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Military coup in Turkey


f0xx

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It is a military coup in one country at the junction of Europe and Asia, not Europe going to war.

 

No fan of Erdogan, but since information about the coup backers is limited and we have little idea what their goals are, I'd hardly place myself in favor of the coup at the moment.  Need to wait and see how the dust settles.

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I've been following it for about four hours now. It is interesting. I wouldn't have pegged Turkey vulnerable to a coup, so I was very surprised by the news. I think we'll be able to tell a lot by who ultimately benefits from this. I don't believe the Gulen movement is involved, although they are blamed. When you execute a coup, you want to name yourself as you are trying to become a legitimate government -- denying it is very contrary to the goal. We'll see what comes out from the shadows.

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Yeah, pretty strange. I've been at work, so it was kinda hard to find the time for a comprehensive search, but I couldn't find anything as to the nature or reason of the attempted coup. Like Celerity said, I would expect any would be coup would blow up the internet to the point where at least some rhyme or reason would trickle out so as to gain the stance of a legitimate political action, rather than a blind power grab. That combined with the fact that the people are apparently (were earlier) in the streets at Erdogan's request seemingly points to a lack of legitimacy on the side of the military. I dunno I guess we'll see.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say it has religion involved- either people wanting to push Turkey further away from secularism, or to push it back in that direction.

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Gulen himself has denied involvement.

 

By my reading, Historically, the Turkish military had thrown or threatened a coup just about every decade from 1950-90, in attempts to keep the government secular when leaders began to bring in too much religion.  If I had to guess, this was a reaction by elements of the military to Erdogan's having decreased the military's power while gathering more to himself.

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Turkey has a history of coups, they happen mostly when the country strays to a more religious path and/or leaders start wreck havoc. It is said that the military is a warden of democratic values and the the secular future of the country, so every time the generals start to feel those are in danger, they intervene. At least that is what history has shown.

The thing is, Erdogan is a smart man and throughout his reign, he has weakened greatly the military leaders by imprisoning A LOT of them. Lately Turkey has seen a lot of internal turmoil, from the shootdown of the Russian plane, to arrests and raids on journalist offices who are critical of his government, to the civil war against the kurdish populace that is going on in the southern part of Turkey... generally there are a lot people who are not satisfied with his way of leading the country. On the other hand though, there are a lot of people who ARE happy with him, and the populace is split 50/50.

That coup was not well planned. The military did not manage to capture any high profile political leaders, and when Erdogan went on Facetime and called for the people to rally to the streets and resist the rebels, they did. The military didn't want to start a civil war, so the coup failed.

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Well, Erdogan's certainly using the coup attempt as an excuse to play dictator.  Count is now ~50,000 public employees sacked, charges being brought to heads across the military, over 1,500 deans across Turkish universities are being called to resign, and 21,000 private school teachers have had their licenses revoked.

 

Not good.

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