Attempted Coup in Turkey

[Sophelia]

This is not looking good for Turkey-US relations: at first Erdogan was making statements that any countries protecting Gulen would be considered at war with Turkey.  Now the rhetoric seems to be getting more explicit, as I hear Erdogan and other MPs are demanding that the US must return Gulen to Turkey, and blaming the US, by sheltering him, for the coup.  (This is second-hand translation of things being said on Turkish TV).  I'm not sure if it is related to this, but according to what I'm reading, all air traffic into and out of the Incirlik Airbase has been stopped for quite a few hours (this Nato base is mainly used by the US, which has 1500 personnel and planes for attacking ISIS.  There are also nuclear weapons stored there).

Anyone know more about this situation or the diplomatic implications?

 

P.S. I also heard that the USA had said they would extradite Gulen if they got a request  to do so, and some evidence of his involvement in the coup, with the implication that they had received neither.

P.P.S. The Guardian livefeed is reporting the same things, so I guess that's confirmed then.

[Astromech]

20 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

This was my cynical thought.  Either the coup was staged to consolidate autocratic power or else it was very convenient for Erdogn in its ineptitude and timing.  

Either way, an autocratic Turkey warring with Kurds and asserting regional power looks a lot like a second Iran.  And the EU will appease him to stem the migrant flow. 

In essence, Erdogan's Reichstag fire. Interesting thought and one I entertained as well.

[Trigger Warning]

 

3 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

This was my cynical thought.  Either the coup was staged to consolidate autocratic power or else it was very convenient for Erdogn in its ineptitude and timing.  

Either way, an autocratic Turkey warring with Kurds and asserting regional power looks a lot like a second Iran.  And the EU will appease him to stem the migrant flow. 

I'm not usually one for false flags but this all seems a bit iffy, they didn't really achieve much and it petered out very quickly without much direction, add that to the lack of senior military leadership and I wouldn't be surprised if it was instigated from above with senior officers promising support that simply never materialised. Total speculation of course but I had the feeling that it seemed more like a show throughout, especially in regards to Erdogan's performance. 

[Horza]

I agree that this has strong parallels with the Reichstag fire. In just the same way that a lone Dutchman burnt it down and the Nazis siezed the moment out of a combination of genuine paranoia and opportunism, an incompetent coup is a gift to Erdogan politically as well as a huge confirmation of his many paranoias.

[James Arryn]

21 minutes ago, Trigger Warning said:

 

I'm not usually one for false flags but this all seems a bit iffy, they didn't really achieve much and it petered out very quickly without much direction, add that to the lack of senior military leadership and I wouldn't be surprised if it was instigated from above with senior officers promising support that simply never materialised. Total speculation of course but I had the feeling that it seemed more like a show throughout, especially in regards to Erdogan's performance. 

That's the thing about false flags. I'm not venturing an opinion on this...I know less than nothing. But the 2 things about false flag operations:

1) everyone does them. History is full of them.

2) they're almost always effective because everyone's 'not usually' believing them. Like, everyone knows that they do happen, can happen...but almost no one ever believes it about any particular incident at the time. This is not a criticism; I'm wired just like you. I'll know the general truth that everyone will try ffos at one point or the other, but my instinct in each particular case is to disbelieve this could be one. And because we're wired that way, they will always be effective.

 

[James Arryn]

3 minutes ago, Horza said:

I agree that this has strong parallels with the Reichstag fire. In just the same way that a lone Dutchman burnt it down and the Nazis siezed the moment out of a combination of genuine paranoia and opportunism, an incompetent coup is a gift to Erdogan politically as well as a huge confirmation of his many paranoias.

The Nazis did other, more literal false flag ops than the Reichstag. They had German soldiers stage a false attack by 'polish' soldiers attacking German soldiers, for example.

[Horza]

Just now, James Arryn said:

The Nazis did other, more literal false flag ops than the Reichstag. They had German soldiers stage a false attack by 'polish' soldiers attacking German soldiers, for example.

Yes, and most false flags look like the Gleiwitz attack: small scale, amateurish and dubious. See also the Mukden Incident, where the bomb the Japanese planted on their own railway to get into a fight with China didn't even damage the track.

This, by contrast was a 8+ hour coup where parliament was bombed four times, gunships roamed the streets and real soliders and real citizens clashed, and hundreds of people were killed.

[Fragile Bird]

I gather 265 people were killed and about 1400 injured.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

1 hour ago, James Arryn said:

The Nazis did other, more literal false flag ops than the Reichstag. They had German soldiers stage a false attack by 'polish' soldiers attacking German soldiers, for example.

My impression was that nobody believed them, or at least no one cared. I mean the Allies still declared war on Germany for declaring war on Poland after that.

[Horza]

It came at the end of about five months of increasingly belligerent statements, atrocity propaganda and troop movements, so yeah.

[James Arryn]

14 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

My impression was that nobody believed them, or at least no one cared. I mean the Allies still declared war on Germany for declaring war on Poland after that.

It was one in a series of moves; there's debate on how effective they were. Outside of Germany, there was a degree of scepticism, but within Germany it went down much better. The debate is whether the latter was the principle motivation. Historically almost all expansionist states have acted at least nominally in 'self-defense', whether against rampaging Gauls or savage Redskins, the idea is almost always that the imperial power is the victim (hence must attack). To it's own people, at any rate.

Few want to wear the mantle of Atilla.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Assad is democratically elected in Syria multiple times now btw. I'm thankful this wasnt exacerbated and escalated through foreign meddleing. The Turks themselves need to determine their own fates, were Syria allowed to do the same, w/out foreign proxy interference, the rebels would have been crushed a few years earlier.

I shudder at the amount of tangled mess and intervention either the Clinton or Trump regimes will have the U.S. stuck in over the next 4 yrs. It's endless war and escalation coming soon.

[DireWolfSpirit]

11 hours ago, James Arryn said:

I'm just off the coast in Rhodes. Place is buzzing. They bombed across the way in Bodrum, which was visible from here, apparently, because they found out the President was there. So, I was in Nice a week or so back, in London for Brexit, in Budapest the day they closed it down, in Istanbul for the Taksim riots, in Vienna for the refugee camp storm, etc. My passport is starting to look a mite suspicious. Was going to go to Turkey from here, but I guess we'll see. 

May you live in interesting times. Those poor people. 

Wow that's some itinerary.

[Corvinus85]

12 hours ago, James Arryn said:

I'm just off the coast in Rhodes. Place is buzzing. They bombed across the way in Bodrum, which was visible from here, apparently, because they found out the President was there. So, I was in Nice a week or so back, in London for Brexit, in Budapest the day they closed it down, in Istanbul for the Taksim riots, in Vienna for the refugee camp storm, etc. My passport is starting to look a mite suspicious. Was going to go to Turkey from here, but I guess we'll see.

Agent of chaos.

But what happened in Budapest? And when?

[DunderMifflin]

14 hours ago, Sophelia said:

This is not looking good for Turkey-US relations: at first Erdogan was making statements that any countries protecting Gulen would be considered at war with Turkey.  Now the rhetoric seems to be getting more explicit, as I hear Erdogan and other MPs are demanding that the US must return Gulen to Turkey, and blaming the US, by sheltering him, for the coup.  (This is second-hand translation of things being said on Turkish TV).  I'm not sure if it is related to this, but according to what I'm reading, all air traffic into and out of the Incirlik Airbase has been stopped for quite a few hours (this Nato base is mainly used by the US, which has 1500 personnel and planes for attacking ISIS.  There are also nuclear weapons stored there).

Anyone know more about this situation or the diplomatic implications?

 

P.S. I also heard that the USA had said they would extradite Gulen if they got a request  to do so, and some evidence of his involvement in the coup, with the implication that they had received neither.

P.P.S. The Guardian livefeed is reporting the same things, so I guess that's confirmed then.

Yeh, this is shaping up to be a very tricky situation.

Does the US just take the guy and send him back without any sort of due process just to make sure it keeps it's important military strategic position?(not that it can't keep it regardless) On the world map, Turkey is literally a land bridge between Europe and the Middle East. 

 

Or does it ignore demands and allow him to stay here while accused of being a country that harbors terrorists, something the US hasn't been shy to chastise other countries for.

 

 

[Relic]

5 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Agent of chaos.

But what happened in Budapest? And when?

Budapest closed down its railway to prevent refugees from moving within the country last summer. I was there around that time too. 

[Altherion]

12 hours ago, Horza said:

Yes, and most false flags look like the Gleiwitz attack: small scale, amateurish and dubious. See also the Mukden Incident, where the bomb the Japanese planted on their own railway to get into a fight with China didn't even damage the track.

This, by contrast was a 8+ hour coup where parliament was bombed four times, gunships roamed the streets and real soliders and real citizens clashed, and hundreds of people were killed.

This is an "I know you know I know..." situation though. If it looked like previous false-flag operations, nobody would believe it. On the other hand, this seems fairly plausible, but at the same time there does not appear to be much danger to the government. Parliament was bombed four times, but nobody of consequence was inside. Gunships roamed the streets of cities while the leadership was elsewhere. Soldiers clashed with real citizens and hundreds of people were killed, but hundreds of casualties is hardly new to Turkish politics (recall the attack on the opposition march).

I'm not saying that this is certainly a false-flag operation. However, there are a couple of things that bother me. The main one is that the leadership of the country was in the country at the time, but never in any danger or even under arrest. The second is the broad nature of the response at least part of which (i.e. removing hundreds of judicial officials who could hardly have anything to do with the coup) had to be pre-planned.

[Horza]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

This is an "I know you know I know..." situation though. If it looked like previous false-flag operations, nobody would believe it. On the other hand, this seems fairly plausible, but at the same time there does not appear to be much danger to the government. Parliament was bombed four times, but nobody of consequence was inside. Gunships roamed the streets of cities while the leadership was elsewhere. Soldiers clashed with real citizens and hundreds of people were killed, but hundreds of casualties is hardly new to Turkish politics (recall the attack on the opposition march).

I'm not saying that this is certainly a false-flag operation. However, there are a couple of things that bother me. The main one is that the leadership of the country was in the country at the time, but never in any danger or even under arrest. The second is the broad nature of the response at least part of which (i.e. removing hundreds of judicial officials who could hardly have anything to do with the coup) had to be pre-planned.

What you're describing is an incompetent coup, followed a consolidation of power by a guy who makes Richard Nixon look like a let bygones be bygones, water under the bridge chill kinda dude. Do poeple think Erdogan didn't already have an enemies list with more names than the actual population of Turkey, coup or no?

The reason false flag attacks pretty much always look dubious is because to do anything more convincing is complicated, a waste of time, and potentially a huge internal political risk. If you're going to lie through your teeth about what happened anyway, why stage something elaborate? And this is before we break out the balance of probabilites on being able to convince thousands and thousands of soldiers, cops, spooks, and who knows who else to shoot at fellow soldiers, MPs and people in the street because you've decided a fake coup is a really good and useful way to tidy up a few loose ends. And them all staying silent about that. Seriously bringing a plan like that up with your closest advisers sounds like a really good way to get yourself ousted for real.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Those false flags/fake coup conspiracies fall short for one simple reason. 

Erdogan has not bothered to hide his power abuses and authotarian policies, so why should he need to stage a fake coup now? The only thing it probably achieved for Erdogan was to speed things up. So unless somebody gives a good reason for staging a fake coup I stick with an ill fated and poorly executed real coup.

[James Arryn]

Speaking to this specifically, one thing bothers me: the degree of coordination/planning, but zero awareness of where the leaders were. Now that can work both ways. If, as most coups intend, they wanted to capture/kill the leadership, then knowing where they were would be job 1 and this would be a suspicious lapse. On the other hand, merely knowing that the leaders are away is sometimes the aim, isolate them on the outside, let them wither on the vine. That's more likely here.