Turkey coup?

Excellent Reddit comment that sums up many countries responses to the failed coup.

While it's not surprising that official representatives of official National Governments would come down anti-overthrow of official National Governments it is amusing to see a collection of condemnations to the same people from the UK, NATO, Spain, Syrian-Opposition, Hamas, Qatar, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Azerbaijan.

Looks like the counter coup has started.

Almost Stalin like in it's purge.

Rumour that a US Air base has been surrounded and the power cut. If true, that could be very worrying.

Axon wrote:

Almost Stalin like in it's purge.

Rumour that a US Air base has been surrounded and the power cut. If true, that could be very worrying.

Unlikely to be an anti-US move -- seems more likely to be preempting any attempts by coup plotters to seek asylum at Incirlik.

Bargaining chip for Gülen?

Still, don't like these situations. Diplomacy using your military can backfire.

I didn't like Erdogan one bit before. I think he is bad for the country. After this, he'll be ten times worse.

Incirlik is near the Med coast, and we have two carriers in the region. Additionally, Turkey is an ally. They can cut power and the like, but if they try to take the base, they'd better plan on serious opposition from NATO. That would be... Bad. I believe we'd do a lot to protect the B-61s.

Turkey widens post-coup purge, demands Washington hand over cleric.

The cleric in question is Fethullah Gülen, who claimed that the coup was staged pretty early on. It's hard to say one way or another but the EU commissioner handling Turkey suggests that at least the arrest lists must have been ready to go beforehand.

Edit: Hard to say one way or the other but if that many people had *actually* been involved in the coup, it likely would have succeeded.

Either way, given Erdogan's charming views on women and appetite for jailing people that mock him, there's no way this ends well.

To be honest I think the coup itself was real enough. It would be hard and risky to fake it.
Especially since Erdogan probably isn't particularly popular in the military.

No doubt the government had lists of people they would like to get rid of though. Even before the coup they have gotten rid of opponents. Now they can just get rid of everyone at once.

Yonder wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

Is this the first coup in a 'major' country since the widespread adoption of the internet? I can't remember another one since 2000 or so. It will be interesting to see how the instant communication everywhere shapes it.

Are we not counting Egypt as a major country? (Serious question, that's not supposed to come off as snarky as it probably does).

From what I remember from Egypt, wasn't that more of a populist uprising after the president declared himself dictator with unlimited power, and then eventually the military backed the protests to overthrow him? You are right in that would probably be a coup, but it wasn't a military-led surprise initiative, which is what I usually think of when people say coup.

LeapingGnome wrote:
Yonder wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

Is this the first coup in a 'major' country since the widespread adoption of the internet? I can't remember another one since 2000 or so. It will be interesting to see how the instant communication everywhere shapes it.

Are we not counting Egypt as a major country? (Serious question, that's not supposed to come off as snarky as it probably does).

From what I remember from Egypt, wasn't that more of a populist uprising after the president declared himself dictator with unlimited power, and then eventually the military backed the protests to overthrow him? You are right in that would probably be a coup, but it wasn't a military-led surprise initiative, which is what I usually think of when people say coup.

If you are looking for recent military coups, look to Thailand.

boogle wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:
Yonder wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

Is this the first coup in a 'major' country since the widespread adoption of the internet? I can't remember another one since 2000 or so. It will be interesting to see how the instant communication everywhere shapes it.

Are we not counting Egypt as a major country? (Serious question, that's not supposed to come off as snarky as it probably does).

From what I remember from Egypt, wasn't that more of a populist uprising after the president declared himself dictator with unlimited power, and then eventually the military backed the protests to overthrow him? You are right in that would probably be a coup, but it wasn't a military-led surprise initiative, which is what I usually think of when people say coup.

If you are looking for recent military coups, look to Thailand.

Yup, Thailand in '06 and '14, though I'm not sure how much of a factor the internet played in the 2006 one. Excellent writeups of all sorts of infosec stuff there.

It's appears that the coup was very close to succeeding. The details in the article reveal that they were minutes away from capturing and/or killing Erdogan.

Edit: Tin foil hat time! Not capturing him, allowing his plane to get away and not shutting off all communication do seem a huge over sight.

Axon wrote:

Edit: Tin foil hat time! Not capturing him, allowing his plane to get away and not shutting off all communication do seem a huge over sight.

Or proper fuel for conspiracy theories.... oh look!

Turkey conspiracy theories proliferate as fog of war recedes

Even the central issue of who was behind the coup is now contested reality, according to a snap poll: it showed that a third of Turks believe Mr Erdogan himself, who says his own life was threatened, was behind the coup. (The poll, by London-based Streetbees, queried about 2,800 Turks, two-thirds via mobile apps, and a third in person.)

Edit -> This one is particularly baffling:

“Turks, like a lot of people around the world are given to conspiracy theories — simplistic explanations for complex events for things they don’t fully understand,” said Ross Wilson, a former US ambassador to Ankara now at the Atlantic Council.

1- That's the opposite of a "conspiracy theory"... those are usually overcomplicated explanations of somthing simple (i.e., chemtrails).

2- A coup, failed or not, staged or not, always involves a conspiracy.

It's a classic tactic to consolidate and further power.. I wouldn't be shocked if it was orchestrated.

Tyops wrote:

1- That's the opposite of a "conspiracy theory"... those are usually overcomplicated explanations of somthing simple (i.e., chemtrails).

I don't think this is true. Chemtrails aren't an answer to "Huh, what are those clouds after jet planes?", they're an answer to the question question of why people are docile in the face of (perceived) overwhelming governmental power, or why the birth rate is declining, or how climate change is really happening, et cetera. Conspiracy theories are often trying to attribute complex mechanisms to individuals or organizations that are more understandable.

And yes, conspiracies undoubtedly happened but "conspiracy theories" has come to mean (or imply) the crackpot, unfounded kind, not an investigation into illegal corporate monopolies or something that actually happens.

I heard one theory that sounds plausible, there was a real group who wanted a coup, but they were infiltrated and misdirected. Enough people died so it seems it wasn't entirely faked.
Either way, yeah, those lists of who to fire or detain were definitely drawn up beforehand.

Why are extremists always so rabidly anti- education? Oh yes, because rational thought is a death sentence for that kind of world view. F*ck them and their bronze age thinking.

Rallick wrote:

Why are extremists always so rabidly anti- education? Oh yes, because rational thought is a death sentence for that kind of world view. F*ck them and their bronze age thinking.

I thought this was about the Turkey coup, not the RNC...

Really, I could copy / paste that remark in quite a few threads here. Typing that just made me sad.

Wow.

More than 9,000 military officers are in detention already and the number keeps climbing.

That is probably going to put a huge strain on their judiciary! One might even guess that these folks won't get a fair trial.

From the article on the academics.

The suspensions followed Monday’s purge targeting other ministries and state institutions.

The employees include 9,000 police, 2,745 judges, 8,777 from the interior ministry 1,500 from the finance ministry, 257 staff working at the prime minister’s office, at least 100 from the National Intelligence Agency MIT, 399 from the family and social affairs ministry and 492 from the religious affairs ministry.

... and no trials, of course, there's arealdy releases coming out indicating that all the political prisoners are being denied rights to representation etc.

Beginning to understand why the military did what it did (having not known much about Turkey prior)... and starting to wish they had succeeded.

Çevik Bir, one of the generals who planned the process, said "In Turkey we have a marriage of Islam and democracy. (…) The child of this marriage is secularism. Now this child gets sick from time to time. The Turkish Armed Forces is the doctor which saves the child. Depending on how sick the kid is, we administer the necessary medicine to make sure the child recuperates".[14]

citation

The last time the Military took power (and every time before that) people were illegally detained, tortured and dissappeared. The role of the military to be protectors of secularism is a convenient narrative that the military invented. Do you know who wrote the most recent version of the constitution? The former military coup winners.

I'm not defending Erdogan but even his opponents don't want military coups as the solution. So far want Erdogan is doing is deplorable but when the Military got it's chance they were worse. Ironically, you can even make a case that AKP current support is founded from the backlash of the effects of the previous coup.

Turkey needs to work this out at the ballot box. It may take decades and a whole series of elections. Military coups solve nothing but very short term problems while storing up greater ones down the line.

I think history shows that military coups can be for the better in the long run (although always a bunch of worse and better intermingled), but in this case it was extremely premature. The equivalent of preemptive wars, with weak arguments of stopping potential future threats.

Erdogan is nasty, but he was still not beyond being stopped by democratic elections. Now he very well might be.

Suspending human rights? Turkey? Surprising!

Axon wrote:

Turkey needs to work this out at the ballot box. It may take decades and a whole series of elections.

Seems like you are assuming the dictator will allow elections, or that they will be legitimate. I think this is quickly heading toward a situation where Erdogan is a dictator until he dies.