Some portion of the Turkish military is trying to seize power. Happening as we speak, developing situation, etc.
The reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4t1eob/breaking_newsmilitary_coup_in_turkey/?st=iqokp3nw&sh=ff087fc6
Those first hand comments.
From what I’ve read it’s a large group of reactionary Islamist soldiers who were due to be ejected from the military at an upcoming meeting.
From what little I know of Turkish politics, Erdogan is an authoritarian wannabe-Putin who has been courting Islamist hardliners to the terror of Turkish liberals, who prize Turkey’s role as a large culturally Muslim yet politically secular democracy. So I dunno if this is an internecine power grab or what.
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Well now Erdogan is saying it’s over. We’ll see how over it is I guess? Or if there’ll be another attempt. Either way a very destabilizing event for the region.
If it really is over, it seems amazing how quickly it fizzled out (or was snuffed). Going by the above small group of Islamists theory, it would seem they were a group with no real allies. To my understanding, Erdogan has courted religious conservatives for their support and the military has consistently tried to maintain its secular obligation, so who were these dudes? A bunch of jerks so hated they couldn’t find a single niche in the bizarre political thriller that is Turkey?
edit: I don’t think this was a false flag by Erdogan, but maybe this was a false flag by Erdogan.
Well, I don’t know the actual timeline here but this seems to be a thing that’s been happening for the last several hours and is only now supposedly over, in case the quick turnaround between my initial post and my last one was confusing anyone as to how quickly everything happened.
Well, coup’ing is hard, a lot of them flop. This seems to have been really disorganized but it’s not like they get to do practice runs (unless you’re in the Weimar Republic and they just release you to try again).
It’s looking like this will redound to even more power for Erdogan which doesn’t seem like a great situation. That said, just because he benefits doesn’t mean he set it up. That would be an insanely ballsy plan and he wasn’t in such a precarious position that he needed to try something that could backfire so badly.
you know all things considered it was a pretty cozy time to be a little kid / teenager / 20 year old adult before everything went to absolute shit and we are all probably gonna be dead before 40
Don’t be melodramatic. Rich countries are going to do just fine over our lifetime, most likely even Turkey will do OK. Here is a realistic projection of what the world will be like when we’re old:
Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. At the very most, this was a Christmas in July for Erdogan - he knew it was coming, he set out some bait, he left for the main event and came back to check off everything on his wish list (this is a tortured analogy).
Apparently a surprising number of mainstream Western newswhatevers are giving at least a passing mention to conspiracy theories (or at least noting the discussion of them). But while I normally feel Western biases in reporting manifest in omission rather than inclusion, the particular and peculiar case of Turkey makes me feel like there might be an essentially uncorrectable amount of relevance distortion. Any attempts at objectivity towards situations in that country will be extra difficult.
Well, to be fair, coups by their nature are conspiracies with elite support, and the question is to determine which elites are involved.
I always thought they were called Juntas when the military did them.
No, that’s after they win
So now I’m reading the coup group (thanks English for making that phrase unreadable) was inspired by a moderate expatriate cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and denounces Erdogan’s flirtations with reactionaries. Meanwhile Turkish liberals were forced to head to the streets to oppose the coup backers who wanted reinvestment in secularism and in support of the authoritarian leader they hate because they know as well as anyone that no good comes from military rule. Politics!
Will be interesting to watch this page fill out.
Obligatory cheap remark about how badly planned Gulen’s coup must have been to fail with these tens of thousands of loyal followers embedded in every part of the government.