Events in Turkey unfolded quickly on Friday night in Ankara and Istanbul. It began with the seizure of two bridges in Istanbul by military forces. Only a couple of hours later, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan landed in Istanbul, sending a strong sign that the coup was about to fail. The coup raised the death toll to 265 with over 1440 people injured. So what has happened and why did the coup fail so quickly? This note provides a short inventory of the past hours.
First, the focus will concentrate on what has been accomplished. The first signs of the coup were revealed when the military started to cut off transportation links by closing two bridges in Istanbul. Furthermore, roads in Ankara and Izmir were shut off. Turkish F-16s were spotted flying over Ankara and civilian airports were shut down, thus forcing international flights to pause.
20th july 2016
After shutting key transportation links, soldiers seized buildings of the ruling Justice and Development Party AKP. Tanks headed towards the prime minister's palace in Ankara. With regards to cutting communication, some TV channels were taken by soldiers and employees have been ordered to go home. This forced the AKP to go to private channels calling to resist the coup in support of Erdogan.
The countercoup evolved so fast because a number of military commanders and national police did not embrace the coup
However, the coup failed on a key component: popular support. Countercoups in support of Erdogan have begun to express their backing for the incumbents’ president. In addition, riot police has joined the countercoup protesters, asking the military to leave. In conclusion the coup failed to draw support on a critical mass of security forces sustaining the coup.
One indicator why the coup failed so quickly lay in the divisions within civil society. The countercoup evolved so fast because a number of military commanders and national police did not embrace the coup. This dismisses the notion the coup being backed by Turkey's secular political and civilian opposition. Moreover, many Turks remembered the economic and political instability of Turkey's past coups in 1960, 1980 and 1997. In conclusion divisions did not spell the necessary success in order to overthrow the incumbent president.
Frank Lunemann is a Junior fellow at the CGSRS | Centre for Geopolitics & Security in Realism Studies. He may be contacted at frank.lunemann@cgsrs.org.
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