Turkish Military Says It Has Taken Over Country

[Gingersnap]

Turkish Military Says It Has Taken Over Country
00:07, UK, Saturday 16 July 2016

The Turkish military claims to have "fully seized control" of the country amid reports of gunfire and explosions.

An announcer on Turkey's state broadcaster TRT has read out a live statement, reportedly on the orders of the military, announcing that the army has taken control.

The statement said the country, a NATO member, is now being run by a "peace council", declaring that martial law and a nationwide curfew are in place.

In an extraordinary interview with a Turkish broadcaster, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on people to take to the streets in support of the government.

Speaking from an unknown location on a mobile phone held up by the presenter, he said the uprising "attempt" was being run by a minority within the armed forces, warning that it would be given the "necessary response".

There are several reports of gunfire and at least one loud explosion in the capital, Ankara, including an unconfirmed report of a blast at a state-run television building.

Another unconfirmed report suggests soldiers have fired on people trying to cross Istanbul's Bosporus bridge in protest against the coup. Several people have been hurt, according to news agency AP.

TV footage shows people ducking and running for cover as the shots ring out.

Military vehicles earlier blocked two main bridges in the city, including the Bosporus bridge.

According to one news agency, a top general is among several people being "held hostage" at the military headquarters in the city.

Journalist Dorian Jones reports from Taksim Square

Gunfire has also been heard in Istanbul, where military tanks have been stationed at the city's Ataturk airport.

All flights in and out of the airport have been diverted or cancelled.

The TRT broadcaster, meanwhile, has now gone off air.

"It looks like a relatively well orchestrated coup by a substantial body of the military, not just a few colonels," an EU source told news agency Reuters.

Clips at the link.

Sky

[Norm dePlume]

This is scary as hell.

There's a pretty good backgrounder over at Slate.

Has there ever been a coup against a government that had such widespread support among the population?

No, and this is going to be the main story. In the past, there has always either enough fear to keep people off the streets, or enough respect for the army, which was the most respected organization in Turkey. And it still is in many ways. But in the past, there was not enough opposition because people were not invested enough in any particular leader. This is an entirely new situation. And with the government calling for people to come out, I wouldn’t be surprised if people started throwing themselves in front of tanks.

[Celeste Chalfonte]

Who's who in this?

[Norm dePlume]

Who's who in this?

In a nutshell, on one side you have elements of the military (apparently not the entire military, but a bunch of it), and on the other side you have Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The military was for a long time the most respected organization in Turkey, was basically autonomous, and has a history of staging coups whenever they felt that the government was pandering too much to some religious sect or just not competent to rule. And then they would suppress opposition for a while, hold new elections, and step back and let the new government give it a try.

Erdogan was previously mayor of Istanbul, and he founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and led it to victory in 2002, 2007, and 2011. He served as Prime Minister for each of those terms, and term limited out. So then he got himself elected President, and since then has been transforming the office of President from a largely ceremonial one to one of real political power. He used the EU accession process to get the military under control of the civilian government, at which point a lot of senior military officials resigned in protest and he promoted people from within the military that would be loyal to him. At some point in his rise to power, he took a dark turn and became this autocratic strongman.

You can’t just say, “and then he went mad.” You have to explain what happened. In the beginning you see this pragmatic politician. And then between 2008 and 2011, something changed. You can kind of pinpoint it. He fired a bunch of people that surrounded him and replaced them with really nutty airheads. His major adviser, the first time he spoke up, said that Erdogan was being targeted by people who were trying to kill him with telekinesis. And then Erdogan built this palace, which is very grandiose. It is bigger than Versailles. You know when dictators get overthrown and people flood into their mansions and find gold-plated bathroom fixtures? Once you start building stuff like that, something is going on. He did other strange things, like surrounding himself with actors wearing costumes representing 16 Turkish empires. It’s laughable. People want to say that the emperor has no clothes, but they don’t dare to. And the emperor also controls everything the people say and hear.

He became paranoid. This is the important word. There are all these indications of paranoia that started with the Gülen movement. Presumably people belonging to the Gülen movement, who were in the judiciary, went after Erdogan and his close circle for corruption. That was a serious business. It was around then that this paranoia arose, helping turn Turkey into a snitch society. Recently a student at a Turkish university said he or she didn’t like how a teacher spoke about Erdogan, and the teacher was fired. Neighbors snitch on neighbors.

[Celeste Chalfonte]

OK so the military are the good guys and the President is nuts, but the populace loves him?

[Norm dePlume]

OK so the military are the good guys and the President is nuts, but the populace loves him?

That's kind of an oversimplification of my simplification. But from what I understand, Erdogan has roughly half the population on his side, which makes things ripe for a civil war. And that would be a very big deal, especially with ISIS taking advantage of the civil war next door in Syria.

[Adam]

I've only half-ass paid much of any attention to Turkey for the last year or two, but it's been fairly apparent to me that Erdogan has been on the express train to downtown Crazytown for a while now. But, it's been relatively "benign" crazy, in the sense that there's Rob Ford crazy, and then there's Adolf Hitler crazy, and Erdogan almost certainly falls a lot closer to the "bizarrely eccentric mayor" side of that spectrum than he does the "genocidal maniac" side.

Turkey has definitely been making a rather disturbing shift toward Islam, particularly radical Islam, for a while now, though I'm not sure how much of the blame for that rests upon Erdogan as opposed to just their geographical surroundings. Erdogan, though, has certainly been associated with that shift for a while now, even if he's only viewed as being guilty of being "the guy in charge" when this has happened. Rightly or wrongly, people wind up laying this at his feet, to include the military. My guess is that they feel that Erdogan's biggest "crime" is that he just hasn't been very effective in countering the Islamic influence that has been taking over in the country.



I'm far from any sort of expert on Turkey at all, but I certainly get the impression that it must be a very difficult county to govern regardless of who is in charge. It's been a very delicate balance there since at least the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, if not long before WWI.

[Frostbit]

That's kind of an oversimplification of my simplification. But from what I understand, Erdogan has roughly half the population on his side, which makes things ripe for a civil war. And that would be a very big deal, especially with ISIS taking advantage of the civil war next door in Syria.

Bad country in which to be a Christian. Joyce's Brother is married to a woman from Turkey and her Christian family came over as asylum seekers while Reagan was President.

[Norm dePlume]

It looks like the coup has failed and Erdogan has emerged victorious. And now he'll take advantage of the conflict to further consolidate his power and suppress any opposition.

[Norm dePlume]

Erdogan Calls On U.S. to Arrest or Extradite Fethullah Gulen

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the United States to arrest or extradite Fethullah Gulen, a political rival and Muslim cleric living in self-exile in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Erdogan has accused Mr. Gulen of being behind the coup attempt, a charge Mr. Gulen denies.

“I call on the United States and President Barack Obama,” Mr. Erdogan said, addressing hundreds of supporters in Istanbul late Saturday.

“Dear Mr. President: I told you this before. Either arrest Fethullah Gulen or return him to Turkey. You didn’t listen. I call on you again, after there was a coup attempt. Extradite this man in Pennsylvania to Turkey. If we are strategic partners or model partners, do what is necessary.”

Yeah, you're gonna have to do better than that, buddy. Over here, we operate on a little thing we like to call "evidence."

U.S. Willing to Pursue Inquiries About Erdogan Rival

Secretary of State John Kerry said that he expected the Turkish authorities to pursue inquiries against Fethullah Gulen, the cleric and opposition leader living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed was behind Friday’s coup attempt.

“We fully anticipate that there will be questions raised about Mr. Gulen,” Mr. Kerry said at a brief news conference here in Luxembourg. “And obviously, we invite the government of Turkey, as we always do, to present us with any legitimate evidence that withstands scrutiny, and the United States will accept that and look at it and make judgments about it appropriately.”

...

Turkey’s politics was for decades divided between secularists and Islamists, but both Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Gulen have occupied a middle ground between these two extremes. Beginning his career as an Islamist, Mr. Erdogan founded the Justice and Development Party in 2001 in an effort to project a less openly religious image. A moderate conservative with increasingly autocratic tendencies, Mr. Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics ever since.

While more openly religious, Mr. Gulen, 75, has promoted a more liberal stream of Islam, and his ideas are popular with the country’s police and intelligence establishments, though not necessarily the military.

He has millions of followers. Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Gulen were once allies but had a bitter falling-out in 2013 over a corruption inquiry that targeted Mr. Erdogan and his inner circle. Mr. Erdogan then purged the judiciary and the police of people linked to Mr. Gulen.

[Lady Marva]

But from what I understand, Erdogan has roughly half the population on his side, which makes things ripe for a civil war. And that would be a very big deal, especially with ISIS taking advantage of the civil war next door in Syria.

yep.
Or Turkey could turn into another Iran, if they keep lurching toward becoming an Islamic state.

[Lady Marva]

Turkey detains 6,000 in failed coup, including Turkish commander at Incirlik

Going to become a dictatorship. Bad news, being a NATO ally.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/...b7Kz&ocid=iehp
ISTANBUL — A sweeping campaign to arrest renegade military officers, soldiers and other suspects linked to a failed coup plot in Turkey showed signs on Sunday of turning into a nationwide crackdown against opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

The country’s justice minister confirmed that as many as 6,000 people, ranging from commanders to civil servants, have been detained over the incident.

Among those arrested was the commander of a Turkish airbase used by U.S. forces to launch raids on jihadists in Iraq and Syria, a senior Turkish official said. Gen. Bekir Ercan Van, 10th Base Commander at Incirlik Air Base, was detained along with 10 other soldiers on Sunday. The facility in southern Turkey is a major NATO military installation hosting U.S. forces that control one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in Europe.

Earlier in the day, the state-run news outlet identified Maj. Gen. Ozhan Ozbakir, commander of a large garrison in southwestern Turkey, as one of the officers detained in the latest and ongoing campaign of arrests.

As many as 3,000 soldiers — including senior commanders in the Turkish armed forces — have been seized by authorities in response to Friday’s unrest, which killed at least 265 people and rattled the stability of a key Middle Eastern nation that is a NATO member and important U.S. ally.

Arrest warrants have also been issued for at least 2,745 judges and prosecutors across the country, according to Turkish media reports.

The failed military coup appears to have had the opposite of its intended effect. Erdogan seems to have been emboldened after overcoming the biggest challenge to his 13-year rule, with thousands of supporters taking to the streets in Istanbul and other areas of the country in defiance of the rogue soldiers who hatched an elaborate plot to overthrow the government.

The Turkish leader has alarmed many here over his attempts to consolidate power over the years. And a number of Turks express concern that Erdogan will use Friday’s incident to further marginalize all forms of challenge to his growing powers, whether peaceful or not, even as the country struggles with myriad crises, including unrest from its large minority of Kurdish citizens and spillover from the civil war in neighboring Syria.

Nearly three million war-weary Syrians have taken refuge in Turkey, a huge burden on this country of 75 million people. And a series of recent attacks linked to the Islamic State and Kurdish separatists have killed hundreds of people and badly damaged the Turkish economy.

Continued at link.

[scott]

While it seems backwards to us, Turkey's military have been the guardians of secular freedom and they have a long tradition of stepping in when the country declines, controlling a bad situation, calming things down, then stepping back to let others run the country. It's exactly opposite here which is why it's a hard concept to understand. I would be very leery of any military coup because they rarely work out well but Turkey's military is different (so far anyway).

Erdogan is taking advantage of the traditional Western view that the military is to be respected, but feared and controlled by civilians. The reality on the ground there is different. Erdogan is the megalomaniac child and the military leaders are the "adults on the playground."

[Lady Marva]

Erdogan is the megalomaniac child and the military leaders are the "adults on the playground."

Yes, and growing worse. This failed "coup" strengthens his hold.