An attempted military coup by a faction within the Turkish armed
forces
calling itself the “Peace at Home
Council” was stifled in less than 24 hours after
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on his supporters
to take to the streets and repel the uprising.
Earlier Friday night, the
soldiers
stormed Turkey’s state-run broadcaster
and said they had seized power, taken over the
government, and declared martial law. They
deployed forces onto the streets of Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey’s
largest city and capital, respectively, and closed two
major bridges leading into Istanbul.
At least
256
people
were killed in the clashes, according to Turkey’s prime minister.
But the
uprising itself was
repelled rather quickly. Many soldiers were either
arrested, had been brutally beaten by protesters, or surrendered
by early Saturday morning, allowing
the Turkish government to regain almost
complete control within 24 hours.
“I predicted this would fail from early on, because all of
Turkey’s opposition parties came out against the coup from the
beginning,” Aykan Erdemir, a former member of Turkish parliament
and senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based think tank
Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider on
Saturday.
He added: “With the opposition, the media, and Erdogan’s
supporters against them, the soldiers had no chance of gaining
any traction.”
Policemen
protect a soldier from the mob after troops involved in the coup
surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey July 16,
2016.
REUTERS/Murad
Sezer
Geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer, president of the political risk
firm Eurasia Group, largely agreed.
“There was really no popular support” for the coup, he told
Business Insider. “All the political parties (including Erdogan’s
opposition) opposed it. The extraordinary need for secrecy
limited their capabilities to effectively plan and muster
allies.”
A ‘very atypical’ coup
The extent of the divisions within Turkey’s military itself,
however, is arguably the biggest reason the uprising failed,
experts say. Though the uprising encompassed “quite a
sizeable network” of young colonels and generals, it did not have
the support of high-ranking Turkish military officers.
“It was poorly organized and they didn’t have a broad
enough swath of the military, which led to infighting,” Bremmer
said. Erdemir, of the FDD, pointed out that the
military’s chief of staff was taken hostage by the coup-plotters
on Friday night and not released until late Saturday morning.
“There were tensions and divisions within the Turkish
military to begin with — now, after this failed coup, there is
going to be a trauma,” Erdemir said. “Earlier coup attempts
never led to this kind of bloodshed, so this trauma will stay
with the military.”
Many are now wondering why the plotters of the coup — many of
whom appeared to be young colonels, not high-ranking military
officers — went ahead with an operation that, in the words of US
Secretary of State John Kerry, “did not appear to
be a brilliantly planned or executed event.”
Indeed, reports have emerged that many of those involved in
the uprising were conscripts who say they were just
following orders and did not know they were taking part in a
coup.
Turkey’s military has a long history of intervening in
Turkish politics — there have been at least four coup attempts in
Turkey since 1960.
This one, however, was “very
atypical,” Dr.
Gonul Tol, the Director of Middle
East Institute’s Center for Turkish Studies, told Business
Insider on Friday.
“In the past, the military acted on calls from the people
and staged a coup against an unpopular government,” Tol said.
“That is not case today. The AKP and Erdogan might be very
polarizing and might have alienated an important segment of
society, but they still have the backing of almost 50% of the
population.”
Eurasia Group’s Bremmer agreed that “Erdogan’s popular
support base remains significant,” but noted that it has been
“narrowing” among the country’s leadership.
“The government certainly believed they were more under
control” before the uprising, he said, “but opposition to an
increasingly authoritarian (and emotionally brittle) Erdogan was
growing given economic and geopolitical challenges and
never-ending fights at home.”
A ‘last gasp’ attempt
A member of Erdogan’s
ruling
Justice And Development Party (AKP) told The Daily Beast late
Friday night that the uprising was a “last gasp” by a faction
within the military
accustomed to taking on
Turkey’s democratically elected governments.
That analysis, however politically motivated, has gained
traction as reports emerge about the immediate factors that may
have compelled the plotters of the coup to act.
Specifically, the military purge that occurs every August —
in which numerous members of the Turkish armed forces are either
promoted or forced to resign — has been cited as a factor.
“Some are now saying this group of officers who staged the coup,
for whatever reason, were to be purged in August, so the coup
amounted to a desperate move for them to keep their
positions,”Erdemir said. “I definitely think
this could be one rationale.”
People
stand on a Turkish army tank in Ankara, Turkey July 16,
2016.
REUTERS/Tumay
Berkin
A well-known, anti-government Turkish journalist took to
Twitter on Saturday to describe a related, yet more immediate,
incident that led the officers to mobilize.
In a string of tweets in Turkish — translated
by Ragip Soylu, a journalist for the pro-government newspaper
Daily Sabah — Ahmet Sik, citing security sources, said Turkey’s
prosecutor had decided to arrest the plotters for
an alleged conspiracy they were planning
against other officers to get higher ranks in the
military.
According to Sik, the coup was planned for a later date — perhaps
just before the August military purge — but the
prosecutor’s decision to arrest them scared them into acting more
quickly.
Indeed, Erdemir noted that the coup plotters might have
been “forced to act prematurely” if an early wave of arrests was
being planned for mid-July.
In any case, Erdemir said, “it won’t be easy to overcome this.”
“One of NATO’s key members is now facing a severe crisis in
its military, and this will have severe repercussions on NATO’s
strength and the fight against ISIS,” Erdemir said. “This is
probably the weakest the Turkish military has ever been in the
history of the Turkish republic.”
