Military Coup in Turkey underway.

[TimothyC]

What's the purge figure up to now? 20,000 including teachers? Or is it 30,000?

Last number I had heard via RUMINT was between 55 and 60k counting those fired, arrested, and those who have had licensures revoked.

[Honorius]

Apperently some copper planes had erdogan's plane in their sights but for some reason they didn't fire. If this is true, and they had fired, I imagine we would be in a very different situation right now.

Unless they were erdogan's to begin with, kind of odd for Rebel plans to take off buzz the city, bomb empty non-strategic buildings while Erdogan is doing air donuts a scant dozen miles away. It's the biggest WTF from the entire coup as the actions of the "rebel" pilots make no sense unless they are taking advantage of the coup to do some joy riding or they took off on their own initiative but then who helped them load up and fuel up to get moving if they had no goal?

This Guardian Article will shed light on the situation.

It was midnight in the Turkish capital, just two and a half hours into the attempted coup, and the group of nine senior ministers who were gathered in a conference room at the prime ministry were convinced that they were all about to meet their end.

“They probably will be successful and we will die tonight,” said one of the ministers, according to an official who was present at the meeting. “Let us be ready to die. We will all be martyred in this fight.”

He sent his bodyguard to fetch his personal gun. Security forces charged with protecting the building had been escorted out of the room in a sombre scene, because ministers did not know who to trust in the middle of the unfolding coup.

They were in the meeting when the state broadcaster, TRT, was taken over by the rebels and the channel’s anchorwoman was forced to read a statement declaring the military was in control and denouncing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The cabinet fell into utter silence for two minutes.

Then one minister cracked a joke that eased the tension: “Don’t bother with TRT, I don’t even watch it during regular times, it’s just state TV.”

Nearly three days have passed since a faction within Turkey’s military attempted to overthrow the government, deploying tanks to the streets of Istanbul and Ankara, blocking bridges, arresting top military officers, seizing TV stations and launching coordinated attacks on police and security headquarters, promising to restore true democracy.

That effort was short-lived but bloody, with hundreds of lives lost and thousands wounded in the carnage. The capital city is pockmarked with tell-tale signs of the violence, abandoned tanks now a curiosity for locals posing on the metal carcasses left in the streets. Shattered glass and concrete adorn the grounds of local security and intelligence headquarters and the parliament building, itself bombed in an attack on democratic institutions of symbolic importance.

But as Turkey picks up the pieces after the failed coup, new details are emerging of how it unfolded, and just how close the military intervention came to succeeding. Many observers have labelled the attempt amateurish, but accounts by officials contradict this characterisation, describing it as well organised and very nearly successful.

In Ankara on Friday, the day of the coup, the interior minister had been invited, along with other top officials, to a high-level security meeting in military headquarters that was supposed to take place after 5pm, a ploy that turned out to be intended as a pretext to detain him. He did not go because he was too busy, and later when the coup unfolded he was stuck in Ankara’s Esenboğa airport, setting up a crisis cell there to manage the fallout, protected by crowds that had gathered to oppose the coup.

The top counter-terrorism official responsible for Turkey’s campaign against Islamic State did go to a “meeting” at the presidential palace in Ankara. He was later found with his hands tied behind his back, shot in the neck, according to a senior official.

President Erdoğan himself was at the resort of Marmaris, but had left the residence where he was staying some 20 minutes before coup plotters attacked it. Around 25 soldiers in helicopters descended on a hotel there on ropes, shooting, in an apparent attempt to seize him just after Erdoğan had left, broadcaster CNN Turk said.

But as he flew from Marmaris on a business jet, two F-16 fighter jets locked their radar targeting system on the president’s plane, according to an account first reported by Reuters and later confirmed to the Guardian.

The jets didn’t fire after the presidential plane’s pilot told the fighter jet pilots over the radio that it was a Turkish Airlines flight, a senior counter-terrorism official told the Guardian.

But that came later. At around 9pm, General Mehmet Dişli, the brother of a long-serving MP with the ruling AK party, allegedly gave the order that set the coup in motion, sending army special forces officers to arrest the military’s senior command. Tanks began rolling out into the streets of Ankara, and an hour later they had closed down Istanbul’s Bosphorus and Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges.

Cemalettin Haşimi, a senior adviser of prime minister Binali Yıldırım, watched it all with a sense of foreboding. At 10.24pm, after surveying besieged Ankara, he walked into the office of the prime ministry’s undersecretary.

“Is it real?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s real,” came the reply. “But we are not sure if it’s within the chain of command or just a group in the army.”

By 10.37pm they had conferred with Yıldırım, who was in Istanbul, deciding to declare it an attempted coup on national television. They called TRT, but 10 minutes later the channel was overrun. So Haşimi called the private channel NTV, and minutes later Yıldırım was denouncing the plot.

Meanwhile, there were chaotic scenes in Ankara and Istanbul. A statement appeared on the military’s website and was circulated by email declaring it had taken control to restore democracy, feeding into the fears of government officials who worried the military chain of command had endorsed the takeover. Haşimi claimed that judges aligned with the coup had begun calling on associates to adhere to the military’s demands.

The national intelligence building and the police headquarters were attacked from the air. In the latter, helicopters had targeted the intelligence department in the top three floors of the facility, unleashing a hail of shattered glass and concrete that still scars the building.

“It was a nightmare,” said Murat Karakullukcu, a police official who spent the night at the headquarters through the attack and had served at UN peacekeeping missions in Kosovo. “Our first thought was how to survive, and then we started shooting at the helicopters with small arms.”

Back at the prime ministry, despair was setting in. They had resolved to make a final stand in the parliament, when Erdoğan appeared on a live broadcast at 12.37am on a reporter’s iPhone, exhorting the people to defend democracy.

“What is FaceTime? Why don’t I have it?” asked one of the ministers in attendance.

“That was the moment when the psychology were reversed and we thought we were going to win,” said Haşimi.

People began taking to the streets in larger numbers, answering the call of the president and the religious affairs Diyanet ministry, which had called on the imams of Turkey’s mosques to take to their minarets to declare “God is great”. The call to take to the streets was met with unease by some ministers, who worried it would result in a massacre.

On their way to the parliament, Haşimi and the rest of the ministers received the news that it had been bombed. That was one of the key pivotal points that led to the failure of the coup, he said. While he appreciated that many of those who took to the streets did not like Erdoğan’s government, the attack on the parliament, the first by the military since the 1920s, was too much of a provocation.

The statements by opposition leaders and top military officers, including army commanders, disavowing the coup sealed its fate.

Stories emerged of those crucial hours, between the president’s address and the successful quelling of the coup by 4am, that are sure to pass into the official mythology of the events. At 1am, officials say the police chief the city of Bursa arrested the local army commander, who possessed a 6-page list that included the names of designated judges and military officials who were to be appointed to various positions in the bureaucracy in the aftermath of the coup. Other pro-coup soldiers possessed lists of secure telephone lines to receive orders.

“There were crucial moments,” said Haşimi. “It was incredibly well organised actually, but sudden moves by the leadership and sudden movement by the people changed the whole plan.”

“It could have succeeded,” he added. “They lost the moment the president and the prime minister went on air, and when high-level army commanders came out on air and declared their support for democracy, and the people rejected going home.”

This is why the Purges are escalating. It was a well planned Coup by the Gulenists who intended to actually impose a Sharia State unlike Erdogan who never implemented one law based on Sharia and slapped down any proposals to do so and kicked such proposers out of the AKP.

The anti-democratic coup forces had a vast parallel deep state in the wings and that is inimical to a democratic society.

Its telling that even HDP came out in support of Erdogan even though half its members will soon be facing charges of blatantly supplying the PKK with arms. All parties in Parliament are agreed that the Gulenists must be rooted out and held to account after slaughtering 100+ unarmed civilians and dozens of police officers.

Regardless of what people personally think of Erdogan, it is the Turkish People and the Turkish People alone who have the right to remove him from office during the next election cycle. That said Erdogan can only run again once more for President and given he is 62 YO, he might might not run again at all and may retire in 2019 at 66 YO rather than serve a second term that won't end till he is 71 YO (TP term of office is 5 years).

[Block]

There's no evidence in your article of anything you said. Can you drop the propaganda bullshit please?

[The Romulan Republic]

Is Honorius on Erdogan's payroll, or just really, really stupid?

[Mr Bean]

Let's review that article, the line of evidence is this

The jets didn’t fire after the presidential plane’s pilot told the fighter jet pilots over the radio that it was a Turkish Airlines flight, a senior counter-terrorism official told the Guardian.

So a government official tells us that the Presidential plane was not fired because the Presidential was reported to be a civilian airlines flight. The pilots did not force the plane down for unknown reasons and oh yes, it was reported as the President's plane on international TV and on the internet and was the only plane in the air not under the control of the "rebels".

So your evidence is literally the statements of some government official, never mind as mentioned the fact Erdogan was onboard was something CNN and Reuters were both reporting and was getting live tweated at the time. Even ignoring the idea that no one could get word to the pilots why did they not force the supposed civilian plane down because again, that would be standard procedure. You figure air superiority planes would take control of the air and ensure it's in the hands of the rebels and that does not mean letting a civilian airline gallivant around.

I know this because Turkish pilots are trained the same as English and American pilots because we got our ideas from the RAF on how to handle things in an emergency and pretty much step 1 of any coup or coup suppression air force is to clear the air of anything not flying your own flag civilian or otherwise.

[Grumman]

It was a well planned Coup by the Gulenists...

Then why were the "Gulenists" denouncing the coup while it still looked like it was going to succeed?

[Edi]

Is Honorius on Erdogan's payroll, or just really, really stupid?

Both. Apparently he has access to some special issue of the Guardian that has all sorts of secret codes and text not visible to those who haven't been anointed to the Cult of Erdogan.

[wautd]

Is Honorius on Erdogan's payroll, or just really, really stupid?

Both. Apparently he has access to some special issue of the Guardian that has all sorts of secret codes and text not visible to those who haven't been anointed to the Cult of Erdogan.

Maybe it was all tongue in cheek/sarcastic.

Or maybe he really is just a brainless follower of the Great Leader.

Then again, is there even independant media left in Turkey or are they all state controlled propaganda channels by now? Perhaps we should give him some slack if that's his main scource of information.

[cosmicalstorm]

More arrests, all kinds of teachers, academics, soldiers, cops and whatever are banned from travel abroad.

Turkey is going all out Ottoman Caliphate Sharia state or it's going to disintegrate into some kind of weird civil war.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 45266.html

Turkey government fears second military coup attempt as purge removes many army commanders


A third of generals detained as President Erdogan finds plot reaches into his inner circle, says Patrick Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn Istanbul |
@indyworld |
Wednesday 20 July 2016|
220 comments |

Turkish leaders are fearful that there may be a second attempt at a military uprising in Turkey following the failure of the recent coup. Several important military units are confined to their bases and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been slow to return to Ankara from Istanbul, apparently because the capital has not been deemed completely secure.

Fears of a second coup attempt stem from the realisation by the Erdogan administration that the infiltration by pro-coup forces of the senior ranks of the 600,000-strong armed forces and intelligence apparatus went far deeper than originally suspected. Some 85 generals and admirals or almost a quarter of the total of 375 were jailed on Tuesday by a court, a sign that the government privately believes that the plot involved many more senior officers than the small clique it has publicly claimed was behind the abortive putsch. Other sources suggest that the true figure for generals detained is 125.




Read more

Is Erdogan using the coup to make Turkey a fully Islamic country?

Arrests at a high level are continuing with Mr Edrogan’s advisor on the air force, Lt Col Erkan Krivak, arrested on Tuesday. Soldiers from the Second Army, which is fighting a widespread Kurdish rebellion in the south east of the country, have been ordered to stay in their camps in the embattled region. The Second Army commander, General Adem Huduti, is the most senior military commander arrested. The gates into the main base of the 3rd Corps in Istanbul, theoretically part a Nato rapid reaction force, are blocked by municipal dump trucks and heavy vehicles according to eye witnesses.

“They are fearing another attempt at a coup,” says Asli Aydintasbas of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Istanbul, pointing to the extensive nature of the purge of the senior officer corps and judiciary, a quarter of whose members have been dismissed. Those arrested for secretly backing the original coup include some from Mr Erdogan’s inner circle such as Ali Yazici, his military secretary. Soli Ozel, professor of internationals relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and a columnist at Haberturk newspaper, says that “the number of Manchurian Candidates” in the upper ranks of the government is extraordinary – a reference to the film about secret agents and “sleepers” who infiltrated the top political leadership in the US in the 1950s at the height of the Cold War.





A history of Turkish coups

The sweeping purge carried out by Mr Erdogan and his administration is being interpreted by many Turks and foreign governments as an opportunistic attempt to get rid of everybody not obedient to Mr Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The Board of Higher Education dismissed 1,577 university deans on Tuesday and the Ministry of National Education said that it had sacked 15,200 for connections to the movement of the self-exiled Muslim cleric Fetullah Gulen which is accused of orchestrating the original coup. Mr Gulen and his supporters have publically denied any connection to the attempted coup.

It is true that Mr Erdogan and his administration evidently see the coup as an excuse to cleanse the army, state apparatus and civil service of all who are not loyal to them. But government officials genuinely believe that there is a very widespread conspiracy by Gulenist “sleeper” agents, not all of whom have been detected and may still be capable of armed action. When the Gulenists were allied to the AKP seven or eight years ago, they were at the cutting edge of a purge of the armed forces of secular sympathisers and were well placed to replace those dismissed or jailed by their own cadres. The AKP appears to have known about some but not all of these Gulenist networks which is why it is now casting the net so wide.


Read more

Turkey coup: What’s actually happening and what does it mean for the future of the country?
Turkey coup: PM suspends annual leave for over three million civil servants
Turkey warned it can't join the EU if it reinstates the death penalty

While the government wants to give the impression that the pro-coup forces have been wiped out, its restrictions on the movement of military formations are a sign that it is not yet confident that this is so. “The government has committed all the resources it is left with to deal with the fall out from the coup,” says Prof Serhat Guvenc of the Department of International Relations at Kadir Has University. “The country looks very vulnerable.” He believes the coup on 15 July was bound to fail once soldiers had fired on the protesters and bombarded the parliament building in Ankara, but says the present situation is chaotic and difficukgt to undertsand.



Prof Ozel says that Mr Erdogan may be a stronger leader because of what is seen as his heroic behaviour during the coup attempt, but he will be leader of a weaker state. He says that the Turkish Army “is like a man who has suffered a serious stroke and will be weakened for a long time afterwards”. Many senior military commanders may have equivocated during the critical hours of the coup while they waited to see which side would come out the winner.

The Erdogan government may not be giving much long term thought to its relations with the US and the EU, while it focuses on its long term survival. Mr Erdogan may get his wish for an all-powerful executive presidency run by himself in the wake of the foiled coup, but the over-all strength of Turkish state is visibly diminished. “This army, the second biggest in Nato, is now a broken army,” says Prof Ozel. Other state institutions have been hollowed out or rendered ineffective by years of purges,of which the latest is only the most all-embracing. They will take time to rebuild. Prof Gunec says that the problem is “not just a broken army, but a broken country”.

[Balrog]

More arrests, all kinds of teachers, academics, soldiers, cops and whatever are banned from travel abroad.

Turkey is going all out Ottoman Caliphate Sharia state or it's going to disintegrate into some kind of weird civil war.

How dare you besmirch Erdogan Pasha's good name, spreading Conspiracy Theories cooked up by evil Gulenists from their bases hidden in the Tribal Areas of Pennsylvania.

BTW, last I heard a number of Turkish Navy vessels had also gone missing and haven't reported in to take part in Dear Leader's purge, kinda curious where they might end up, probably Greece?

[cosmicalstorm]

A Thai viewpoint on Turkey

Turkey’s Failed Coup Through Thai Eyes
By Pravit Rojanaphruk, Senior Staff Writer -
July 23, 2016 2:12 pm
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A woman displays a poster with the image of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as government supporters wave Turkish flags Friday in Istanbul as Erdogan was granted sweeping powers in reaction to a failed attempt to oust him in a coup. Photo: Petros Giannakouris / Associated Press

Retention

Last week’s failed coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reignited the pro-vs-anti coup debate in Thailand, particularly on social media.

Reading the comments, it was as if another Thai coup had taken place.

Coup leader Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha quickly urged Thais not to compare Bangkok to Ankara, citing their different contexts. But in many ways, comparison is inevitable, given their similarities and differences.
Get Khaosod English by email. Binge-read when you want.

And no matter what dictator Prayuth will say, he cannot dictate some Thais to stop comparing. There’s always something we can learn from such comparisons, so let’s get to it.



The Principles

Pravit RojanaphrukThere are Thai coup supporters who say because Erdogan is autocratic and repressive, a military coup was justifiable. They condemn Thais who publicly oppose the coup as naive. Some even satisfy Godwin’s law by comparing Erdogan to Hitler, asking whether one would support a coup to overthrow Hitler – or Pol Pot for that matter.

Those supporting coups don’t care about legitimacy or whether such methods cause more long-term damage. That more than 300 died in the failed coup attempt was itself proof but hardly mentioned by Thais who rooted for the failed coup in Turkey.

There should be no illusion that although Erdogan is elected, he’s also an autocratic leader. The heavy-handed crackdown in the days after the failed coup is a testimonial to that and must be condemned. But a coup doesn’t solve anything in the long run other than create a norm where might is right, destroys proper checks and balances and normalizes the ability of anyone with arms to simply try to grab power.

Coup-prone societies perpetuate the Stone Age mentality of grabbing power without consideration of legitimacy. Those Turks unhappy with Erdogan have an adequate weapon in the ballot box, and should try to oust him through it first. If claims that elections have been rendered ineffective through Erdogan’s manipulation, then the people can lead a popular revolt.
Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha waves at reporters as he leaves the Army Club in Bangkok on May 21, 2014, one day before he would stage a coup d'etat and seize control of Thailand.
Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha waves at reporters as he leaves the Army Club in Bangkok on May 21, 2014, one day before he would stage a coup d’etat and seize control of Thailand.

Many Thais simply don’t care how power is attained, however, as long as the people they believe to be good are in power. Many don’t care about checks and balances, or the right to scrutinize the “good people” in power, as well. They just believe in what they perceive as good vs. evil, never mind if others disagree as to what is which.

Countries plagued by coups, be it Turkey or Thailand, lack genuine social contracts. Forget what Thailand’s near two dozen “permanent constitutions” stated, the country’s dozen “successful” coups proves there’s no genuine supreme law yet, as generals with guns and tanks frequently seize power on an average of once every eight years and declare, “L’Etat, c’est moi,” or “I am the state.”



The People
PCAD protesters storm Channel 7 offices in Bangkok on May 9, 2014, demanding favorable news coverage.
PCAD protesters storm Channel 7 offices in Bangkok on May 9, 2014, demanding favorable news coverage.

Unlike the Turks, little resistance was mounted by Redshirts and Pheu Thai leaders in the immediate aftermath of the coup. On the other hand, cowardice, moderation, if not self-restraint by both sides of the Thai divide also means no lives were lost compared to the more than 300 deaths in Turkey.

“In fact Thais came out to oppose the NCPO,” wrote a Facebook user by the name of Burapa Lekluanngarm, referring to the formal name of the Thai military junta, the National Council for Peace and Order. “But there weren’t enough forces as in Turkey, and the elected Thai government had already thrown in the towel.”

Another Facebook user, Mongkhon Atthajak, said there’s no point in comparing the two because in Thailand, some Bangkokians held parties to celebrate the coup and showered the coup makers with flowers.

“People in our capital city have different mentalities to those in other countries,” Mongkhon wrote.

Yet another Facebook user, using the pen name Nui Nuiy, said the Turkish coup makers were simply dumb for not making sure there was a six-month prolonged siege of the capital city by coup-supporting demonstrators like in Thailand.



The Complexities

It’s also ironic and must be pointed out that the crackdown unleashed by Erdogan – going after against opposition media, removing government officials, preventing dissidents from traveling abroad and declaring a state of emergency – were all things done by Prayuth as well. This teaches us that when putsch comes to shove, elected politicians can act like dictators too.



The Cycle

In the final analysis, the vicious cycle where pro-and-anti junta elements battle for power will continue until Thailand or Turkey achieved genuine social contracts where military coups are no longer an acceptable option or “solution,” and where elected leaders learn more self-restraint and accountability to the people.

http://www.khaosodenglish.com/opinion/2 ... thai-eyes/

[Elfdart]

I'm curious: Turkey's armed forces have in the past overthrown governments for far less than the kind of UNLIMITED POWAAAAAAAH! things Erdogan is doing after the botched coup. Aren't his actions in the aftermath of the last coup attempt almost guaranteed to bring about a second coup, only with the pros instead of the amateurs doing it?

[Ralin]

I'm curious: Turkey's armed forces have in the past overthrown governments for far less than the kind of UNLIMITED POWAAAAAAAH! things Erdogan is doing after the botched coup. Aren't his actions in the aftermath of the last coup attempt almost guaranteed to bring about a second coup, only with the pros instead of the amateurs doing it?

I would assume he's doing it specifically to make a second coup harder to pull off. Pretty hard for 'the pros' to get together if he's preemptively removed from power/imprisoned every ranking officer who looks even vaguely disloyal to him.

[Titan Uranus]

I'm curious: Turkey's armed forces have in the past overthrown governments for far less than the kind of UNLIMITED POWAAAAAAAH! things Erdogan is doing after the botched coup. Aren't his actions in the aftermath of the last coup attempt almost guaranteed to bring about a second coup, only with the pros instead of the amateurs doing it?

It's possible that the balance of power has changed, Erdogan has been in office for a decade and a half now, right?

He had plenty of time to move his creatures into positions of power.
Indeed I believe that I remember that a few years ago he amended the constitution to make coups more difficult, though I will have to look that up.

This is assuming, of course that the coup was not a false flag operation to expand Erdogan's power base and allow a purge, seeing as the coup failed to control the airspace of Turkey, and the soldiers were allegedly turned back by civilians and police.

[ArmorPierce]

I'm curious: Turkey's armed forces have in the past overthrown governments for far less than the kind of UNLIMITED POWAAAAAAAH! things Erdogan is doing after the botched coup. Aren't his actions in the aftermath of the last coup attempt almost guaranteed to bring about a second coup, only with the pros instead of the amateurs doing it?

The real reason is that the secular element/military wished to join the European Union. The European Union deemed Turkish military involvement in political affairs was to great and needed to be scaled back for admission considerations. This led to the military becoming hesitant to intervene allowing erdogen to gather and consolidate his power base. A few years back erdogen arrested many military leaders who he charged were conspiring of a military coup. This effectively broke the militarys ability to effectively engage in a military coup with a united front.

So, erdogens rise in power and sustainability is in large part due to the european union wagging their finger at turkey. In the absence of that factor, erdogens probably would have been knocked out a long time ago.

[Thanas]

On that we agree, Turkey should never have started that process which will not have a positive outcome for them anyways.

It is a huge shame though because there are many Turks who would be a net benefit to the EU.