Turkish PM reports 130 pro-coup military officers are in custody, a general is dead.
There seems to still be some fighting in Ankara, airlines report IST airport back to normal as of 6AM Saturday.
I just posted this 5 days ago, I was mostly kidding about the coup guys.
Actually, for the most part, I’m happy to see that military is still following its tradition of removing authoritative rulers. Turkey will be a lot better of without Erdogan. 13 years ago I had a business partner in Turkey. He and his wife left Ankara about six years ago and she all of her friends hate Erdogan with a passion. Her niece called earlier this morning to say that there were tanks on the street, my friend said they’ll know in the morning whether it succeeds. He also said that it appears most of the coups leaders, are colonels and brigadier generals since Erdogan has installed loyalist in the top positions.
A failed coup will make Erdogan much stronger. For those people, who think this is an awful thing, I’ll just point out that Russia would be far better off, if when Putin started to rewrite the constitution and installed his lapdog, Medvedev the military had couped him.
If you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. The coup leaders are about to learn the latter.
This is going to be ugly.
Not saying that I support coups, but if you do this, you absolutely have to make sure you get the head of state immediately or else this happens. To quote Game of Thrones again, The man who holds the king holds the kingdom.
I have the impression they deliberately planned this with Erdogan out of the country.
Which is the wrong way to do it.
It’s obvious they had the Air Force, or at least some jets. Shoot down his plane while he’s flying out on a trip.
Look, it’s ruthless, but, again, if you’re launching a coup, you win or you die.
This didn’t seem to follow the Turkish-Coup playbook. Usually they are fully within the chain of command, this was one general and many low level officers. Usually they grab the media first, make a public statement, this time they attacked parliament (?) and blocked the Bosphorus bridges, and only tried to secure the media hours later. And they chose a time when the president was on a trip out of the capital, but failed to capture or isolate him. They may have also underestimated the popular response, the AKP and islamists called supporters into the streets to fight, but every other parties leaders came out against the coup early and all the opposition supporters stayed home.
It is possible his military purges were successful in stacking the leadership in his favor, and no large scale coup could get started. Maybe it just came 5 years too late.
This is depressing. I was hoping that whatever happens, hopefully Erdogan will be deposed at least…but no, instead we get the worst possible result.
You have a lack of imagination if you think Erdogan staying is the worst possible result. :(
Hearing some parts of Turkey the coup did win, especially the navy and Ankara. It lost in the capital, and I see it getting no foreign support (despite how much folks hate Erdogan)
I’m still afraid of the civil war scenario if this is true.
Ankara is the capital, and I just saw some footage of an airstrike on coup soliders by the Presidential Palace and fighting around the Ministry of Defence.
From what I know about Erdogan, there really aren’t many worse possibilities other than fullblown ISIS takeover or something equally extreme. Although, with time I think it is possible Erdogan might match even that.
Civil war. Civil war is always the worst outcome.
Yes, Turkish civil war would the worst possible outcome, although ISIL extending into Turkey would be a close second.
“Siria 2, this time it’s in NATO” would be the worst outcome.
well, yes, ok that one.
Looks like they lost :(
Oh well. It wasn’t as if Turkey was’nt heading down the dictator drain with Erdogan anyway, now it will just move there quicker.
Cui bono?
Such a poorly planned coup. Almost as though it was set up from the beginning to fail.
Looks like Erdogan will not stop with purging the military, a huge purge of the judiciary is under way.
I do think this is very bad for Turkey. The coup plotters have handed Erdogan an opportunity to completely consolidate power.