Wasn’t Erdogans Turkey an active IS supporter already.
I’m not sure ‘active’ is the term I’d use, but they certainly tolerated them quite a bit.
It was the government reporting that, so could very easily be FUD, traditionally the military in Turkey is pretty friendly to the West, NATO member, ally to Israel, all of that, but we’re not in traditional times…
Turkish Military Says It Has Taken Over Country
The Turkish military claims to have taken over after Turkey’s PM said a military faction had been involved in an attempted coup.
In a statement read out on Turkey’s NTV television, the army said: “Power in the country has been seized in its entirety.”
The military said it was seeking to protect the democratic order and maintain human rights.
Is this a good time to remind everyone that this is a NATO member who has “joint control” of the many American nuclear warheads sited in the country…
Erdogan is the Islamist. It’s the military which supports the secular state. I applaud this coup and hope they hang Erdogan.
It could be amazing, but it could also still be a disaster. I’m hoping for democracy and peace, hopefully at the same time, so I won’t celebrate until we see how the dominos fall…
With Erdogan gone, I suppose the Kurds will be back on the peace-plan again as well. So Win/Win.
Apparently Erdogan is in hiding somewhere protected by his personal security forces, and is going to make a statement soon.
The situation seems far from stable, with reports of gunfire and explosions in Ankara and elsewhere. Also hard to say which part of the military is in control - there are reports that the army chief has not authorized the coup. And social media has been shut down in Turkey according to various sources.
I just hope this is quick. The worst case scenario is a civil war in Turkey. That said, Erdogan is someone who I would cheer being thrown out of Turkey or worse. Brutal despot.
I grew up during the cold war, and then got into the touchy feely ‘winds of change’ vibe. Then 9/11, Iraq, that was shitty.
Still, it feels like things are spinning out of control on multiple fronts these days in a way I haven’t seen before in my lifetime.
Trump, Brexit, Nice, Orlando, now a coup in Turkey… oy, hard to keep up.
Pretty soon we’ll all have to start quoting that damn Yeats poem.
Coups in Turkey are a return to the past Gordon, not a new future.
Well there appears to be some statement that their takeover is due to the erosion of democratic and secular rule due to Erdogan.
That gives me some hope, we’ll see if the statement is true soon enough.
I agree he needs to go. He’s disnantled the free press, taken control of the courts, and imprisoned political opponents. How much longer should they have waited? Elections without democratic institutions aren’t really free. He’s not all that much different than Putin at this point.
Apparently he is out of country at the moment?
He’s talking to the nation via FaceTime right now from an undisclosed location, asserting that he’s still in control. This strikes me as a dubious claim.
Also super ironic considering his derision for social media and the internet.
He doesn’t like it when citizens use social media because they can deprecate him without punishment. When he does it though it’s fine…
Where is the “like” button!