The one friend I have here who is from Turkey claims it was definitely all staged.
Turkey
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https://www.buzzfeed.com/borzoudara...ey-in-coming?utm_term=.goGnwoKOrY#.bppa34kvK5
“This is a coup where everyone loses.”
The enthusiasm of the men and women, young and old listening to speeches against the faltering coup d’etat against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) had begun to wane late Friday night. The putsch launched hours earlier by units of the armed forces in the capital, Ankara, and the commercial center, Istanbul, appeared doomed — and it was getting late.
Suddenly scores of boisterous, bearded young men came out on the streets, chanting “God is Great” through megaphones, and waved the flags of the three-year-old hardcore Islamist Huda Party, a descendant of Turkey’s outlawed Hezbollah Party that used violence and intimidation in the 1990s to fight leftist and secular foes. AKP and Huda-Par supporters have been wary of each other. But on this night, they came together in rowdy chants.
“Hezbollah is with AKP!” they shouted, electrifying the audience at the 2 a.m. early Saturday morning rally.
Within hours, Turkey’s leaders and their supporters managed to turn the tide against a still murky band of armed forces personnel who attempted a daring putsch. Police battled the rebellious soldiers, and ordinary citizens took to the streets. Opposition parties fiercely critical of Erdoğan railed against the coup. Many celebrated a triumph of democratic principles in a region dominated by authoritarians or descending into chaos.
“We have urged the people to take to the streets and the entire people responded in order to protect democracy,” Abdullah Gul, the former president of Turkey said in a television appearance.
But as the emboldening of pro-Islamist hardliners like the Huda Party showed, the coup attempt and its aftermath also exposed several potential dangers that could further hurt Turkey’s stability in the coming months, as it seeks to stop attacks by ISIS, bolster its international partnerships and tamp down a war with separatist Kurds in the country’s southeast.
“This is a coup where everyone loses,” said Henri Barkey, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson center, who was in Istanbul during the attempt for a coup — Turkey’s sixth military putsch since 1960. “The damage is also psychological. It’s a huge blow on terrible wounds that have yet to heal and still hurt.”
At least 265 people, including 104 alleged coup plotters, were killed in a chaotic night of violence that stretched into the morning.
Many hope the failed coup and its aftermath might divert Erdoğan from an authoritarian drift that has marred his reign. His panicked expression as he appeared on television Friday night via FaceTime on a news anchor’s iPhone showed that the coup had frightened him. Afterward, leaders of all three major opposition parties, all of whom have locked horns with Erdoğan, voiced support for the elected government. The same social media tools and democratic freedoms his government has sought to control, rescued Turkey’s democracy from the coup plotters.
But many doubt he will change course.
Erdoğan and his allies alleged that the coup was planned by members of the armed forces loyal to the religious leader Fethullah Gülen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. As the coup was rolled back, authorities arrested military officials allegedly linked to Gülen — he has been widely described as a cult leader and was allied with the AKP for years before a falling out in 2013 — and vowed to bring forth evidence of the group’s involvement. Some critics questioned the evidence connecting the putschists to the movement, suggesting that a rogue faction within the military, perhaps enraged over an impending wave of purges, had initiated the failed coup.
One Turkish official said many of the alleged coup leaders had entered public service with references from senior Gülenist figures. “The coup attempt has Gülenist fingerprints all over it,” said a senior Turkish official in a WhatsApp group message to international journalists. “Many of the failed coup leaders were in direct touch with senior members of the Gülen movement. More details will come to light as the investigation continues.”
But the government also quickly suspended 2,745 judges and prosecutors in connection with the coup, a huge proportion of the country’s legal system. The judiciary has long been a thorn in the ambitious Erdoğan’s side as he seeks to reshape the country, and some suspected he was using the coup as an opportunity to settle scores. “It’s impossible to find 2,745 judges linked to a coup plot in just four or five hours,” said Gareth Jenkins, an independent Turkey analyst based in Istanbul. “This is a preconceived list.”
Erdoğan and his supporters hailed the outpouring of public support for the government as a triumph of people power. But some critics condemned the government’s call for people to head into the streets, worried that it had empowered mobs who will be reluctant to give up on their newfound status as government heroes. Reports of attacks on army conscripts showed the potential for spiraling chaos on the streets in a country where vigilantes this year already stormed a record store for violating Islamic norms, and regularly attack offices of the opposition parties.
The coup attempt will further tarnish the reputation of Turkey’s regular armed forces exactly at the moment when the country is facing bedeviling security challenges. Military forces already battling ISIS and the separatist Kurdish PKK rebels and its offshoots must now focus their attention on the Gülenists, which the government has labeled a terrorist organization. Meanwhile public confidence has been rattled — for the first time in decades, Turkey witnessed members of security forces battling each other on the streets.
“We’re going to get an increased allocation of resources for alleged Gülenists,” said Jenkins. “It’s already in a war it’s not winning with the PKK.”
“This is a coup where everyone loses.”
The enthusiasm of the men and women, young and old listening to speeches against the faltering coup d’etat against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) had begun to wane late Friday night. The putsch launched hours earlier by units of the armed forces in the capital, Ankara, and the commercial center, Istanbul, appeared doomed — and it was getting late.
Suddenly scores of boisterous, bearded young men came out on the streets, chanting “God is Great” through megaphones, and waved the flags of the three-year-old hardcore Islamist Huda Party, a descendant of Turkey’s outlawed Hezbollah Party that used violence and intimidation in the 1990s to fight leftist and secular foes. AKP and Huda-Par supporters have been wary of each other. But on this night, they came together in rowdy chants.
“Hezbollah is with AKP!” they shouted, electrifying the audience at the 2 a.m. early Saturday morning rally.
Within hours, Turkey’s leaders and their supporters managed to turn the tide against a still murky band of armed forces personnel who attempted a daring putsch. Police battled the rebellious soldiers, and ordinary citizens took to the streets. Opposition parties fiercely critical of Erdoğan railed against the coup. Many celebrated a triumph of democratic principles in a region dominated by authoritarians or descending into chaos.
“We have urged the people to take to the streets and the entire people responded in order to protect democracy,” Abdullah Gul, the former president of Turkey said in a television appearance.
But as the emboldening of pro-Islamist hardliners like the Huda Party showed, the coup attempt and its aftermath also exposed several potential dangers that could further hurt Turkey’s stability in the coming months, as it seeks to stop attacks by ISIS, bolster its international partnerships and tamp down a war with separatist Kurds in the country’s southeast.
“This is a coup where everyone loses,” said Henri Barkey, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson center, who was in Istanbul during the attempt for a coup — Turkey’s sixth military putsch since 1960. “The damage is also psychological. It’s a huge blow on terrible wounds that have yet to heal and still hurt.”
At least 265 people, including 104 alleged coup plotters, were killed in a chaotic night of violence that stretched into the morning.
Many hope the failed coup and its aftermath might divert Erdoğan from an authoritarian drift that has marred his reign. His panicked expression as he appeared on television Friday night via FaceTime on a news anchor’s iPhone showed that the coup had frightened him. Afterward, leaders of all three major opposition parties, all of whom have locked horns with Erdoğan, voiced support for the elected government. The same social media tools and democratic freedoms his government has sought to control, rescued Turkey’s democracy from the coup plotters.
But many doubt he will change course.
Erdoğan and his allies alleged that the coup was planned by members of the armed forces loyal to the religious leader Fethullah Gülen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. As the coup was rolled back, authorities arrested military officials allegedly linked to Gülen — he has been widely described as a cult leader and was allied with the AKP for years before a falling out in 2013 — and vowed to bring forth evidence of the group’s involvement. Some critics questioned the evidence connecting the putschists to the movement, suggesting that a rogue faction within the military, perhaps enraged over an impending wave of purges, had initiated the failed coup.
One Turkish official said many of the alleged coup leaders had entered public service with references from senior Gülenist figures. “The coup attempt has Gülenist fingerprints all over it,” said a senior Turkish official in a WhatsApp group message to international journalists. “Many of the failed coup leaders were in direct touch with senior members of the Gülen movement. More details will come to light as the investigation continues.”
But the government also quickly suspended 2,745 judges and prosecutors in connection with the coup, a huge proportion of the country’s legal system. The judiciary has long been a thorn in the ambitious Erdoğan’s side as he seeks to reshape the country, and some suspected he was using the coup as an opportunity to settle scores. “It’s impossible to find 2,745 judges linked to a coup plot in just four or five hours,” said Gareth Jenkins, an independent Turkey analyst based in Istanbul. “This is a preconceived list.”
Erdoğan and his supporters hailed the outpouring of public support for the government as a triumph of people power. But some critics condemned the government’s call for people to head into the streets, worried that it had empowered mobs who will be reluctant to give up on their newfound status as government heroes. Reports of attacks on army conscripts showed the potential for spiraling chaos on the streets in a country where vigilantes this year already stormed a record store for violating Islamic norms, and regularly attack offices of the opposition parties.
The coup attempt will further tarnish the reputation of Turkey’s regular armed forces exactly at the moment when the country is facing bedeviling security challenges. Military forces already battling ISIS and the separatist Kurdish PKK rebels and its offshoots must now focus their attention on the Gülenists, which the government has labeled a terrorist organization. Meanwhile public confidence has been rattled — for the first time in decades, Turkey witnessed members of security forces battling each other on the streets.
“We’re going to get an increased allocation of resources for alleged Gülenists,” said Jenkins. “It’s already in a war it’s not winning with the PKK.”
Well I study modern Middle Eastern history, there really aren't any other candidates out there. But even compared with the other European leaders of his time, he stands out IMO for getting on with the boring job of ruling and nation-building after independence. Too many leaders of the 1920s and 1930s were prone to adventurism and fell prey to the ideological trends that eventually led to the disaster of WW2. Thanks to Ataturk's legacy, Turkey managed to stay out of that calamity and chart an independent path. If someone like Enver Pasha, who planned to unite all the Turks from the Balkans to Xinjiang, had inherited the post-WW1 Turkish state, Anatolia would now look something like the Levant.
Sorry, I thought you meant across the world, not just within the Middle East in the 20th Century. And certainly yes, great Middle Eastern leaders are hard to come by in the 20th century and I think it is fair to say that any that can be considered so will be hugely controversial.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/borzoudara...ey-in-coming?utm_term=.goGnwoKOrY#.bppa34kvK5
“This is a coup where everyone loses.”
The enthusiasm of the men and women, young and old listening to speeches against the faltering coup d’etat against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) had begun to wane late Friday night. The putsch launched hours earlier by units of the armed forces in the capital, Ankara, and the commercial center, Istanbul, appeared doomed — and it was getting late.
Suddenly scores of boisterous, bearded young men came out on the streets, chanting “God is Great” through megaphones, and waved the flags of the three-year-old hardcore Islamist Huda Party, a descendant of Turkey’s outlawed Hezbollah Party that used violence and intimidation in the 1990s to fight leftist and secular foes. AKP and Huda-Par supporters have been wary of each other. But on this night, they came together in rowdy chants.
“Hezbollah is with AKP!” they shouted, electrifying the audience at the 2 a.m. early Saturday morning rally.
Within hours, Turkey’s leaders and their supporters managed to turn the tide against a still murky band of armed forces personnel who attempted a daring putsch. Police battled the rebellious soldiers, and ordinary citizens took to the streets. Opposition parties fiercely critical of Erdoğan railed against the coup. Many celebrated a triumph of democratic principles in a region dominated by authoritarians or descending into chaos.
“We have urged the people to take to the streets and the entire people responded in order to protect democracy,” Abdullah Gul, the former president of Turkey said in a television appearance.
But as the emboldening of pro-Islamist hardliners like the Huda Party showed, the coup attempt and its aftermath also exposed several potential dangers that could further hurt Turkey’s stability in the coming months, as it seeks to stop attacks by ISIS, bolster its international partnerships and tamp down a war with separatist Kurds in the country’s southeast.
“This is a coup where everyone loses,” said Henri Barkey, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson center, who was in Istanbul during the attempt for a coup — Turkey’s sixth military putsch since 1960. “The damage is also psychological. It’s a huge blow on terrible wounds that have yet to heal and still hurt.”
At least 265 people, including 104 alleged coup plotters, were killed in a chaotic night of violence that stretched into the morning.
Many hope the failed coup and its aftermath might divert Erdoğan from an authoritarian drift that has marred his reign. His panicked expression as he appeared on television Friday night via FaceTime on a news anchor’s iPhone showed that the coup had frightened him. Afterward, leaders of all three major opposition parties, all of whom have locked horns with Erdoğan, voiced support for the elected government. The same social media tools and democratic freedoms his government has sought to control, rescued Turkey’s democracy from the coup plotters.
But many doubt he will change course.
Erdoğan and his allies alleged that the coup was planned by members of the armed forces loyal to the religious leader Fethullah Gülen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. As the coup was rolled back, authorities arrested military officials allegedly linked to Gülen — he has been widely described as a cult leader and was allied with the AKP for years before a falling out in 2013 — and vowed to bring forth evidence of the group’s involvement. Some critics questioned the evidence connecting the putschists to the movement, suggesting that a rogue faction within the military, perhaps enraged over an impending wave of purges, had initiated the failed coup.
One Turkish official said many of the alleged coup leaders had entered public service with references from senior Gülenist figures. “The coup attempt has Gülenist fingerprints all over it,” said a senior Turkish official in a WhatsApp group message to international journalists. “Many of the failed coup leaders were in direct touch with senior members of the Gülen movement. More details will come to light as the investigation continues.”
But the government also quickly suspended 2,745 judges and prosecutors in connection with the coup, a huge proportion of the country’s legal system. The judiciary has long been a thorn in the ambitious Erdoğan’s side as he seeks to reshape the country, and some suspected he was using the coup as an opportunity to settle scores. “It’s impossible to find 2,745 judges linked to a coup plot in just four or five hours,” said Gareth Jenkins, an independent Turkey analyst based in Istanbul. “This is a preconceived list.”
Erdoğan and his supporters hailed the outpouring of public support for the government as a triumph of people power. But some critics condemned the government’s call for people to head into the streets, worried that it had empowered mobs who will be reluctant to give up on their newfound status as government heroes. Reports of attacks on army conscripts showed the potential for spiraling chaos on the streets in a country where vigilantes this year already stormed a record store for violating Islamic norms, and regularly attack offices of the opposition parties.
The coup attempt will further tarnish the reputation of Turkey’s regular armed forces exactly at the moment when the country is facing bedeviling security challenges. Military forces already battling ISIS and the separatist Kurdish PKK rebels and its offshoots must now focus their attention on the Gülenists, which the government has labeled a terrorist organization. Meanwhile public confidence has been rattled — for the first time in decades, Turkey witnessed members of security forces battling each other on the streets.
“We’re going to get an increased allocation of resources for alleged Gülenists,” said Jenkins. “It’s already in a war it’s not winning with the PKK.”
There were reports all over Twitter last night of these Huda goons attacking Kurdish-Alevi neighbourhoods in Istsnbul.
What was my argument about democracy and elections? All I said was that if the other parties had widespread support, they could have won elections prior to Erdogan consolidating power as he has now ie before the AKP had even held power. I also would not argue that the ends justified the means when it comes to dictatorship (unlike others who do think so when it comes to military coups).
I also think it is wrong to frame a military coup now as different from a coup a few years ago and I think it is wrong to imply that the army (or the factions of it which got involved) decided to do this out of an interest in the country's democracy.
Yes I agree that he has been taking those steps and that he is moving towards a dictatorial system. I worry about whether he would willingly leave power. I would not vote for him were I Turkish (indeed, as I've said, I would probably vote for the HDP) and would likely be involved in protest movements against him and his party.
How does the political opposition depend solely on his courtesy?
No I think that nobody can 'stop' him but this (imo anyway) is also in large part because of the weakness of the opposition party.
People tend to think of things as very zero sum or black as white, especially when it comes to the Middle East. There are dictators much much more powerful and entrenched than Erdogan ever was or (imo) is ever likely to be who have been toppled or stepped down in the face of elections/ widespread opposition.
I would not agree that dictatorship under Erdogan is better than any alternative. I would argue that removing Erdogan and the AKP, who, despite a huge amount of problems (many of them far away from anything approaching democracy), still represent the views of the population better than the opposition parties by force, is dangerous and not the best choice. My own personal opinion, unlike some on here, is that a dictatorship is a dictatorship, as I've pointed out and the crimes of a secular dictator, whether a party one or a military one, are the same. I would argue that a democracy is the best option. A secular democracy would be the best option imo. But in lieu of the population not desiring that, then at least a democracy which represents the population best and with a movement towards secularism.
Lots of chatter on Twitter that it was staged. Apparently a lot of soldiers that weren't involved are being arrested, judges being arrested, even some rumors about many soldiers being told it was a training. Don't know what to believe.
#OscarGoesToErdogan is trending.
#OscarGoesToErdogan is trending.
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Series of tweets here which make sense, no idea the credibility though:
Not sure what this is. Some kind of a bad army joke?
This kind of development appears logical, but I don't think we will get a confirmation on those kind of details in the immediate future.
That's the legal justification used by the US to launch drones into countries they're officially not at war with.
Surely they have agreements with the governments of the countries in question?
In short my argument is, that military intervention is clearly wrong, when democratic means have a realistic chance to change politics. Once democratic path-ways are closed, other means become acceptable.
Erdogan disempowered the last democratic institution (after weakening all of them for years) with the constitutional amendment in May. He lifted the immunity of ~137 MPs and can prosecute them for no reasons. In the future MPs will think twice before opposing him, because he might put them in prison. With that measure he ensured that the parliament will accept the constitutional changes that turn the country in a presidential “democracy”. At this point it will be a democracy only by name, because the institutional balance of power itself is way too one sided.
Are democracies allowed to abolish human rights and democracy itself? No. Of course not, because democracy is more than organizing politics by a majority voting system.
These fundamental issues aside, if Erdogan would be so popular and unopposed, he wouldn´t need to harass, prosecute and jail all these people who are not cheering for him. He wouldn´t need to close down all media outlets who criticize him. He wouldn´t need to go after academics, journalists, judges, prosecutors, MPs, or social media activists. He wouldn´t need to expel critical foreigners. He would certainly not need to end the rule of law itself. Once you silence anyone who oppose you, you don´t get any opposition. He wasn´t able to change the constitution in the past, because the democratic forces in the system stopped him. Now they won´t be able to do that anymore.
At this point we all know whats going to happen, because “the gloves are off”. Turkey will become more and more authoritarian and oppressive and anyone who doesn´t agree with his ideas will be fecked. I hope that the EU is sensible enough to welcome anyone, who doesn´t want to live under kind of oppression with open arms.
So what's the greater implications of Turkey becoming an Islamic state? How does this affect NATO and EU? The Middle East?
In terms of regional and international politics, sooner or later it will inevitably IMO express itself in a fundamental realignment of Turkey away from the NATO/Western camp into a bid for leadership within the Islamic world, at least in the Middle East. In fact this is what has been happening in slow motion since at least 2011 already. The consequences of the shift are hard to tell - it doesn't necessarily mean Turkey will become a hostile state with regards to Europe. I think that the bid for regional leadership will end up sapping up much of Ankara's energies and resources, as it will not go unopposed, either by Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Israel. In terms of relations with Russia, despite the current rapprochement, they are historical and natural rivals, so that's an interesting relationship to keep tabs on.
In terms of Turkish society, we can expect the slow march towards a greater role for Islam in public life to pick up speed - it is the AK Party's program, but also probably reflects the desire of the majority of the people to some degree - certainly of the conservative, Anatolian heart of the nation, whose population is rising faster than the secularists of the two main cities, Thrace, and the west coast. The Kurdish response will be tied to events in Syria and Iraq, but I expect their military struggle within Turkey to continue as avenues of political engagement become increasingly closed to them.
All this is of course subject to the performance of the economy.
It amazes me that a partially westernized country would choose to 'revert' to an islamist state. Why on earth would turkish women want that?
It amazes you that muslim women would want to live in an Islamic country?
This is a incredibly outlandish, but i dont get how a 3,000 plus army with the intention of overthrowing the government can surrender within a fews hours. Also how they could allow the president to escape so easily
In a strict Islamic society when they had previously experienced the more relaxed society that Turkey has.
I'm sure you know what I mean and I don't necessarily want to derail this thread into a bashing of Islam over the treatment of women.
Depends on how conservative endorgen's ideal turkey is really, i suppose.
Read up a little on how this westernisation came about in Turkey, then you'd understand why a substantial proportion of Turks want to revert back to an Islamic system of governance...
EDIT - Also, honest question: have you ever spoken to a Muslim woman be it here in the UK, or anywhere else, and asked her view on her religion? As opposed to people from the outside, or women from that background who for whatever reason, have rejected it? If not, I suggest you should. If for nothing else, it would give you a better perspective on the issue. It probably won't change your mind, but at least you'll have come to your conclusions having seen both sides of it.
I don't know which is why I asked the questions.
I'm probably fairly ignorant on it to be honest. I don't think I'm wrong in believing that Islam and female issues don't gel with Western attitudes though.
So in your mind Western Values > all ?
OK, here are some of the anti-Islamic reforms Ataturk imposed on the new Turkish Republic after 1923:
* Abolished the Caliphate
* Banned the head-scarf in public institutions
* Banned the wearing of the Fez in favour of brimmed hats (which prevented the faithful from touching their foreheads to the ground when praying)
* Banned the sufi orders which were the centre of Islamic devotional life in rural Turkey
* Co-opted the previously autonomous ulama (clergy), essentially making them civil servants subject to a Ministry of Religion (or something like that)
* Swapped the Islamic calendar for the Gregorian
* Swapped the Arabic alphabet for the Latin
* Purged the Turkish language of as many Arabic and Persian loan-words as possible
* Concocted a bizarre theory on the origins of the Turks which relegated their Islamic heritage to a footnote in their history
There's a few more I can't think of at the moment. You can see why this would majorly piss off pious Muslims to this day, and it has led to accusations that Ataturk was a Western agent / Freemason / Zionist / etc. out to destroy Islam from within. Here's why I think he did what he did, you can judge yourself if he went too far or not enough:
Ataturk came of age at a time when the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, suffering military defeats at the hands of the Russians and the Christian peoples of the Balkans who were breaking away. Then from 1911 to 1923, the empire was at war continuously, with the exception of some months just before the outbreak of WW1. By the time he came to power, Anatolia was a wasteland. Over a million Armenian and Assyrian Christians had been uprooted, marched off and/or killed. The Turkish-speaking Christian population had been expelled to Greece. In their place, millions of Muslim refugees from the Balkans and Greece had arrived, joining the millions who had arrived from the Caucasus and Balkans over the previous fifty years or so. These people had different traditions, spoke a different language, and in many cases practiced a different form of Islam, to the Turks of Anatolia. So Ataturk had to make a nation out of all this. He could have gone down the Islamic route, and used Islam to unite them. But he feared that this would tie Turkey to the rest of the Muslim peoples of the empire, in the Arab lands further south, and believed that this would entangle Turkey in a series of wars they couldn't hope to win. More than that, he deeply believed that Islam could not succeed in shaping the state in the modern world, and believed the success of the European powers was derived from their commitment to nationalism. He had watched the Ottomans attempt to use Islam to hold the empire together, and saw it fail. So he opted to mimic European nationalism and take it as far as he could, and in doing so, obliterated Islam from public life in Turkey. But his reforms, while certainly shaping the elites and urban life to an extent, never fully won over the rural population, or the Kurds whose own growing sense of nationalism conflicted with the nation-building project.
You're right in that they most likely don't, but it doesn't make them any less correct or wrong.
How strong is the opposition towards Erdogan in Turkey?
Judging by the last two elections, slightly more than half the country are opposed to him (or at least didn't vote for him). But they're divided between three major parties who despise each other, and then other minor parties who don't come near breaking the 10% threshold required to win parliamentary seats.
It sound simple maybe and naive but why don't that 3 parties put aside their differences and united in their fight against him somehow.
What about regions, I guess support for him is stronger in some regions and some not?
Also I see Erdogan is calling for a death sentence for the plotters.
But, for example, what if a woman in an Islamic society objects against a specific role she is restricted to, or against limitations concerning the fulfillment of her individual needs.
Is she right or wrong then?
(This debate probably deserves its own thread. On the other hand this exact issue is crucial in regard to the future of Turkey, too.)
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MHP is full of nationalistic Turks, the kind who give normal Turkish people the bad reputation of wanting to see Kurds denied rights and generally oppressed. Since the HDP is the Kurdish party and is increasingly less subtle about its ties to the PKK, getting those two parties to cooperate would be a miracle. Meanwhile, the CHP is obviously Atatürk's party, and they'll never win over Kurds or manage to appease the bleeding liberals who try too hard to portray themselves as being enlightened and understanding, the same liberals who also enabled Erdoğan's rise. All in all, it's extremely unrealistic to expect cooperation between any of them because they have conflicting interests that trump their desire to see the AKP dethroned.
Soldiers being kept in the dark would actually be part of the coup. Telling them to control point X but not that it is part of a coup makes sense. You can't expect to keep a coup a secret if you brief thousands of soldiers before hand.
You hope many will just follow the orders from above and not question things.
@Fener1907 has described the parties' relations there. Also worth noting that the AKP spent a lot of time courting the Kurds in their first decade of rule, but that Erdogan's use of ISIS and other jihadi groups in Syria to counter the PKK (YPG) mini-state there further alienated Turkey's Kurds leading to the growth of the HDP.
As for regions, you'll find the AKP dominating the heartland of the country (central Anatolia), with the CHP maintaining a lead on the west coast and Thrace, and the HDP leading in the south-eastern Kurdish regions. From what section of society or region the MHP takes its support from, I have no idea.
Also probably best answered by some Muslim women... not men speaking on thirty behalf! Which in a way would be the very point of the thread!
But I'm not sure if we have many Muslim women posters on this forum?
If you're a muslim woman wearing a headscarf and the banning of the headscarf in public institutions restricts you and your life choices it makes sense to welcome someone like Erdogan.
Nah, Islamic rule and societies are clearly superior. That is why all muslim countries are such peaceful havens and you see us from the west fleeing in the hundreds of the thousands to these havens and democratic lightbeams.
Yes. You have to compartmentalize such an operation if you are to have any chance of success. Not to mention that virtually all military offensive action, everywhere, is kept from the enlisted personnel up until the last possible moment.
In my opinion the attempt was not staged, but suffered from last minute setbacks, and severe planning deficiencies. For instance, in my opinion, the following actions would have been crucial:
- Stop all cellular phone services: A tank parked in front of the carrier building and a platoon armed to the teeth would convince any technician to hit the kill switch promptly.
- Stop international internet access: This may have happened, I read some conflicting reports. By cutting the international net you practically deny access to every social media. It is easier than the stopping the entire internet in the whole of the country, since the channels to the outside world are not that many (usually).
- Stop all landline phone services: Less important than the previous, but still necessary.
- Terminate power to the TV transmitting and relay stations. I have no idea how the infrastructure in Turkey is, but usually satellites are used for relaying, and usually one site is used by multiple TV channels.