Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

In my day, never was longer.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The willow is too close to the house.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

This fight is for everything.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Everybody saw this coming.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Turkish Coup Update: The Coup Has Failed

Turkish Coup Update: The Coup Has Failed

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Update at 12:10 AM EDT

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yldirim has announced that Umit Dundar is the new acting Chief of the Turkish Military. There is still no new information on the whereabouts and the status of the actual Chief of Staff, General Hulusi Akar. I saw a tweet several hours ago saying he’d been rescued and freed as he was being held hostage, but the tweet wasn’t really sourced to any real reporting.

———————————-

The Guardian is reporting that President Erdogan is addressing a sizable crowd in Istanbul.

He tells supporters that the government will succeed.

From the highest level of the army to lowest-ranking officers, he says, the armed forces must know they cannot govern the state.

The government is elected and is in control, he says. The people elected a president and that president is here.

He says the coup plotters brought out tanks, but “my people” took them back.

Erdoğan says he will stand firm and will not compromise.

He says he will address “those in Pennsylvania” – by which he means cleric Fethullah Gülen and his supporters – accusing them of betraying the nation. That’s enough, he says: if you are courageous, come back to Turkey.

There is still some fighting in Ankara though, so complete control hasn’t quite been reestablished.

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  4. 4.

    ? Martin

    Yep. Erdogan wasn’t wrong to be paranoid, but he’s probably now looking admirably at how Kim Jung Il has things set up.

  7. 7.

    Psych1

    Erdogan has been purging all critical institutions, military, press, judiciary, govt, of all opposition for many years. His people are in place where it matters. Key opposition leaders including many military leaders are in prison. Hard to pull off a coup.

  8. 8.

    Merci

    @Pogonip:

    I am that great big bad old cat, Sylvester is my name
    I only have one aim in life and that is very plain
    I want to catch that little bird and eat him right away
    But just as I get close to him, this is what he’ll say

    I taut I taw a puddy tat a creepin’ up on me
    You bet he taw a puddy tat, that puddy tat is me!

    Burl Ives

  13. 13.

    guachi

    Time for the EU and USA to put some pressure on Erdogan. If NATO and EU membership have any meaning to Erodgan and Turkey then use them as leverage. The US and EU can’t keep getting played with “we need them for Syria” as an excuse to turn a blind eye.

  16. 16.

    max

    @efgoldman: He’ll probably bomb the Kurds again, because he can.

    They never stopped bombing the Kurds. ‘Fun in Turkey’ has been the continuous theme since Erdogan won reelection on the basis of fighting Kurdish terrorism – which he blamed for the bombing of a peaceful Kurdish demo by Daesh.

    You want paranoid?

    max
    [‘There will be blood.’]

  18. 18.

    redshirt

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    How much do you know about Turkey? I say you know fuck all. So shut the fuck up.

    More than you I bet. Also, you’re becoming more caustic with each passing month. You’re not the only one who gets to judge, dude.

  21. 21.

    Miss Bianca

    @redshirt: You mean a typo as in…the chickens have flown the coup?

    ETA: Or would that be “the turkeys have flown the coup”?

  26. 26.

    PhoenixRising

    @Omnes Omnibus: if you boys can’t behave you’re going straight off to bed. No dessert.

    Back to the issue at hand: link to a short primer on why we are disappointed to see tanks rolling in the streets and not overthrowing the elected government?

    Sorry I’m behind, took a personal day for oncology and the Bosphorus was never my bag so…catch up materials are welcome.

  33. 33.

    Elie

    @PhoenixRising:

    Hey man, whats with the oncology? Do I have to worry about you? Just tell me to butt out if you want but I have to show you that I care….

  35. 35.

    max

    @efgoldman: I don’t know whether it’s better or worse that he hasn’t blamed the Jews.

    Oh, he’s officially back to loving the Israelis. Also he’s back to being OK with Putin. Mainly because he’s got a war with the PPK, not to mention a bombing campaign against YPG/J to conduct. And there’s that leetle problem with Daesh.

    So blaming the Jews is out.

    In the face of government assertions that the coup has failed, the pro-coup faction of the armed forces insists it is still fighting, Reuters reports:
    An email from the Turkish military general staff’s press office address said on Saturday the faction of officers behind an attempted military coup overnight was still determinedly fighting all those who try to oppose it.
    Calling itself the Peace at Home Movement, the faction also called on people to stay indoors for their own safety.

    max
    [‘As far as I can tell, Erdogan has Istanbul and the TV nets and the coupers have partial control of Ankara.’]

  36. 36.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Just a vote for putting your updates below the main post in chronological order. Your previous post with multiple granular updates was hard to read because one had to search for the original nugget that was being updated, then read back up.

    No one expects up-to-the-minute news flashes from Balloon Juice, or at least that’s not the main reason for coming here, so that format isn’t necessary. IMHO, of course.

  38. 38.

    magurakurin

    @efgoldman: holy fuck. What’s up with this brawl? Is the dew point at some ungodly high and steamy level?

    Because it was here. We had a dew point of 81.5 degrees here on Wednesday. A dew point over 80 is just stupid humid.

  40. 40.

    magurakurin

    @Adam L Silverman: I had an asthma attack on Wednesday night. Foolishly tried to hack it out with just a fan. Woke up from a dream choking. Took my medicine and shut up the house and blasted the AC. Looks like another dose of it tonight. Not quite as bad as Wednesday though. It’s humid here all summer but a dew point over 81 is not fit for human habitation.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @magurakurin: I’m sorry and I hope you feel better. I can tell you trying to sleep with the respiratory infection I had a couple of weeks back was not fun at all.

  43. 43.

    magurakurin

    @Adam L Silverman: thanks, I’m just fine. My asthma isn’t that bad and the humidity doesn’t usually get it going. But it was just a perfect storm of humidity the other day. I’ve lived in Western Japan for 18 years and it is always very humid, but that was just freaky. I was born and raised in Southeastern PA, so I grew up with humidity as well. Californians are spoiled. They have no idea. PNW, too. I live in Oregon a long time and the would complain about the humidity when it was around 50% in the summer. Dry up there in summer.

  44. 44.

    mike in dc

    I think the 24-hour news establishment is wearing under the strain of covering multiple big stories simultaneously–Trump’s VP pick, Sterling/Castile/Dallas, Nice, Turkey.

  46. 46.

    Steeplejack

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Thanks for considering it. I noticed on this post you did put a line between the update and the original post. Previous one didn’t have that.

  47. 47.

    magurakurin

    @mike in dc: Trump’s VP they probably coulda skipped. Mike “who the fuck is he?” Pence. The best part is though that it’s the TP ticket….only good for wiping your ass.

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @magurakurin: When I moved to Carlisle in July 2010 for my assignment there at USAWC, I left Florida on a Tuesday morning. It was about 92 and 60% humidity. When I got to Carlisle the next day around 4:30 PM it was about 104 and 80% plus humidity. I was so glad I had gotten a house with a pool! I got the dogs out, got them into the backyard, then watered and fed. Got the truck unloaded. Got changed and got right into the pool. Followed by my oldest dog at the time. She smelled the water and thought “I know what this is, we had one at grandma’s and grandpa’s house! I’ll just put my paws in to cool down. Unfortunately the pool was an above ground that had then had the deck built around it to make it look less tacky. So no steps, just stairs. She went right into the pool and was not pleasantly surprised! So I had to get her out and toweled off.

  53. 53.

    magurakurin

    @Adam L Silverman: brutal. PA summers are hot, especially out in those valleys.

    I remember some nasty summer nights though from my childhood. But we always missed the worst of it because we went to the Jersey Shore and stayed with my grandparents all summer. Bloody hot some nights there, too. In the sixities they still sprayed for mosquitoes at night. We would hear the truck coming and my mom would rush around closing all the windows as the gas started pouring in (might have been DDT, don’t know). Then the house would begin to bake. We had no AC at all in those days. After about a half an hour the danger of the poison gas seemed nothing compared to suffocating in the still humid air. Living in the Northeast you get used to all extremes, hot and cold, snow and rain. A little bit of everything, eh?

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @magurakurin: We had those bug spray trucks in Florida growing up as well. We also had central A/C!

    And with that I’m too bed.

  55. 55.

    burnspbesq

    Erdogan, Orban, Kaczynski, Trump. All planning on being the last democratically elected leaders of their respective countries.

  56. 56.

    burnspbesq

    @magurakurin:

    The best part of Jersey summers: you take a shower, and by the time you finish drying off you need another one.

    201 fa life!

  61. 61.

    Lurking Canadian

    @PhoenixRising:

    Back to the issue at hand: link to a short primer on why we are disappointed to see tanks rolling in the streets and not overthrowing the elected government?

    I am emphatically not an expert. The previous thread about the coup contains a pretty good discussion of the background, I think. My dog just woke me up, so I’ll try to summarize.

    As I undertstand it there is a tradition in Turkey (going back all the way to Ataturk) that the armed forces are the defenders of Liberty. In the century since the creation of modern Turkey, anytime the democracy starts getting out of hand, (which basically means “too Muslim”) they intervene, dissolve the government and form a new one.

    It sounds very strange to Western ears to root for the military coup against a democratically elected government, but NATO is usually OK with it. A way to think of it might be that the armed forces in Turkey play a role not unlike the US Supreme Court. They believe themselves empowered to act to defend civil liberties against the tyranny of the majority.

    Another way to think of it is that this is basically what Pinochet said he was doing, too (except read “too communist” instead of “too Muslim”).

    The problem with the SCOTUS analogy, of course, is that this is all ad hoc. They don’t “really” have that authority in any kind of constitutional sense, they just kind of do it sometimes.

    In this case, the situation seems murky. Erdogan’s treatment of the Kurdish minority is certainly not worthy of praise, but squashing the Kurds is a non-partisan issue in Turkey (i.e. Both sides do it). Obama has come out in his favour in this case, and against the coup. That might be realpolitik, it might be “better the devil we know”, it might be just a bias against further instability in an unstable region, it might be something I haven’t thought of. In this case, as in so many others, I am glad that Obama has to make the decisions and not me.

  64. 64.

    J R in WV

    @Joel:

    In Turkey, usually. They need a “This Government can make no laws nor express any preferences regarding race, religion, national origin, or sexual identity whatsoever.” clause in their constitution. The Army is secular, and keeps reseting the civilian government back to secular as it tends to slide towards Islamic Government every 15 or 20 years.

    We have still not proven that an Islamic population can maintain a democratic and secular government.

    It is actually looking like we have not proven that a secular Christian state can maintain a secular, non-religious government either, so far. Just ask Mike Pence, right?

  65. 65.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @guachi: This is sorta where I am.

    Erdogan is dangerous and it’s quite clear that he’s trying to set himself up as a quasi-dictator for life. He let/encouraged a million migrants run to Europe to try to pressure them into giving him what he wants on EU membership, etc. He agreed to join the US in fighting Daesh as cover for waging war on the Kurds in Syria and Iraq. He’s muzzling the press from reporting on the war on the Kurds in eastern Turkey, taking over papers that are critical of him, etc.

    He was bad news even before yesterday.

    A coup is bad news, too, even if it might appear that the military can “reset” the direction of government there. It shows that civil institutions are still weak and still too easily manipulated by a demagogue.

    I’m sure that Erdogan is going to feel emboldened by the coup’s failure. He’ll purge more of the military, crack down even harder on his critics, and probably ratchet up his war on the Kurds even more. As bad as he was, the failed coup is going to make things worse.

    Unless, perhaps, the EU and the US and others somehow get him to change his ways. A sensible leader might step back and think “why did this happen, and what are options that I have, other than cracking down, to prevent it from happening again?” Given his authoritarian tendencies, it’s hard to imagine him thinking that he has other options…

    If the coup has indeed failed, I hope it is wrapped up with as little violence as possible. In this situation, one thing worse than a failed coup is a failing coup that drags on for weeks with escalating violence.

    :-(

    We’ll see.

    I hope Obama and Kerry think carefully about how to handle Erdogan going forward…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  66. 66.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Omnes Omnibus: Shut the fuck up yourself. I know enough about Turkey (having followed their situation since I spent 17 days there in 1996) to understand that Erdogan is one of the nastiest pieces of work out there. His entire administration has been a slow-motion Islamist coup against the Kemalist state (which whatever its failings had been faithfully* secularist, largely due to the Army’s mission as the guardians of Ataturk’s vision & its willingness to step in, restore it, & step back out ASAP).

    All the West needs is a heavily armed Turkey walking out of NATO & into a full-blown hegemonic struggle with the Saudis & Iranians for supremacy in the region, probably with ISIS/ISIL as allies. And now that Erdogan has drawn out the rest of the opposition & crushed them, we are odds-on to get that within the next 10 years. Fun & games!

    * Pun unintended but accepting the award on behalf of my subconscious.

  67. 67.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @redshirt: I presume “geothermal cooling” = ground-source heat pumping. I’d do the same in a heartbeat, except that an interior-group row house with a 18’x50′ yard would require a deep well (at least in the current designs) & even if I could get zoning approval for same, break-even would come well into my 90s. (So I do the next best thing by spending most of the thermonuclear season in my sunken basement with a small fan.)

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