What happened in Turkey? Making sense of the 10-hour-long attempted military coup

Late on Friday night, India time, Twitter started to see a spurt of unconfirmed news suggesting that the Turkish military had blocked and cordoned off the iconic Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, which connects Europe and Asia by road. 

Initial reactions by journalists in Turkey and others in the region was that it was a large anti-terror drill, as the iconic bridge in the background sported the colours of the French flag as a mark of respect to the lives lost just a day earlier when a man rammed a truck through the promenade in the French city of Nice, killing dozens, an act now allegedly being claimed by the Islamic State. 

However, the Turkish situation only started bubbling after even the best-informed journalists in the country failed to recognise what exactly was going on. “I don’t know what’s happening, I am getting most updates from social media,” a journalist in Istanbul told me when I called to find out more about the ground situation. But over the period of the next one-hour, post-midnight India time, the situation in the country’s capital Ankara and its main city Istanbul seemed to deteriorate very quickly. Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter planes were seen making extremely low passes in what seemed like a show of support for the factions of the military that were leading this attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of President of Recep Tayyip Erdogan (apparently the Turkish pilot who shot down the Russian jet on the Turkish-Syrian border some months back was also one of the plotters). 

The military coup commanders in #Turkey. pic.twitter.com/HsSLmfvqsk — Barzan Sadiq (@BarzanSadiq) July 16, 2016

The coup seemed to progress at a frantic pace, with military commanders taking over media stations in the country and announcing that they had seized control of the Turkish government throughout the nation. At this point, various conjecture driven reports were preempting the fate of Erdogan, with some suggesting he had fled to Germany and one report even saying he has left for Iran. However, the reality could not have been more different, as Erdogan surfaced in Istanbul after using FaceTime to call on his supporters to take to the streets against the dissenting army factions. 

This call by Erdogan, perhaps surprisingly to most, worked immensely in his favour. Initial reactions to his calls for people to assemble against the military’s actions were met with underlying fear that the dissenting factions will not fall back, and could take lethal force against civilians. However, amidst tanks rolling down Istanbul’s roads with helicopter gunships firing projectiles on government buildings in Ankara and Istanbul airport being blocked off, within hours of realisation what was afoot, the coup attempt bizarrely also started to fizzle out. The fact that Erdogan was able to address his country using FaceTime, and later via proper television channels, was probably the first moment when it could have been said that the coup was perhaps not the most well-planned, and confusion more than confidence prevailed within the dissenting army men. It is also pivotal to remember here that a lot of the Turkish army comprises of men who are not full-time soldiers and are citizens who are required to go through compulsory military service. Hence, the abstract and broken way in which this coup progressed could be made sense of as normal civilians managed to overrun Army tanks and capture troops, even killing many of them later on. 

Turkey as a country is not new to the concept of military coups either. In fact, including this coup attempt, the country has previously seen four coups in 1960, 1971, 1980, 1993 (alleged coup), 1997, and now the attempt in 2016. One of the critical acts by Erdogan to secure his seat in the country was that he, in good time, managed to control or at best challenge the information flow. Even as the coup leaders announced their victory, it seemed far from the truth, and they found little support not just from the opposition parties in the country but from the people as well, including those who were against Erdogan’s leadership but had decided that a coup could very well be a worse option. 

By early morning, the tides had turned. The military units which had defiantly blocked the Bosphorus Bridge, were shown on live television putting their arms down and surrendering to pro-Erdogan forces, which included the city’s police force. In fact, unprecedented footage of police forces disarming and arresting Turkish Army personnel flooded media outlets, portraying a dismal look into how poorly planned and executed the coup was despite the panache it started with. 

One of the most common questions being asked right now is whether the Turkish Army was firmly behind this attempt or not. The answer in all likeliness is no. The Turkish Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar was not part of this, and was in fact held hostage by the dissenters only to be released later on. The Army commander in Istanbul was also not part of it, giving the dissenters lack of credibility within the chain of command of the military for it to be a cohesive operation. This sporadic uprising within the military against the state was perhaps bound to fail as experts have long envisaged that coups do not have big support as a political tool anymore in Turkey. To strengthen this sentiment, Erdogan over the past years has purged both the police and the armed forces of people his government believed could create trouble. 

The other noteworthy aspect here is the support base of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish preacher and former Imam who now lives in self-imposed exile in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania in the United States. A former ally of Erdogan, Gulen is blamed for running a “parallel government” in Turkey and his supporters within the army were also blamed for the current situation. It will be interesting to see whether the top generals and colonels involved in this coup attempt had underlying loyalties with Gulen or not, as more information becomes available in the coming days. 

It also remains to be seen how Turkish politics will recover from this. Erdogan is already seen as a ‘singular’ leader, who has a tight grasp on his leadership and has critical policies, such as clamping down on free press and so on, which have highlighted him as a president with dictatorial streaks. The outcome of this failed coup could be bad news for Turkey, as Erdogan is most certainly going to look to consolidate power even further. If the dissenters were thinking the coup would free Turkey from his shackles, they may now be in for a Turkey being run in more of a style like Vladimir Putin runs Russia.