failed COUP in TURKEY [July 15th 2016]

[Tsude 16 / 1,252]

Hello everybody

 

It has come to my attention that most people don't know a coup happened in Turkey or they believe Erdogan planned the coup himself. Now, I will be quoting a post written by my brother (Former member of the MUN, not a fan of Erdogan and an advanced IT guy). He experienced the COUP himself first hand and so did I. He was in Istanbul, whilst I was in the largest military base based in Turkey, Eskisehir. I want to state that I am very happy my Uncle did not go to jail as he is a commander and would have partaken in the COUP, but he did not as he forgot his phone as he was driving up to his home village and couldn't answer to the calls he got from the military.

 

"Friends,
Having observed a lot of BS all over the news this week about the failed coup attempt here in Turkey and as a person who was in Istanbul last Friday I couldn't resist the urge anymore to write something about it.

First of all, I want to say that everyone here in Turkey whether pro- or anti-Erdoğan is massively against a coup. Turks see this mainly as an attack to their homeland and their free will and not only to Erdoğan. Also, I only laugh at people who say that this was all orchestrated by Erdoğan himself only to get rid of his opponents and get executive presidency powers. One, he does not have to bomb his own parliament and kill hundreds of people to realize this. He can just use the state bureaucracy to achieve this goal. Two, for executive presidency he could have organised a snap election because the recent polls were showing that AKP would have enough seats in the parliament to change the constitution or at least to bring it for a referendum.

First of all, I want to highlight some examples of Western hypocrisy which bothered me this week very much:

- In the very beginning of the coup attempt, when everything was unclear, the Western media started to praise the coup attempt by saying that this coup is the only chance of Turkey to escape out of "Islamisation" and even tried to spread the disinformation that Erdoğan fled the country and asked asylum in Germany in order to crackdown the resistance of the Turkish people on the streets.
https://www.stratfor.com/…/turkey-president-reportedly-seek…

- Two days ago, the government announced three months of 'state of emergency' all over Turkey. Which is pretty normal in my opinion when your own parliament is bombed by your own fighter jets and helicopters (and many other horrible things). Again, this has received critics from the Western world, by saying that this is purely rolling back on democratic freedoms. 
http://edition.cnn.com/…/07/21/europe/turkey-coup-emergency/

- Temporary derogation of some rights of European Convention on Human Rights received a huge amount of criticism in the Western world, while France was never criticised on invoking exactly the same article after Paris attacks last November.
http://www.coe.int/…/france-informs-secretary-general-of-ar…

- "I hope there will be ‘stability, peace, continuity' within Turkey" was the initial comment of John Kerry when nothing was clear. Whereafter he "emphasised US's support for the elected government" when it was clear that the putschists lost the day after.
http://www.politico.com/…/…/07/john-kerry-turkey-coup-225632
https://twitter.com/JohnKerry/status/754141724193284096

- John Kerry warned that Turkey should respect the rule of law **cough Guantanamo cough** when conducting crackdown operations on Gülenists and insinuated that Turkey's NATO membership could be in jeopardy. 
http://www.independent.co.uk/…/turkey-coup-could-threaten-c…

- I am not saying that Turkey is perfect but hey, it isn't Sudan either. The thing that irritates me the most is that people that don't know the Turkish culture, never visited Turkey, don't know the facts on the ground, nor understand the history of Turkey and the Turks, are acting like they're experts based on the biased information they get.
Secondly, I will list some reasons why the Turks keep voting for Erdoğan every election since 2002.

--- IMPORTANT NOTE ---
I never voted for Erdoğan and probably will never vote for him. Here I will only explain what the train of thought is of a typical AKP voter.
--- IMPORTANT NOTE ---

- The main reason why people voted in 2002 for him was because to get rid of serious economic crisis in Turkey and political instability. This economic crisis was so serious that several banks were bankrupt in one night, so that many people lost their savings. There was also hyperinflation, here we speak of interest rates above 100%+. People had enough of old faces and unstable coalitions hence elected in 2002 AKP as the only governing party. After a while things started normalise in Turkey. The inflation fell quickly (now it's around 8-9%), government dept to GDP fell from ±70% to ±30% in 2015, industrial exports skyrocketed, etc... To wrap things up, the main reason why the majority of people still vote for AKP is because of economy and not because of religion.

- People that think AKP voters are definitely Islamists and most of them want some sort of Islam to govern Turkey are wrong. There is a big portion in AKP voters that are just central right voters and not islamists. Their main argument to vote for AKP is "stronk leadership", "stronk Turkey", "economic growth", "building bridges", "building roads", "improved healthcare system" etc... Not because AKP is a conservative party. I know people that are dedicated AKP voters, but drink a lot and are very secular. Also, the secular lifestyle is too deep rooted now in the Turkish society. Even the conservative people don't favour sharia rule in Turkey. Here is a research on it: http://www.pewforum.org/…/the-worlds-muslims-religion-poli…/

- Some things that improved dramatically during Tayyip's period:
- Health care
- Improvement of infrastructure
- Roads
- High speed trains
- Airports popping up everywhere in the country
- Privatization of Industry
- Economy in general
- ...

Those things are immediately tangible in the daily live of Mehmet. People don't care much if journalists are in prison as long as they are not suffering from economic crisis and keep getting services from the state.

- Moreover, there is this weakness in the opposition that should be addressed. There isn't any leader at this moment that can surpass Erdoğan's public speaking skills. Why is this important? Turkish people like a strong leader image, just like Russians like Putin. Whether I like him or not, I have to admit he is a master in addressing large crowds and manipulating them according his own interests.

Lastly, I salute the brave people who gave their lives  Friday (15th of July). Hopefully, we can get rid of Erdoğan by ballots and not bullets."

 

I hope you learned something new by reading this little topic about Turkey and it's failed coup.

 

Have a great day

Berkan/Tsude