to pick a weird argument with me.

    I’m with Oldflyer and Occam on this. There’s no reason to imagine that this was all a conspiracy. There are no facts that contradict the most obvious explanation. Making up a story about it accomplishes nothing.

  19. Whatever the truth of the coup may be, of more importance are Erdogan’s actions afterwards. Most telling is that Erdogan’s government has just ordered the dismissal of 2,745 judges across Turkey. Those positions must now be filled and there is no doubt that their loyalty will be to Erdogan, rather than to Turkey’s former Constitution. Turkey is now, for all intents and purposes, a dictatorship. The last significant M.E. democracy is no more.

  20. expat Says:
    July 16th, 2016 at 3:16 pm
    Read this about the coup:

    http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/15/turkish-coup-live-blog/
    * * *
    I read Mead’s post earlier; this thought seems apropos to some of the comments here:
    “9:30 PM Erdogan now broadcasting threats of dire punishment and retribution to all involved in the coup attempt. He’s unlikely to stop with the officers who organized it; Erdogan sounds as if he will take full advantage of the opportunity to fill the ranks with his loyalists.”

    And this, from J.E. Dyer, updated from last night at http://libertyunyielding.com/2016/07/15/coup-unfolds-turkey/:
    “What’s going on in the rest of the country is less certain, but it did not appear earlier that the coup had much support outside of soldiers in Istanbul and Ankara anyway. A new chief of the Turkish general staff has been named this morning (it’s after sunrise in Turkey). More than 300 military members have already been named as suspects in the coup (which is pretty darn fast to be naming names).

    Erdogan is one of the most anti-democratic leaders west of Iran. His putting down a coup is the opposite of a triumph for “democracy”; he had to ban his most successful political opponents to avoid decisive losses for his AKP (Justice and Development Party) in the last election. (And AKP took big losses anyway; it merely held on to put a governing coalition together.) Things will get worse faster now in Turkey.

    It’s an object lesson in the triumph of appearances over reality that so many on social media are celebrating the outcome in Turkey as if it represents “people power.” They’re children imagining that they live in a fairy tale. It’s not even clear what happened here: maybe this was a last, poorly-conceived gasp from the old independent military which was constituted early on as a keeper of secularism and constitutionality for the Ataturk republic. But if so, it was awfully poorly conceived. It’s hard to believe military planners really started something they clearly had no way to carry forward or finish. The ineptness of this doesn’t ring true to me.

    But there’s still a lot we don’t know. If Erdogan is back firmly in the saddle, we will probably never know it. It’s his narrative that will prevail now. The die is cast.”
    * *
    Ymarsakar Says:
    July 16th, 2016 at 3:44 pm
    * *
    An interesting comparison could certainly be made to the multitude of failed attempts on Hitler’s life, and the many counter-Nazi conspiracies which ended disastrously for the plotters. My readings have not indicated any infiltration by the Nazis, but that may have been true in some cases. Most of the time, the conspirators were undone by the depth of SS and Gestapo tentacles, and the complexity of conspiring in the pre-tech days.
    However, I do find it “fortuitous” that Erdogan was out of the country when the coup began, and thus was in no danger of capture by the plotters.

    Byzantine is the meme-of-choice for tangled conspiracies for a reason.

  21. Geoffrey Britain Says:
    July 16th, 2016 at 7:30 pm
    Whatever the truth of the coup may be, of more importance are Erdogan’s actions afterwards. Most telling is that Erdogan’s government has just ordered the dismissal of 2,745 judges across Turkey. Those positions must now be filled and there is no doubt that their loyalty will be to Erdogan, rather than to Turkey’s former Constitution. Turkey is now, for all intents and purposes, a dictatorship. The last significant M.E. democracy is no more.
    * * *
    Indeed.
    With the caveat about Israel acknowledged, you could perhaps change the last sentence to “the last significant Muslim M.E. pseudo-democracy” —

  22. It will be interesting to see if the “migrant deal” between the EU (minus Britain) and Turkey will hold up, especially the provisions granting non-visa travel by Turkish citizens, in light of the fact that Turkey is obviously turning away from Westernization.

  23. Interesting article at Politico: Did Obama get Erdogan wrong? Some excerpts:

    A few months before Friday’s attempted coup in Turkey, pro-government media outlets there published reports that the United States was actively plotting to depose Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Things came to a head at a State Department briefing in late March, when a Turkish reporter confronted spokesman John Kirby with the rumor: “Does the U.S. government try to overthrow the Erdogan government?” he asked. …

    Though he once saw him as a potential role model for Muslim leaders, Obama now considers Erdogan a thuggish autocrat who threatens Turkey’s democracy almost as much as the generals who tried to overthrow him. …

    Though Obama privately calls Erdogan a disappointment, he mostly holds his tongue in public for fear of rupturing relations with Ankara. One exception came in early April, after Obama spoke to Erdogan at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. (Obama had pointedly declined to recieve the Turkish leader at the Oval Office.) Saying he was “troubled” by Erdogan’s moves against press freedom–including his government’s recent seizure of a major Istanbul newspaper Zaman, which was later sut down–Obama recounted telling Erdogan that he “came into office with the promise of democracy” but was now engaging in the “repression of information and shutting down democratic debate,” and needed to change his ways.

  24. Two observations:
    1) The coup scenario seems a replay of the military’s coup against Peron in Argentina. Evita just got on the radio and had thousands of workers go into the streets and overwhelm the military.
    2) Let Erdogan turn Turkey into a theocracy. It will be a tragic retrograde for a democracy into a new sick man of Europe, but societies are like people, if one wants to commit suicide there is not much that can be done to stop it. In a few years the Turks will no doubt be as happy about their revolution as the Venezuelans are about theirs.
    In any event a society that depended on the army to maintain democracy was always on borrowed time. The wonder is that democracy in Turkey lasted as long as it did. This should end any question as to whether democracy and Islamism are compatible.

  25. I think it possible, even likely, that Erdogan staged the coup himself,

    I wounder Neo what she said if this matter comes from diffrent mouth than Yancey Ward” then will strat seen name taging, “Conspracy theories” or other things like the comment held by blog admin “Neo” for moderation and will never been freed, ……

    Of course Erdogan as Neo put it is a tyrant , but for the time been, he is an ISIS backdoor gate guard using his country land as training and baypassing world jihadest from round the world from diffrent believes not just one religon as most of you missing this.

    Whatever reasons why Erdogan got support and indorsmeant for “democtraticaly elected” or democracy, we had another form of democracy endorsed in Iraq well shadowed by Iranian Proxy, despite most of you knew what Iraq today after 13 years of regime change millions killed, free landtill for ISIS with all sort of media photos and pictures of those jihadests dressed as Afghani with thier ugly beard faces, most with hiddien faces, but you never seen thier dead body in the fields after “liberation” like Falujah, Ramadi or other pleaces in Iraq or Syria.

    Only the “pairot” flag shown all the time, even those Toyota Truks fitted with DShK Heavy Machine Gun on them no trace in meadia outles, but only shown runing onland called Iraq & Syria from diffrent source before but not after!!

  26. The wonder is that democracy in Turkey lasted as long as it did. This should end any question as to whether democracy and Islamism are compatible.

    Wll said Bob

  27. It’s not known whether the officers who staged the coup were Gulenist (a moderate Islamist faction, compared to Erdogan’s more extreme AKP) or Kemalist (secularizers who oppose Erdogan’s Islamism and antidemocratic tendencies).

    The answer is here

    In 2010, I moved to Istanbul, where I taught at a university and reported for this magazine for three years. I found that, much like America, Turkey was polarizing into two camps that were increasingly unable to communicate with each other. There was a new dichotomy I had never heard of before: the “white Turks” (Westernized secular élites in Istanbul and Ankara) versus the “black Turks” (the pious Muslim middle and lower-middle classes of Anatolia). The black Turks were the underdogs, while the white Turks were the racists who despised them. Jenny White writes, “The term ‘Black Turk’ is used by Kemalists to disparage Turks of lower-class or peasant heritage, who are considered to be uncivilized, patriarchal, not modern, and mired in Islam, even if they have moved into the middle class.” ErdoÄŸan proudly declared that he was a black Turk.

    The head scarf, modern Turkey, and me.
    http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/cover-story-personal-history-elif-batuman

  28. Ann:

    Obama told Erdogan he “needed to change his ways”? Oh, I’m sure Erdogan was shaking in quaking in his shoes at that tongue-lashing (if in fact Obama ever said such a thing in the first place).

  29. As it is leaking out that the victims in the Paris attack (Bataclan theater) were decapitated, castrated, and had their eyes gouged out, a PJ Media reader quoted this from, of all places, USA Today (2013):

    The al-Shabab terrorists who seized a Kenyan shopping mall for four days tortured, maimed and mutilated some of their 67 victims, leaving a tattered scene of ghoulish, gruesome remains that investigators likened to scenes from a horror movie.

    Hostages were left hanging and had their eyes gouged, others were dismembered. Others had their throats slashed or were castrated and had fingers amputated, according to media reports quoting soldiers, medical personnel and investigators sorting through the rubble of the collapsed mall.

    Kenya’s The Star, quoting a forensics doctor, said all of the victims were mutilated. Britain’s Daily Mail reported children stashed in refrigerators with knives in their bodies.

    “You find people with hooks hanging from the roof. They removed eyes, ears, nose. Actually if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers,” said the doctor. The Star said he declined to give his name.

    Some of the terrorists’ bodies also appeared to have been burned by fellow extremists to protect their identities.

    Allegations that hostages had been raped and others beheaded could not be verified, although those claims have circulated since Kenyan military forces ended the four-day mall siege earlier this week.

    More than 70 people remain missing, but it could take up to a week before the mall, much of it in ruins after the collapse of three floors, is thoroughly searched.

  30. Beverly:

    When you read those reports, you have to wonder if they were high on PCP or something like that. They seem like ghouls, zombies, that sort of thing, in a frenzy. The Manson gang.

  31. Nick,

    Occam’s Razor is tool in analysis, nothing more, and certainly not an arbiter of fact. Having said that, I don’t think it likely it was staged, but I think it probable that Erdogan knew it was coming.

  32. Watch for an Iran, Turkey, Russia axis to develop. Turkey now has more in common and more at stake with those fascist dictatorships than any western democracy.

    The times just got more interesting.

  33. Bob From Virginia:
    “This should end any question as to whether democracy and Islamism are compatible.”

    It’s essentially the same question of whether democracy and Marxism are compatible. Qutb’s foundational work reads like Marxist tract.

  34. Neo:
    “Oh, I’m sure Erdogan was shaking in quaking in his shoes at that tongue-lashing (if in fact Obama ever said such a thing in the first place).”

    … given Obama’s firm track record in the region of withholding and withdrawing the support that reformers need to compete against anti-liberal forces and, more, actively boosting anti-liberal Iran.

    https://www.lawfareblog.com/syria-obamas-fault

    https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2016/03/11/barack-obama-comes-clean/

  35. I had a conversation with a Turk from a military family when the coup began. He described the army as the Turkish version of the US two party system. Looks like that system is broken now. The coup was too little, too late.

  36. Three policemen were murdered this morning by a sniper in Baton rouge. I have not found any news about the US Air Force base in Turkey with multiple nuclear weapons. What will the Obama administration do if a Turkish mob or their military approach the base to take it over?

    The pace of events seems to be accelerating. Who is going to lead the United States during these chaotic times? Neither of the candidates for President is morally or temperamentally fit for the office.

    I am not prone to panicking but I am tempted to get the heck out of California and move to a small town far away from main roads and stock up on guns and supplies.

    Pray for the United States of America.

  37. Here is some news on the US Air Force base from Russia Today of all places. Ominously, the electric power to the base has been cut off. They probably have backup electrical generators but these have limited fuel supplies.

    https://www.rt.com/news/351606-usa-incirlik-base-turkey-blocked/

    Movement in and out of the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey was blocked on Saturday by local military authorities. The NATO base stores US tactical nuclear weapons.
    Trends

    Access to the base has now been restored and flights are again allowed in its airspace, Daily Sabah reports, citing the US consulate in Turkey.

    FOLLOW RT’S LIVE UPDATES

    “Local authorities are denying movements on to and off of Incirlik Air Base. The power there has also been cut,” the US consulate in Adana said in a message.

    “Please avoid the air base until normal operations have been restored,” it added. No further details were provided.

    According to CNN, power to the facility was also cut.

    The closure of the airspace reportedly led to a halt in US air strikes against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). CNN was told by sources that the Turkish authorities did make an exception for US aircraft that had already been deployed on missions before the airspace was shut and allowed them to land at the base.

    The air space was closed for Turkish authorities to complete “anti-coup” operations at the base, where some of the servicemen are suspected of supporting the failed Friday night military uprising. They have now been arrested, Turkish officials say.

  38. For a totally unexpected coup…

    Erdogan has proved to be astonishingly well prepared for its aftermath.

  39. Watch for an Iran, Turkey, Russia axis to develop. Turkey now has more in common and more at stake with those fascist dictatorships than any western democracy.
    Unlikely.

    There’s a lot of historical and real politik reasons for that, for those that know the histories of Turkey, Iran, and Russia, for that matter.

  40. There’s no reason to imagine that this was all a conspiracy.

    You haven’t even talked about the theory, so you have no idea what the reasons even. Your stance, Nick, was that even talking about the theory was part of the crazy. Which is an invalid way of looking for the truth, it’s more akin to circling the wagons or Obeying the Authority of the masses, the AP, or the Majority.

  41. Not wanting to emulate our friend Artfl on the subject of conspiracies, but the Soviets did in fact have an operation called the “Trust” in the ’20s and ’30s which was supposedly an anti-Communist organization seeking to overthrow the Soviet state. Actually, it was a device run by the secret police (I forget what name they went by at the time) for identifying the anti-Communists who joined the Trust, who were then subject to arrest or assassination. (Stalin then liquidated all the operatives who had run the Trust, presumably on the grounds that in pretending to be anti-Communist, they might have become infected with actual anti-Communist thought, and therefore were a danger to the state. But that’s another story.)

    So a “staged” coup is certainly not a completely unbelievable idea.

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