Turkey
coup attempt: who were the plotters?
The
Turkish government alleges links to Fethullah Gülen, while others
say it was a badly organised coup and Hizmet connection is doubtful
Patrick
Kingsley in Istanbul
Sunday
17 July 2016 15.49 BST
For a while on
Friday night it looked as though one of the most powerful governments
in the Middle East would be overthrown. Tanks brought Istanbul to a
standstill as soldiers invaded the headquarters of the ruling party,
bombed parliament, took over the military high command building,
seized control of the state broadcaster and announced that the army
was now in charge.
By Saturday it was
clear the coup had failed. The night’s events came to be defined by
images of plotters surrendering to crowds of pro-government forces.
They emerged from tanks and trucks with their hands held above their
heads . Some of them, bizarrely, were photographed in their
underwear.
With the government
saying it has arrested at least 6,000 alleged anti-government
plotters, questions are being asked about how they were able to get
as far as they did, who exactly the leaders were and what made them
take action that night.
The government, led
by the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, claims the plotters came from a rival
Islamic group, Hizmet, led by Fethullah Gülen. He denies any
involvement. Once allies of Erdoğan’s AK party, the group is now
designated a terrorist group. The government claims Hizmet has
thousands of sympathisers within different parts of the deep state,
all plotting to overthrow Erdoğan’s elected administration.
“The coup attempt
has Gülenist fingerprints all over it,” said a Turkish government
source, who asked to remain anonymous. “Many of the failed coup’s
leaders were in direct touch with senior members of the Gülen
movement. Many people who participated had entered public service
with references from senior Gülenist figures and remained loyal to
their networks.”
According to the
government’s narrative, the putschists were organised and had a
plan for how to run Turkey after the coup. They had a list of 9,130
people they planned to arrest, the government source said. They
planned to appoint military governors in every area, replace the
heads of all government institutions, and had a list of more than 100
loyalists they planned to promote.
“Our sense is that
the would-be junta had made preparations for some time,” said the
source.
But some Turkish
observers are more sceptical – either about the association with
Gülen, or about the level of planning involved. Aslı Aydıntaşbaş,
Turkey analyst at the European council for foreign relations, thinks
it was a well-planned operation, but doubts it could have only
involved Hizmet.
“The government
has come out and said it’s a group of Gülenists,” said
Aydıntaşbaş. “But I think we need to assume they have other
allies with the [armed forces]. It’s too big of a mobilisation.
This was a well-planned operation with several simultaneous
operations in different parts of the country.”
But others doubt the
Hizmet connection – precisely because they think the coup was so
poorly planned. “I doubt that,” said Doğu Ergil, a political
scientist at Ankara university. “The Gülenist group would not
reveal itself in such an amateurish way [that would] lead to its own
doom.”
For many, the coup
seemed badly organised. It involved senior officers from across
Turkey – including Erdal Öztürk, general of the Third Army in
Istanbul, and Adem Huduti, who led the Second Army based at the
opposite end of the country. But it did not seem to involve all
factions of the military, nor its most senior generals. Parts of the
tank divisions were involved, and parts of the air force. But most of
the land forces did not turn out, and other wings of the air force
stayed loyal to Erdoğan.
“I’m surprised
this attempt took place,” said Sinan Ülgen, Turkey analyst at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The coup officers did
not have enough backing within the military. It was done outside the
chain of command, so they didn’t have enough resources to make it
work.”
Fundamentally, the
coup plotters did not seem interested in doing things that are
usually integral to a successful coup. They took over the state
television station – but only belatedly went after Turkey’s many
private stations, which gave the government a chance to control the
narrative on the airwaves all night.
They arrested the
army’s chief of staff, Hulusi Akar, seized a major bridge in
Istanbul, and took over army headquarters in Ankara. But their key
opponents – Erdoğan and his prime minister, Binali Yıldırım –
escaped capture, allowing them to rally their supporters and remain
as visible figureheads for the fightback.
“By blocking the
bridge, taking command of [the military headquarters] and taking a
few planes, how on earth did they think they would succeed?” asked
Ülgen. “It smells almost like a kamikaze coup – they went and
did it oblivious to the consequences.”
Some conspiracy
theorists even suggest that the fact Erdoğan emerged unscathed means
the whole scheme might have been a false-flag operation. A more
logical explanation is that the plotters were rushed into it by an
impending crackdown.
Some think their
plot was discovered, forcing them to reveal their hand early. Or they
knew they would be arrested anyway in August, when they expected a
long-awaited crackdown on Hizmet supporters in the military, so they
decided to act while there was still time.
This is the
preferred narrative of the Erdoğan government. “The putschists
knew that they would lose their official titles within weeks,” the
government source said, “so they had to act quickly.”
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