Abdullah Fazeel
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The Fate of Turkey
Written by: @Abdullah Fazeel
Turkey, a currently rising country in the world. An aspiration & hope for muslim countries as it represents Muslim Nation and their crisis on international platform. It had to pass through a lot of dilemmas and hardships to become a representative. Turkish history is full of catastrophic events. One of these such events was coup d’état attempt. The most violent military Coup in Turkish history.
It was a clear night of July dated 15, year 2016. Nothing extra ordinary was expected. It was about 9:00 p.m. when Salic Zeki Çolak, the commander of Turkish land force was apprehended at military headquarter. Simultaneously, head of air force AbidinÜnal was abducted from a wedding ceremony in Istanbul. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president was at holidays at Marmaris. The clock showed approximately 11:00 p.m. Streets were about to quiet. Explosions reverberated suddenly, prey was police air force and special forces headquarters, city Ankara, Bombs hurled from the helicopters hovering over was the cause. 42 deaths & 43 injuries were the outcome of the first attack. 12:02a.m. of 16th July reported the took over of Turkish national public broadcaster (TRT), Anchor named Tijen Karaş was enforced to read out “Democratic &secular rule of law has been eroded by current government.”
Instead, the truth of attack was aired by Tijen Karaş. Erdoğan had already took off at 11:40 p.m. but the plane kept wandering as Ataturk Airport was captured. 12:23 a.m. marked with the first message from Erdorgan later, at 1:00 a.m. he did an interview with a CNN Turk. He stimulated supporters to flood the streets against imposed curfew. “There is no power higher than the power of public” these were Erdorgan’s words. Public acceded to president's plea. A wave of rage soon thronged the streets with people having kitchen utensils as weapons.1:00 a.m. reported the dislodge of force from airport 1:13 a.m. marked with the sounds of heavy fires of tanks, when people tried to enter inside. Landing of Erdoğan’s plane was made possible at 2:50 a.m. when pro-government forces cleared a part of airport. Airport was completely recaptured at 5:18 a.m. after several skirmishes. Later tanks fired on parliament building and helicopters from the top showered bullets. A message of complete control popped up on army website at 3:10 a.m. simultaneously at 3:12 a.m. Prime Minister Yildirim rejected the statement. The hotel where Erdoğan stayed was bombarded by 2 or 3 helicopters. Fortunately, he had left a moment before. This all was done by a group from Turkish armed forces. Approximately it comprised of 1.5 % of Turkish force. The resistance of civilians and pro-government officers at last turned out to be successful in failing the coup. Coup appeared on to be crumbled in early hours of 16th. It mentioned with the surrender of pro-coup soldiers at Taksim square, 50 soldiers blocking Bosporus bridge & about 700 soldiers at headquarter.
Reasons of failure
· Hiken Fidam, intelligence head, happened to know about the plot. So, the coupists were forced to execute it six hours before of schedule.
h One of the main organizers, Semih Terzi was shot dead by loyalist sgt. Maj Ömer Halisdemir.
These two events highly disturbed the coordination between coupists. Had the coup been launched at original time at mid night, much of population would have been sleeping so, they were free from public resistance in execution. Moreover, the soldiers mobilized by rebels were unaware of their true purpose which made it easy for them to become demoralized & surrender.
h According to Edward N. Luttwak the basic reason was inability of coupists to neutralize high ranking government officials.
· Author of “Seizing Power”, Naunihal Singh stated the fail of coupists to secure media control as basic reason of putsch failure.
Civilian’s role
Civilians indeed played an important role in the failure of coup. Citizens were messaged & called by pro-government forces for protest. Simultaneously night sela prayers were repeatedly recited across the country to encourage people. Crowd of people on streets proved to be a huge resistance in the way of coup.
Behind the coup
General Akin Ozturk, TAF Commander was reported as a leader of coup attempt. Later he was sentenced to life in prison on 20 June 2019. Government blamed Fethullah Gülen as the mastermind of putsch. Whereas Gülenists claim it as a self or fake coup arranged by government itself.
Losses
It resulted in 270-350 deads & 2185 injured. Moreover a lot of government buildings including parliament & presidential palace were damaged severely.
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References
- Aljazeera
- The guardian
- TRT world
- Hurriyet Daily News
- wikipedia