Amid the military coup attempt that flared up in Turkey on the night of July 15, 2016, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on those participating in or supporting it was heavy enough to shadow repercussions on the entire country.
“In 2013, the alliance between Erdogan and Gülen sect was broken, and since then, the government was calling them Fethullah Gülen “terrorist organization”, persecuting many state officials under the pretext that they are part of the network. So the government claims that they are the ones behind the coup,” Günay said.
“In reality, who is behind the coup? We don’t know. Now we started to learn the physical names of which officials were involved in the attempt. But the motivations and the means of organization and political goals are kind of obscure.
“Now they are taking measures to protect themselves. It is very predictable that they would reject.”
“We, the Turkish people, are kind of experienced about military coups, and how it goes on practically on the ground. The latest coup was totally weird. Most of the important institutions were left out, but almost not a single political official leader was detained. Everybody was speaking on the televisions. Because of this, there is right now a kind of a theory that claims it may be a false operation by Erdogan to strengthen his position enough right now because it is certain that in the upcoming days and weeks and months we will see real surge of the Islamic thought. Erdogan’s government was in that shape, it was politically in a very bad position.”
“It was mainly centered in Istanbul and Ankara. For example, in the proper coup, you would expect the army to go to the parliament with hundreds of soldiers and then they just keep on the politicians there and keep the parliament building under their control. However, shooting fire from helicopters to the building doesn’t make sense. It is not how coups were staged before in Turkey.”“It gives us the idea that it was not the majority of the army that participated in the coup. And after Erdogan’s appearance, when he began to speak over the phone to televisions, we witnessed senior generals also calling the televisions and condemning the attempt. So the question was: is it under the chain of command of the army or not?”
“Right now, my estimation about what we will see in the upcoming days is a counter-coup by the AKP government because Erdogan’s dictatorial eagerness did not really have legitimacy. The main missing part of Erdogan’s political goals was legitimacy.”
* Yiğit Günay is a freelance journalist based in Turkey. He has a master degree in art history, abachelor degree in political science and international relations, and he has also studied Spanish language and Literature.
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