As became apparent early this morning the attempted coup to overthrow President Erdogan’s government failed. And it failed pretty spectacularly. There are several reasons for this. The first is that this was, despite all the initial reporting, not a coup led by even a majority of the senior military leadership. While a number of general officers/flag officers have been arrested, what we now know is that this was not organized by a majority of the senior Turkish military leadership. General Hulusi Akar, the Chief of Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces was taken and held hostage by those involved with the coup. This is why the initial reporting that he had declared that the military had taken over was quickly deleted and replaced with the statement from “The Turkish Armed Forces”. General Akar was freed early this morning. Other general officers/flag officers, however, quickly stepped in to fill the leadership void.
A second major contributing factor to the coup’s failure was that those involved did not capture the Turkish leadership. President Erdogan was not in the capitol; he was at a resort on the Black Sea Mediterranean. No one involved with the coup either planned to or tried were able to take him into custody like they did with General Akar and a number of other senior uniformed leaders. The same can be said for Prime Minister Yldirim and other senior leaders in Turkey’s executive branch and parliament. Moreover, the coupe plotters and leaders did not have the support of even the opposition parties in the Turkish Parliament. If you cannot even get the support of the Kurdish opposition party in an attempt to overthrow the Turkish government, you are not going to be successful!
The coup also failed because those organizing and participating in it were unable to actually enforce their orders of curfew and restrictions on movement. They could not hold the airports, which allowed President Erdogan to return from the Black Sea during the coup. This was a huge Information Operations victory for him and his government. And they were unable to secure the streets. Turkish law enforcement and Turkish citizens quickly responded to President Erdogan’s calls to take to the streets to protect democracy and rebuff the coup. The result was Turkish Soldiers being arrested by Turkish police and being forced to stand down by Turkish citizens.
The coup organizers and participants were also unable to stop the signal. While coup participants took quick control of a state broadcaster and ultimately worked their way to the Hurriyet Building that houses CNN Turk, Hurriyet News, and several other news outlets, they were unable to maintain control of the message. President Erdogan, Prime Minister Yldirim, and others were able to utilize a variety of social media platforms to indicate that they were free, provide instructions to loyal military and law enforcement forces, and to the Turkish citizenry. This is a good example of where social media had a significant effect on actual events in real time, which has not always been the case in the past.
And because the coup plotters couldn’t stop the signal, they were also not able to provide a united front and the coup as a successful fait accompli to the rest of the world. As a result a wide variety of leaders, from the EU, NATO, America, Germany, Britain, Pakistan, Russia, and and a number of other states and movements quickly weighed in with support for President Erdogan and the democratically elected government of Turkey.
The result of failing to have a united military and law enforcement leadership, or at least a majority thereof; the failure to seize the Turkish civilian leadership; the inability to actually seize and hold the airports and the streets; not lining up and securing opposition political support; and finally being unable to stop the signal, gain control of communications, and dominate what information did and did not go out all contributed to the coup’s failure. The Erdogan government has quickly moved to reestablish its authority and restore order. President Erdogan has had over 2,800 military personnel arrested, as well as dismissing over 2,700 judges for alleged ties to the Gulenist opposition. He has also closed the airspace over Incirlik Airbase and demanded that the US extradite Fuleithi Gulen to Turkey. It is unclear if the closing of the Incirlik airspace is intended to pressure the US, but given that a significant number of US air strikes on the Islamic State in Syria originate from Incirlik Airbase this would be a reasonable assumption. With Incirlik closed, these air strikes will have to be shifted to other air fields and/or carrier groups.
The major result of the coup, and one that President Erdogan seemed to foreshadow with his statement caught on a hot microphone that it was “a gift from God”, will be his cementing control. While the conspiracy theories that the coup was actually instigated by Erdogan to allow him to purge the military and judiciary and consolidate more control have already begun, it is clear that he has wasted no time taking advantage of it. While I think the conspiracy theories are far fetched, Erdogan is a smart man and a shrewd and when necessary ruthless politician. He understands the advantage he was just provided with. The judiciary purge was done very, very quickly and that would seem to indicate that he, and his immediate circle of advisors, had a list of judges that they suspected of being affiliated with Gulen or just being disloyal and were simply waiting for an opportunity to move against them. The coup has provided that and only a very poor politician would have failed to take advantage of the opportunity to consolidate power and control. What remains to be seen is what President Erdogan does with the opportunity he’s been presented as we move farther away from the actual coup. And that is a question that only time can answer.
A Final Postscript (8:55 PM EDT)
On think that occurred to me after I hit post is the question of what does the Turkish citizenry do now in the new, post-coup reality? President Erdogan has explicitly empowered them; doing so by calling them out to preserve democracy and the Turkish constitutional order as counter-coup participants. As President Erdogan consolidates his power, and, perhaps, extends it post-coup, the question will be what does a Turkish citizenry that he empowered as defenders of democracy do if they, or a significant portion of them, decide he’s gone to far. Here too only time will tell, but as every good strategic thinker understands: every solution creates new opportunities, challenges, and threats. We will have to see what new problems are created by President Erdogan’s solution to the threat and challenge of yesterday’s coup.
rikyrah
thanks for outlining all that they did wrong. they were amateurs trying to be professionals.
Lee
Has anyone determined if these were secular military officials attempting a couple?
Omnes Omnibus
Sounds like there are a lot of parallels with the failure of the July 20, 1944 plot.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Oh, Cokie ?
Villago Delenda Est
Very much the way the deserting coward and the Dark Lord took full advantage of 9/11 to advance their agenda.
amygdala
That “gift from God” remark sounded like the mother of all unguarded comments. False flag or not, consensus that this means nothing good for Turkish democracy is starting to emerge. Putting aside US strategic interests in the region, it’s just sad.
mike in dc
It’s not clear to me whether Fethullah Gulen and his adherents actually had anything to do with this, or whether he’s a convenient scapegoat. Gulen condemned the coup, from what I understand.
hovercraft
I’m assuming the chances of Gulen being extradited are slim to none based both on his being a US citizen and there being no evidence of his involvement in the coup. How long does the no fly zone of the base last in that case, it’s not like the US can allow itself to be blackmailed.
mike in dc
@hovercraft:
Any “evidence” is likely to consist of forged documents and coerced confessions.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a second coup a couple years down the road.
The Ancient Randonneur
Ergodan is a fascist and this half-assed attempt at a coup certainly can’t mean anything good for secularists.
p.a.
As I noted yesterday, Erdogan seems to be working from the ‘one vote one time’ playbook. Will be interesting to see how many funerals result from this.
Brachiator
@efgoldman:
How can you ever verify whether an action is a false flag? When has one ever been confirmed?
sigaba
How does one instigate a coup against oneself? I’m sure people have all kinds of fun theories.
Jim Parish
@Omnes Omnibus: It reminds me more of the August 1991 attempted coup in the USSR. The plotters in that case did manage to take Gorbachev into custody, but didn’t recognize Yeltsin’s importance, and otherwise made the same communications and street-control errors that the Turkish coup-makers did.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator:
Gleiwitz.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim Parish: Unsuccessful coups probably all have a number of common features.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I have no idea. The question is out there. True or not it will shape the Turkish political environment going forward.
raven
“Some” say it was all a setup. . . see Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Adam L Silverman
@amygdala: I just did a quick postscript update. While walking the four foots, I had a thought…
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: One of the things that continues to surprise me is that they were so very inept at doing this.
Thanks for the summary, going to share the link.
Adam, you don’t do fiction, right? Dialogue issues? You should still write. I’ll bet you’ve got a heck of a thriller in you.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Say it isn’t so…
Adam L Silverman
@mike in dc: He did. Here too, it will remain to be seen what shakes out.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mike in dc:
Jeremy Bowen at the BBC made the point that the groups upset with Erdogan before are still upset with him now. And the groups that love him still love him. There seems to be a fundamental conflict that Erdogan has fanned within Turkish society and I can’t see him being the one to bring unity to the country going forward.
I don’t know that the Army will try again within a couple of years, but it seems that the chance for another military challenge to Erdogan’s rule can’t be ruled out. On the other hand, AFAIK, this is the first coup that has failed in Turkey. Maybe he’s defanged the military so that they can no longer challenge him. I dunno.
As I said earlier, this (especially the purging of the courts) seems to be a disaster for a pluralistic Turkey. Maybe Turkey’s best near-term hope is that Erdogan over-reaches. But given what happened today and the way he crushed the Gezi Park Protests, he seems stronger now and seems unlikely to be effectively challenged for a while…
I just hope the US and the EU don’t end up effectively rewarding him in the near future.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@p.a.: Actually I expect there will be an election fairly soon to allow a democratic and popular imprimatur on his actions going forward.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: They do. Where do you think I got the checklist for this post from?
And more seriously, I know you’re away of the basic checklist: secure the leadership, have opposition support, secure all communications, secure all means of transportation, etc.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: I’m not sure how to take that last sentence…
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: which he will easily get, yes?
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: Noel Maurer just mentioned a book by Naunihal Singh on that very subject: what distinguishes successful coups from failed ones? The ability to create the impression of a fait accompli seems all-important.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: if you weren’t the only person who routinely says that to me, I’d be worried there was something wrong with my sentences.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks.
redshirt
These fools needed to go to coup school.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: If it will make you feel better, I am sure we would all be willing to start saying it.
Baud
@redshirt: They are too coup for school.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: I appreciate the willingness to help, but I’m good, thanks!
I almost let the typo “I’m god” through just for fun.
hovercraft
@mike in dc:
It wouldn’t surprise me, the only question would be whether he’s weakened the top ranks of the military enough to prevent them from coming together enough to be successful. As to forged evidence, it will take more than trumped up evidence to get the US to go ahead with extradition. Fake evidence would probably work domestically helping him consolidate his base. My understanding is that he has the support of a plurality of the population, not a majority, this coup attempt may push that up into a majority. The judicial purge though I think will solidify his secular opposition.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: More seriously, there is no way to really know now, and I’m not sure there would ever be.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: I would expect so.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: I knew what you meant, but taking that out of context made for a nice smartassed reply.
Doug R
It’s a deuce coup
jl
I’d be interested if Adam can give us some insights into the Gulen connection. I’ve read that the coup plotters were Kemalist, which doesn’t fit very well, as far as I know (which is not much on this topic) with the Gulen movement, which is supposed to be some kind of moderate reform Islamist movement, right?
Erdogan has built himself quite a history of using all sort of pretexts to go after people and groups he has decided to go after anyway. So, I can’t put a lot of stock in his talk about who is behind the coup. Erodogan is creepy authoritarian, so supporting him in the name of democracy is problematic, though favoring him over a military coup is low bar, that has to pass the laugh test, but I’m not sure by how much, especially if he has continued success in moving the country towards autocracy.
cmorenc
Of course, Fox News retired Lt Col. Ralph Peters lamented the Obama Administration seeming to take sides with “democratically elected President Erdogan”, when the people staging the coup were the ones on the side of the U.S., and Obama should have kept silent. Peters failed to consider that perhaps the Obama Administration realized by that point that the coup was likely failing, and didn’t want a suspicious Erdogan to think by our silence that we might secretly be somehow behind the coup, especially since Erdogan attributes the inspiration for the coup to a Turkish exile living in Pennsylvania – and that the base from which the US is launching air strikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq are in a nearby area of Turkey. Peters repeated the bullshit right-wing meme that Obama romanticizes Islam.
Where did Fox get this ass-clown “Lieutenant Col.”? I’ve seen him on Fox several times before, and he always is a shill for the right-wing nut case view of the Obama administration and how it is failing our military and strategic interests.
amygdala
@Adam L Silverman: I hope he’s empowering the Turkish people, but fear he’s not. He has played last night’s events well, embracing the victim role. Never mind the journalists and military leaders he’s been jailing for years. Is shutting down Incirlik a serious effort to pressure the US into giving up Gulen? Or is it a great distraction? Who knows?
Filkins has been pretty unsparing for years now on how Erdogan has been gutting elements of a free society. Not something that turns out well.
Two foots good, four foots better? Hope you’re feeling better from the crud wouldn’t let you out of its clutches.
Major Major Major Major
Just how conservative/Islamist is the median Turkish voter?
Matt McIrvin
@jl: I get the impression that Erdogan has had it in for Gulen for a long time and has a history of accusing him of plotting a coup.
jl
@cmorenc: In some quarters, everything always turns out wrong, and it is always Obama’s fault. Surely, in Turkey, with many people’s ideals and lives on the line, some cheap talk statement of support from the US would magically rescue the botched poorly executed coup produced by a faction inside a clearly badly divided military and somehow everything would be better. The Peters’ drivel is the kind of plain and obvious common sense you hear from Fox News all the time.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: Erdogan has been purging supposed Gulen movement members from Turkish courts and civil service for several years now. Maybe Gulen was behind the coup, as opposed to a thoroughgoing secularist Kemalist faction in the military. But I would never take Erdogan’s say-so as good evidence for it.
Matt McIrvin
@cmorenc: I saw Eric S. Raymond cheering for the success of the coup on Google+, so probably bashing Obama for not supporting the overthrow of Erdogan is going to be a thing on the right.
mainmata
Erdogan started out as a moderately conservative Muslim PM years ago and has steadily become more Islamist and autocratic. It is possible this was always his strategy – to subvert Turkey’s secular Constitution gradually and then impose an elected dictatorship. Erdogan has always wanted to weaken the political power of the large secular urban population and render them powerless. Erdogan’s constituency is traditional, small town, rural and devout urban groups. He will definitely try to get revenge and will definitely overplay his hand, which means more instability, IMO. Also, forget about EU membership.
jl
The thing with Erodgan is that, I think history shows that he is willing to take irresponsible risks in using false pretexts to go after people and groups he has targeted anyway. I wouldn’t put it past him to take irresponsible risks in pressuring the US to extradite Gulen leadership in the US, even if they were not behind the coup. Erdogan is bad news in a number of ways, even if he is still the legitimate democratically elected president of Turkey (of course, if he were still acting in the traditional role of president of that country, he would spend a lot more time symbolically puttering around the palace he built for himself). If he keeps going in his recent direction, how lang he can be given that credit will be a good question in the future.
burnspbesq
@mainmata:
Erdogan, Orban, Kaczynski, and Trump are all reading from the same playbook. They all want to be the last democratically elected leaders of their respective countries.
Joel
@cmorenc: There must be hundreds of O5 ranked officers; can’t be hard to find a hardcore wingnut amongst them.
Mark
Maybe I’m just naive, but I find it hard to fathom that in this day and age that the military in a NATO country would even attempt such a thing.
Adam L Silverman
@cmorenc: He’s a retired 48C/E – Eurasian Foreign Area Officer. I don’t remember his original MOS. So he was a Russia specialist. He wrote a series of fiction novels on military issues, then wrote a book on strategy and policy even though he never attended the Professional Military Education schools to be educated on those. He’s been eating out on the “my troops and Soldiers, we have to do better by them” weepy, academicy persona he’s invented for himself in retirement.
redshirt
Hey Adam, any chance for a Saturday night open thread?
raven
@Adam L Silverman: Yup, it would be irresponsible not to speculate.
sharl
I hope Zeynep Tufekci goes beyond some cryptic tweets she posted earlier today to provide more details, or at least more detailed and informed speculation:
~
I assume she’s talking about the “Gulenists” as the former allies of Erdogan, but the fact she won’t just come out and say so seems unusual. It might just be the cautious nature of a professional academic who won’t state something as fact without proper background setup and sourcing for it. [She won me over with her twitter and blog “reporting” from on-scene at the Gezi Park protests. And some of this stuff may go into a book she’s working on which now requires an additional chapter.]
Aleta
What a great article. Thank you for spending the time and offering it up. I appreciate this perspective very much.
JMG
The anti-Erdogan parties in Turkey opposed the coup. The chance of the US giving back a resident here to satisfy Erdogan is nil. He will be just be the same pain in the ass he was for us on Thursday.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: See, even that guy can write.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Infantry, then MI. Bravo Romeo wasn’t that bad a novel. I have read any of his other ones.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: You are correct, both Gulen and Erdogan are each working different portions of the religious, traditionalist, conservative Turkish electorate. Gulen is much more moderate, has specifically denounced terrorism as un-Islamic and argued that women wearing the veil is secondary to the them getting an education in terms of priority. He started as an imam, largely for middle class moderate Mulsims, and branched out into education.
At one point, if I’m recalling correctly, they were on good terms, but there was a falling out. Gulen has enough adherents/supporters within Turkey that several years back a large number of prosecutors and judges aligned with his movement brought a large number of corruption charges against major Erdogan allies including Erdogan’s son.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/turkish-ministers-sons-arrested-corruption-investigation
Gulen came to the US in 1999 for medical treatment and never left. He lives on a huge farm in Saylorsville, PA and rarely leaves his property.
Adam L Silverman
@amygdala: I am feeling much better for the past ten days or so, thanks for asking. Thought now I’m sore as all from getting back into the gym.
As for Erdogan – it is a strange thing. He has been slowly hollowing out Turkish democracy and the Turkish civil space (Grey Zone), but he is legitimately elected. There is nothing that prevents theocrats, fascists, dictators, tyrants, autocrats, and/or authoritarians from being democratically elected. The question is how do the structures and institutions of a democratic state, as well as the citizenry, respond when such a thing happens.
There’s another post to be done from this. Erdogan appeals to and represents a more traditional, conservative, religious, and rural demographic within Turkey. It is to them that he appeals and is appealing and from them that he generates popular support. The opposition tends to be more secular, urban and suburban, and if privately religious at least publicly supportive of a secular state and society, and more embracing of modernity.
I don’t want to become reductionist, but if you just take these broad categories what you’ve got are the basic cleavage lines in the US, Britain, Australia, France, Israel, and many other states and societies. The real issues in a lot of places going forward is how to manage the cleavages, how to develop policies and strategies that can bring if not equal opportunities to everyone, at least establish enough common prosperity that it can overcome the differences we are observing.
Ella in New Mexico
@jl: I would think the potential of persecution of a moderate Islamic group will give the other members of NATO and the EU pause for concern. Hopefully their respective representatives (who I’m sure have been in close contact with one another from the start of this ) put pressure on Erdogan to back off.
Not a great time for GB to have Brexited and put Boris Johnson in as foreign secretary, I must say.
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman: The Poconos connection is what makes this utterly surreal for me. My grandparents and a bunch of aunts and uncles used to live around there, though most of the surviving ones have moved away. It’s a lovely area–I think of it as somewhat sleepy and gone-to-seed, though there seems to have been more growth there lately. Strange to think of it as the home of the alleged ringmaster of a coup against the Turkish president.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: About 50%.
(yes, I know that’s the mean, but you work with what you have).
Here’s Pew’s page for Turkey:
http://www.globalreligiousfutures.org/countries/turkey#/?affiliations_religion_id=0&affiliations_year=2010®ion_name=All%20Countries&restrictions_year=2013
And here’s something from Brookings:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/04/24-turkey-new-model-taspinar
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Ha!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: “Howdy, neighbor? Whatcha doing?”
Adam L Silverman
@jl: @Matt McIrvin: They had KT whatshername a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration on with Bill Hemer on Fox while I was at the gym explaining and discussing why the coup in Turkey was a failure of Obama’s leadership. No word on whether the 1960 coup was a result of residual Eisenhower failures, or the 71 one was because Nixon was a poor leader, or 1980 because of Carter, or 1993 because of the residual failures of the Bush 41 Administration. Or whether that one and the 97 one were actually the fault of President Clinton.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: To be fair, none of those other presidents were black.
Adam L Silverman
@mainmata: EU membership was never going to happen. Erdogan has been making bank off of the EU’s long, drawn out, extended way of trying to say no without saying no to a NATO ally for a very long time. Its one of the major reasons why he turned his focus East and South and has sought to turn Turkey into the regional hegemon.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Some say that Clinton was.
Adam L Silverman
@Mark: Traditionally, as in every time before this time, the Turkish military has acted as the protector of the Kemalist nature of Turkish society. When the country moved to far from what the military leadership believed Kemalism allowed, they stepped in, took over, and reset every thing. As I wrote last night in a response to someone’s question, Erdogan has worked very hard over the past five to ten years to coup proof himself by removing and replacing the more traditionally Kemalist military leaders (both senior and their proteges), even going so far as to having them charged, tried, convicted, and imprisoned. He apparently hadn’t gotten all of them, but my guess is he will move quickly to root out every last one now.
amygdala
@Adam L Silverman:
Wealth is some or much of it, but sometimes I wonder if there’s something additional captured in the urban-rural divide that might be informative. China is struggling with that, too.
I gotta say that Brexit rattled me. I count on the UK to be a little saner than we are in the US.
Glad you’re on the mend.
guachi
Adam, if you’re still here I’ve sent you an email through the contact form.
It’s work related.
Prescott Cactus
Ankara vs Cleveland;
High Intelligence of plotters ?
Able to utilize a variety of social media platforms ?
Enforce curfew, including ban on water pistols and duct tape ?
Ability to expand movement via “White Elevators” ?
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: I give you quality analysis on a Saturday night of current events with significant geo-strategic importance and all you can think of is an open thread? This is why we can’t have nice things anymore!
Also, Ann Laurie has already put one up!
ThresherK (GPad)
@Matt McIrvin: I grew up in broadcast range for a few of the ads. I can’t forget the jingle for “Beautiful Mt Airy Lodge”.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
You mean, if Trump is elected president?
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: Quality analysis, but it’s Saturday night!
I assumed you were monitoring the posts board or whatever exists behind the curtain for AL. You the man!
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: That’s an interesting take on the origins of the coup. To me it reads more like Erdogan’s own people or people he thought he’d coopted and could trust, that he’d placed in positions of authority in the military, police, and intelligence services. You know you’ve gone to far when you’ve pissed off your secret police/deep state assets! Though we’ll have to wait for her book to come out to see. Provided she addresses it.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: People who make stuff up for a living, I would think, find fiction an easier lift.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought he had been MI, but I couldn’t be bothered to check. I’m always intrigued by the guys who go through three or more MOSes on their way to O5 and O6. Its one thing to get through your 03 command, decide you want to stay in, and look for a new opportunity like becoming a FAO or a strategist. But to go from your primary MOS to another one and then go to a third or fourth, it makes me wonder.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: Given that the same place in the Poconos that has a huge Hasidic Jewish community, and right near the B’nai B’rith NE summer camp property, also has one of the Islamburgs, I’m not surprised. Beautiful area, economy isn’t great, property is cheaper. Of course this particular Islamic community is the source of conspiracy theories and Islamophobic BS from that guy who started as an intern with the Clarion Project, which was itself a family run ministry offshoot of Jerry Fallwell’s organization. I’m pretty sure if Hancock, NY was an Islamic extremist training center that we’d have heard something from the Hasidic community there or the B’nai B’rith folks or both.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: True.
Adam L Silverman
@guachi: It has not come through. Is the email you use to log on here a working email? Let me know and if so I’ll send a test message across.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: If that should happen, yes. But I think with Trump its something slightly different. He’s almost gotten the entire GOP to blink, flinch, and knuckle under. That’s what he wants. He wants dominance. He clearly doesn’t know what to do with it, or he’d be far richer than he is – he just seems to squander the advantage once he achieves it, which makes me think that achieving it is his primary driver. He has no clue what to do with the nomination any more than he’ll have any idea what to do with the Presidency. He’s a/the walking, talking personification of grievance and resentment politics. Its also the genius of his campaign. He will be treated fairly or else. And since he always is, or he gets even (even though he really, often doesn’t), he is the only one that can ensure that America and Americans will be treated well. Or else… In the dictionary next to revanchism there is a picture of Trump.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I was “branch detalled,” FA until the advanced course and then a move to AG. Fuck that. But it is not uncommon as some branches need more O-4s and O-5s than O1-O-3s. CSS branches are highest in these. Going FAO or some such is a way of escaping from the branch you didn’t really want but got stuck in.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Hancock? Gateway to the Upper Delaware? Middle of fucking nowhere, as I recall. Friend of mine bought a house there specifically to fish. I remember saying that’s a pretty expensive hobby.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: That part I understand. Both your experience and the escape my initial MOS. But its the escape the MOS I escaped into and then escape that one that I wonder about. I get the square peg, round hole issue, especially with high speed personnel so they never fit in, and wind up never happy, no matter what they switch to, but it is the Conventional Army…
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Yep, that’s it.
Eric U.
@Adam L Silverman: we obviously got our money’s worth with this guy :eyeroll: the way the blame Obama for every uncontrollable event is cliche, too bad there isn’t anyone to make note of it in the media
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I was a simple line artillery officer (13A05P) and jumped ship before the shield of shame could be attached to my collar. Much like Mongo, Omnes pawn in game of army.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: It is what it is.
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman: Can we do callbacks here? A few months ago we discussed long time Athens stalwarts Five Eight. I caught their show at Smith’s Olde Bar in Atlanta last month. Those guys are a hell of a live band. Go see them if they play anywhere near you.
I still don’t know where their name came from, but only the drummer was taller than five eight.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: I brought them up in response to something from Raven. I’ve seen them, or however they were constituted back in 1991 and 1992, numerous times. The band I worked with played a lot of gigs where Five Eight was also on the playbill.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, in this case, it is what it should be. I would have been a terrible career army officer. My army goals were satisfied by graduating from OCS and getting the Parachute Badge. The rest was doing a job that I didn’t particularly like.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Good.
Uncle Cosmo
It occurred to me just now that Erdogan is essentially a much cannier Ahmedinejad with no mad mullahs to overrule him.
Nasty piece of work. If someone had brought down his plane on its way home I would have felt sorry for the flight crew & their families…& that’s about it.
I have this sinking feeling that we’ll be fighting an undeclared war with him & whoever he’s allied with (probably ISIS/ISIL) within ten years. And I hate saying that, because the Turks I encountered on my vacation there 20 years back were among the decentest folks I’ve met in my travels. They don’t deserve that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Uncle Cosmo: We won’t fight an undeclared war with Turkey. Turkey is in NATO.
pseudonymous in nc
Or as the EFF’s Eva Galperin said today, what happens when Erdogan pulls access to social media at the core routers, as he’s done in the past to disrupt protests?
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: What if, and it’s a what if of course, Turkey seizes US military locations?
Adam L Silverman
@pseudonymous in nc: It is ironic, is it not, that the very same social media platforms that he despises are the ones he needed late last night and early this morning!
Omnes Omnibus
@redshirt: Not going to happen.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: They won’t. We have enough personnel to hold our bases. We wouldn’t have them there otherwise. Also, Erdogan isn’t that stupid. He’s ruthless. He’s crafty. He may be power hungry. But he’s not dumb. And all his senior military leaders have done at least one educational tour in the US and one NATO tour. They may be loyal to the government, but they’re not suicidal.
ETA: The only way they take our bases is through air power projection. They put their F-16s up and make it clear that they’ll take out anything that moves. That’s a nice threat, but the F-22s from the carrier group in the Med give us air superiority. If we need to we can own the skies over Turkey in very short order. There is not an air force on the planet that can compete with ours. If you’re wondering why we spend so much on defense, maintaining air superiority is one of the reasons.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: Again as a what if, I’m imagining an actual ISIL takeover of the government and correspondingly hostile acts.
Omnes Omnibus
@redshirt: No one is going to seize any access to US nukes.
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: Turkey could produce large number of irregulars if inspired by an Islamic revolution or the like. Enough to overwhelm any defense.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: IS is not going to take over the Turkish government. The Turks have a functioning military, one of the best not just in the region, but also the world. They have a functional law enforcement community as we saw yesterday. And Erdogan may be willing to help smuggle oil for IS and take a cut, but he’s Muslim Brotherhood, which is a very different animal than IS.
sharl
Hooo, boy…
~
Looking forward to twitter stripping away that surrounding context and just using that quote to claim Erdogan is threatening one of our States; as if the existing reality isn’t dramatic enough.
@Adam L Silverman: I’m not sure how strong Zeynep is on the fine-grained intricacies of Turkish politics. She’s pretty sharp and well informed, but her family moved to the U.S. when she was still a child. She has concentrated on social media and how societies – especially young people and opponents of despotic regimes – use social media strategies to bypass censorship and surveillance. So she is well positioned to analyze a lot of what is going on in Turkey. But I think I need to find some additional sources for the Erdogan-vs-Gulen thing.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: The purpose of a “What if” scenario is to imagine other possible reactions to situations. Not necessarily to predict them happening.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: It was a very thought provoking and interesting comment that she made. Often folks doing research within the population have a better take on what’s going on – their research sources provide them with information, that when they corroborate it, tells us something we don’t know. This was certainly what I found when doing my fieldwork in Iraq in support of my brigade.
Also, Pennsylvania has been involved in planning at least one revolution, so…
psych1
Anyone familiar with Turkey has seen the incredible progress that has been made under Erdogan. Almost every person in Turkey is much better off now than they were before. farmers have gone from donkeys to tractors., horses replaced by cars. Lights stay on, water keeps running. Foot paths replaced by 4 and 6 lane highways. All in the last 15 years!
There is opposition and resistance to some of the govt policies but Erdogan is in charge and has a lot of support.
Gulan had nothing to do with this.
redshirt
@psych1: First question: Is this satire or sincere?
sharl
via Zeynep Tufekci:
~
It goes on for a while after those first two paragraphs, though a lot of it is photos and reproductions of tweets, so isn’t quite as long a read as it might first appear. The author is the pseudonymous The Grugq, who has an interesting history himself.
sharl
@redshirt: Most of what psych1 wrote is true, at least based on my limited readings. Erdogan remains popular, and there are reasons for that (including those that psych1 noted). To understand that popularity, you need to know a bit about the pre-Erdogan history of Turkey, and who the winners and losers were in those days of military rule (or rule by military-backed civilians). The question now is whether Erdogan will choose the short-term easy path of popular demagoguery – demonizing minorities, shutting down unfriendly media, tormenting opposition politicians – or whether he’ll try to improve democratic institutions. Recent behavior and statements are not encouraging in this regard.
Barney
Not quite true; Ergogan was in Marmaris (south-west corner of Turkey, on the Mediterranean), and they made an ineffectual attempt to capture the hotel he was in, but he’d already left.
https://www.sundaypost.com/news/world-news/turkey-crisis-terrified-scots-family-woken-helicopter-gunfire-batters-hotel-coup-ordeal/
D58826
He may not have planned it. but I wonder if he caught wind of it and let it play out figuring he could crush it.
Amanda in the South Bay
@redshirt: Sounds like an Erdogan PR person.
I think this just means Erdogan will never step down voluntarily, short of dying of natural causes. Turkey just got them Putin Jr.
Psych1
I am not an Erdogan supporter – I support the CHP party in Turkey. But, no one should deny the progress and change under Erdogan. Turkey has now moved so far into the modern world that, like in the US, the lives of most people will not change, regardless of who is in charge.
He is a religious islamist but the influence of religion in both daily life and in government is still far less in Turkey than in the US. Pakistan and the US are countries where religious extremism is most evident. Turkey is still secular but is changing to allow more access to religious people.
My Nym is
Longtime lurker, first time poster. I am no fan of Erdogan either, but it is absolutely true that the infrastructure of Turkey has been improved in the last 15 years. The highway system is excellent, and rural areas are being modernized at a rapid pace through electrification and machinery. Just drive north from Istanbul into Bulgaria and it is like step back 50 years (and Bulgaria is in the EU). Some of Erdogan’s more aggressive aid to rural areas (free coal, for example) is nothing less than vote buying, but those areas were neglected by the leftists when they were in charge. Whether the felt influence of religion is less in Turkey than in America is an open question. I think I disagree with Psych1 on that score (and I can compare Turkey with my time in the rural south of the US). And I take a very dark view of Turkey’s near future. Nothing good will result from the failed coup. By the way, I am currently in Ankara and experienced the failed coup, close enough to hear gunfire and feel the walls rattle from explosions. During the hour or so that Facebook was not accessible, this blog and (some of) the comments under Silverman’s posts were very informative.So, thanks.
max
Late, but what the hell.
@efgoldman: So no rumblings at all of whether it was a false flag? Not conspiracy mongering, but it’s out there.
No, but I think D58826 has got it.
He had wind of the coup well beforehand. The arrest lists are telling: he went after several thousand judges with no ties to the coup – those people were already on a list. He’d been hinting at purging the military in August – supposedly this is why they went ahead. The key commander appears to have been the 2nd Army commander – the 3rd Army commander may have been involved (he was arrested) but nothing appeared to be going on in his area of responsibility. So the fighting around Ankara (2nd Army) was pretty intense but the units fighting in Istanbul (1st Army) were ineffective – 1st Army was under the command of an Erdogan loyalist, and the Chief of Staff was a loyalist too. The Air Force commander was obviously involved – they bombed a number of things, and Erdogan couldn’t quite get control of the skies – but that didn’t last that long, since he could fly from his vacation to Istanbul.
(He was willing to risk landing in Istanbul (not Ankara) because the 1st Army commander guaranteed his safety – or so they put out.)
I think the key to understanding the situation is the position of Hakan Fidan. If you want the situation from early 2015, here it is:
Fidan pulled out of the race for Parliament and was immediately reinstated as head of MIT. And given the operations against social media and whatnot during protests and emergencies, it’s obvious MIT has effective command of the IP network inside Turkey. The coup plotters didn’t have control of MIT so they couldn’t command the intelligence service to shut down social media and whatnot.
The coupists couldn’t get at Erdogan, probably because troops from or under the command of 1st Army we guarding him. Nonetheless the Air Force bombed where Erdogan had been some hours AFTER Erdogan had taken off in his airplane. Given that the plotters had to communicate with each other (how?) and MIT controls the IP nets, and given that the plotters had planes in the sky but couldn’t shoot down Erdogan, then they obviously thought they knew where he was, but were wrong. Ergo, the group of plotters were penetrated in part, probably at several points. I’d expect that whomever they thought they had as an insider in the Erdogan’s circle was probably a MIT double.
So: Erdogan was back on heels in early 2015, then he manages to regroup in the November election based on a manufactured threat from the Kurds, then all kinds of things start happening. Given that the Air Force was involved, I suspect the deliberate shoot down of the Russian bomber was the catalyst for the plot – because deliberately shooting down a Russian aircraft is insanely risky. Various unpurged military types, not necessarily that keen on opposing the government, decide they have no choice.
MIT has been watching the entire time, and knows there’s some plotting going on but can’t see deeply inside, so they’re telling Erdogan what’s up. So they threaten to purge the military again this August, and that forces the plotters hands. (The current arrest count of military personnel is up to 6000 – they’re just rolling up everybody that isn’t an Erdogan loyalist, I suspect.)
Erdogan doesn’t control the situation, exactly, but he’s reasonably well defended and hits back almost immediately.
max
[‘Not a false flag, but not what it seemed, either.’]
max
As for false flags and Fidan:
It’s also notable that the Gulenists supposedly had positioned themselves among the police and judiciary, but the police backed Erdoğan across the board.
Omnes nailed it the first time – it’s the July 20th plot, which failed pretty much the same way and for the same reasons.
max
[‘And which made it unlike any of the previous coup attempts.’]