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How is last year's Turkey coup attempt viewed internationally?

MetatronM

Unconfirmed Member
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Do you have any apart from the coup plotters being morons and something not negative happening to Erdogan?
It wasn't just "not negative" for Erdogan. He was completely ready with a whole massive list of purges and policies to be implemented within days. That's a man who was prepared and knew what was coming and was ready and able to take full advantage.

That said, I don't think that necessarily means it was purely a false flag situation. I think it's more likely a situation where you're both right to a certain degree, i.e. Erdogan manipulated a situation in order to instigate his enemies to launch an incompetent coup attempt. In such a scenario, both "Erdogan staged the coup to gain more power" and "Erdogan's enemies tried to launch a coup and failed because they did a shitty job of executing it" could both be technically true statements.
 

Xe4

Banned
I think it was a legitimate coup attempt that was poorly planned. However, Erdogan has since used it as an excuse to crack down on dissidents to an almost totalitarian degree. I think he was generally happy that the coup turned out the way it did.
 
Erdoğan has a voice mail that plays before every mobile phone call celebrating the day. It INTERCEPTS THE CALL TO DELIVER YOU A POLITICAL MESSAGE

It's celebrating our 15th of July victory

Edit: 90k mosques reading sala (prayers) in celebration of the coup's failure. We jihad now I guess
 
The latest in an ongoing saga.

However I am broadly in favour of Erdogan's removal providing that some kind of return to secular norms was to follow.
 
Erdogan is the bad guy in the West since he started to have an independent policy. But most people don't care about Turkey anyway. Outrage over democracies issues strictly depend of your pro/independant/anti-western stances.

I think most of people in the arab/muslim world (Erdogan is one of the most popular political leader of the muslim world) perceived it as the success that didn't occur in their own countries. The normal outcome is that society elect a political leader that goes too much against the military class, the military overrule the civilian power and it's the end of story. In that case, it didn't occurred because Erdogan (even anti-Erdogan turks here will confirm) have a STRONG popular support in Turkey and in a large part of the army.

And to respond to OP, it's totally stupid and dangerous to support a military coup because you don't like the current government. I don't think having a political opinion is terrorism, though, but it's clearly anti-democratic. With all it's flaws, the actual turkish government is the only legitimate government in Turkey. Wanting a military coup to get rid of authoritarianism is like burning your house when you're cold. If the coup had succeeded, it would have been bad for ALL turkish society, like it was in the past. It's why the main opposition party (CHP) have marched against the coup.

So if you don't like that government, vote and campaign for the opposition and try to change it by the rules. Is it possible in Turkey unlike most countries in the region. If CHP win the next presidential election, Erdogan is gone.
As somebody who live in South America and have south americans roots, i'll take the worst elected civil presidency over military rule any time.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
Erdogan is the bad guy in the West since he started to have an independent policy. But most people don't care about Turkey anyway. Outrage over democracies issues strictly depend of your pro/independant/anti-western stances.

I think most of people in the arab/muslim world (Erdogan is one of the most popular political leader of the muslim world) perceived it as the success that didn't occur in their own countries. The normal outcome is that society elect a political leader that goes too much against the military class, the military overrule the civilian power and it's the end of story. In that case, it didn't occurred because Erdogan (even anti-Erdogan turks here will confirm) have a STRONG popular support in Turkey and in a large part of the army.

And to respond to OP, it's totally stupid and dangerous to support a military coup because you don't like the current government. I don't think having a political opinion is terrorism, though, but it's clearly anti-democratic. With all it's flaws, the actual turkish government is the only legitimate government in Turkey. Wanting a military coup to get rid of authoritarianism is like burning your house when you're cold. If the coup had succeeded, it would have been bad for ALL turkish society, like it was in the past. It's why the main opposition party (CHP) have marched against the coup.

So if you don't like that government, vote and campaign for the opposition and try to change it by the rules. Is it possible in Turkey unlike most countries in the region.
As somebody who live and have south americans roots, i'll take the worst elected civil presidency over military rule any time.


Um Erdogan changed the rules to help prevent that.

And the idea that "nobody " cares about Turkey is nonsense. The dog piling you get on this forum is precisely because people DO care about Turkey. It's a world cultural treasure and (including its prior incarnations) has been a lynchpin between east and west for much of recorded history.
 
Erdogan is the bad guy in the West since he started to have an independent policy. But most people don't care about Turkey anyway. Outrage over democracies issues strictly depend of your pro/independant/anti-western stances.

I think most of people in the arab/muslim world (Erdogan is one of the most popular political leader of the muslim world) perceived it as the success that didn't occur in their own countries. The normal outcome is that society elect a political leader that goes too much against the military class, the military overrule the civilian power and it's the end of story. In that case, it didn't occurred because Erdogan (even anti-Erdogan turks here will confirm) have a STRONG popular support in Turkey and in a large part of the army.

And to respond to OP, it's totally stupid and dangerous to support a military coup because you don't like the current government. I don't think having a political opinion is terrorism, though, but it's clearly anti-democratic. With all it's flaws, the actual turkish government is the only legitimate government in Turkey. Wanting a military coup to get rid of authoritarianism is like burning your house when you're cold. If the coup had succeeded, it would have been bad for ALL turkish society, like it was in the past. It's why the main opposition party (CHP) have marched against the coup.

So if you don't like that government, vote and campaign for the opposition and try to change it by the rules. Is it possible in Turkey unlike most countries in the region. If CHP win the next presidential election, Erdogan is gone.
As somebody who live in South America and have south americans roots, i'll take the worst elected civil presidency over military rule any time.

I'd agree with much of what you say about the ethics of my stance on this, but I think whether Erdoğan's government is "legitimate" is an open question. The same goes for the freedom of speech and freedom of press that would let me campaign through legal/official channels.
 
I'd agree with much of what you say about the ethics of my stance on this, but I think whether Erdoğan's government is "legitimate" is an open question. The same goes for the freedom of speech and freedom of press that would let me campaign through legal/official channels.

Legitimacy is always relative, but what is the alternative ? It's like in the US with Trump. Many people here would probably says that they would like a military coup against Trump, because they don't know what a dictatorship feel like. Just look at the what happens in Egypt, everybody in the West was super-happy that Morsi was kicked out in the name of secularism, to be replaced by what ? A dictator who have 80.000 political prisoners and who criminalize homosexuality and atheism. With the current atmosphere in Turkey, a dictatorship will use religion as well. So it won't be good for secularism as well.

Democracy is about accepting the game, even if the other side play dirty. Look at Tunisia for instance. They made their arab spring, kicked out Ben Ali, an islamist coalition was elected, then they made an alliance with secularists, and now secularists are in power again. Maybe the next election, islamists will win again, or maybe it will be the secularists. What we need is political pluralism and civil representation.

Is CHP outlawed in Turkey ? There was a very mediatized march recently in Istanbul. What impede you to join the CHP and make campaign for them ?
 
Legitimacy is always relative, but what is the alternative ? It's like in the US with Trump. Many people here would probably says that they would like a military coup against Trump, because they don't know what a dictatorship feel like. Just look at the what happens in Egypt, everybody in the West was super-happy that Morsi was kicked out in the name of secularism, to be replaced by what ? A dictator who have 80.000 political prisoners and who criminalize homosexuality and atheism. With the current atmosphere in Turkey, a dictatorship will use religion as well. So it won't be good for secularism as well.

Democracy is about accepting the game, even if the other side play dirty. Look at Tunisia for instance. They made their arab spring, kicked out Ben Ali, an islamist coalition was elected, then they made an alliance with secularists, and now secularists are in power again. Maybe the next election, islamists will win again, or maybe it will be the secularists. What we need is political pluralism and civil representation.

Is CHP outlawed in Turkey ? There was a very mediatized march recently in Istanbul. What impede you to join the CHP and make campaign for them ?
I swe your first point.

For the last one though, the existence of a march doesn't discredit the Turkish government's crackdown on political dissidence in the last several years.
 

Valhelm

contribute something
The latest in an ongoing saga.

However I am broadly in favour of Erdogan's removal providing that some kind of return to secular norms was to follow.

Right. If the coup was anything like the Turkish media reported (something I doubt), and thus led by Gulenists, I'm not sure if it's success would have made Turkish politics less imperialistic or religious.

Turks deserve far better than Erdogan and what he stands for. We can only hope that this neo-Ottoman reaction is just a short page in Turkey's illustrious history.
 
Looked fishy as fuck from the very beginning, to me. I think it was staged by Erdogan (or his people). I'm from the US, and I remember hearing about it as it was happening on NPR.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
With all it's flaws, the actual turkish government is the only legitimate government in Turkey.

Autocrats are by definition not legitimate in no matter what country they rule. They may be the best possible option for order, they may be the best possible option for peace, but they are by definition not legitimate. Legitimacy is derived by consent, and in the absence of fair, free, and open democracy there is no consent. This is true even if the population does appear to broadly support their autocrat. The coup might also, of course, lack legitimacy. "Might makes right" can never be the moral underpinning of legitimacy.
 

zeroOman

Member
Junior officer coups are unlikely to succeed which means they are almost always a miscalculation. The speed with which the coup failed indicates it wasn't even close. That Erdogan happened to be nowhere near the capital is a bizarre detail -- a successful coup would certainly need to arrest or kill Erdogan, so performing one while he is absent makes no sense. The person who has more to gain from this miscalculation is Erdogan, not Gulen. This is of course not dispositive, it's entirely possible the planners were just bad at their jobs, but in the absence of reliable reporting, I know where my prior is on who to blame.

Side note: the scapegoating of this coup attempt as a premise to reintroduce the death penalty is barbaric and a further erosion of Turkish liberalism; a naked consolidation of power by an autocrat. Erdogan is not a legitimate leader, so a coup against him is not intrinsically illegitimate.

There were some attack in the Hotel he was in, they were trying to capture him.
 
Erdogan is the bad guy in the West since he started to have an independent policy. But most people don't care about Turkey anyway. Outrage over democracies issues strictly depend of your pro/independant/anti-western stances.
Yeah, he is the bad guy for wanting his own policy.... Of course not because he is putting religion front and center again in Turkey, wants the death penalty back, imprisoned 50.000 people and fired 150.000 and counting in a purging of the education and justice system, for trying to give himself more power and picking fights with European countries that divide immigration groups there.
 

qazqaNii

Member
Avatar checks out.

What are you even trying to add to this thread? You know just because you don't support Erdogan doesn't mean you are right.

Erdogan is still the best thing that has has happened for alot of people in Turkey, many people now have access to social services.
While I didn't support his Yes/No vote for that parliamentary thing, I still think that there are no better options out there. And aslong as CHP keeps screwing up there will be no change.
 
Autocrats are by definition not legitimate in no matter what country they rule. They may be the best possible option for order, they may be the best possible option for peace, but they are by definition not legitimate. Legitimacy is derived by consent, and in the absence of fair, free, and open democracy there is no consent. This is true even if the population does appear to broadly support their autocrat. The coup might also, of course, lack legitimacy. "Might makes right" can never be the moral underpinning of legitimacy.

Autocrats are not elected. I don't deny that there are important flaws in the current turkish democracy, but you cannot even compare Turkey with Syria or any autocratics regime out there. It's simple: if Erdogan loose the next presidential election, he is out of power.
Erdogan is in power because most of Turks want him to be and have constantly elected him over the last 10 years. You have political pluralism in Turkey, and an active political debate.

For the last one though, the existence of a march doesn't discredit the Turkish government's crackdown on political dissidence in the last several years.

I agree and don't deny this. However, political opposition still exist and is still legal. Nothing comparable with the opposition in Russia. You have anti-erdogan mainstream turkish media.
 
Yeah, he is the bad guy for wanting his own policy.... Of course not because he is putting religion front and center again in Turkey, wants the death penalty back, imprisoned 50.000 people and fired 150.000 and counting in a purging of the education and justice system, for trying to give himself more power and picking fights with European countries that divide immigration groups there.

He was seen positively in Western medias in the 2000´s, he started to being heavily criticized when he started to affirm a strong regional policy, what they called "neo-ottomanism".

I think that most critics against Erdogan are legitimate, even if i don't agree with all of them, but what i am pointing out is double standard. Long friends of the West like Egypt don't receive half the smear of what Erdogan receive and they actively torture and kill political opponents, without pretending to any kind of democratic legitimacy. Why are they receiving a special treatment (mostly silence) ? Because they constantly align with Western interests.

According to DemocracyIndex (by the Economist), Turkey didn't change radically between 2006 and 2016. But the image of the country radically changed in the Western media in the same period.
 

Wvrs

Member
Can't let pre-baked labels like 'terrorist sympathiser' cloud your beliefs on what is right and what is wrong. Stuff like that just reduces any issue down to its most basic elements or meaning, and from there manipulation or spin is easy.
 

swarley64

Member
Regarding the Gulen accusation, I've heard a few times on news radio, podcast, etc, that Turkey has yet to provide any credible evidence to implicate Gulen. But I don't know what other organizations could orchestrate it and never heard any credible alternatives
 

Steel

Banned
Regarding the Gulen accusation, I've heard a few times on news radio, podcast, etc, that Turkey has yet to provide any credible evidence to implicate Gulen. But I don't know what other organizations could orchestrate it and never heard any credible alternatives

It could've been, you know, the turkish millitary that's famous for those types of coups.
 
"Turkey? It's a country and a food? Huh."
-American view

I get we Americans have a stigma of only looking inward but your post is highly inappropriate and offensive. Many, many Americans care very deeply for people who live in other parts of the world and many, many Americans pay attention to what happens to people who live in other parts of the world.

Your post is both unhelpful to the discussion and whoafully inacurate.
 
He was seen positively in Western medias in the 2000´s, he started to being heavily criticized when he started to affirm a strong regional policy, what they called "neo-ottomanism".

I think that most critics against Erdogan are legitimate, even if i don't agree with all of them, but what i am pointing out is double standard. Long friends of the West like Egypt don't receive half the smear of what Erdogan receive and they actively torture and kill political opponents, without pretending to any kind of democratic legitimacy. Why are they receiving a special treatment (mostly silence) ? Because they constantly align with Western interests.

According to DemocracyIndex (by the Economist), Turkey didn't change radically between 2006 and 2016. But the image of the country radically changed in the Western media in the same period.

Any double standard related to other countries has nothing to do with my question. "But what about Egypt?????" deflects from the discussion at hand.

What The Economist's Democracy Index is not telling you about is the Islamist rhetoric and attempts at bigoted legislation that's plagued this country since 2013 or thereabouts. An opposition media still exists, but long-running opposition newspapers and magazines HAVE been shut down by a surge of legal cases brought up against them, had their executives investigated of links to the organization of the coup, or in Zaman's case, literally invaded and seized by men under Erdoğan's command.
 
He was seen positively in Western medias in the 2000´s, he started to being heavily criticized when he started to affirm a strong regional policy, what they called "neo-ottomanism".

I think that most critics against Erdogan are legitimate, even if i don't agree with all of them, but what i am pointing out is double standard. Long friends of the West like Egypt don't receive half the smear of what Erdogan receive and they actively torture and kill political opponents, without pretending to any kind of democratic legitimacy. Why are they receiving a special treatment (mostly silence) ? Because they constantly align with Western interests.

According to DemocracyIndex (by the Economist), Turkey didn't change radically between 2006 and 2016. But the image of the country radically changed in the Western media in the same period.
That's what happens when you jail journalists and have leader that picks fights with other countries. Should the Germans and Dutch like being called nazis and fascists by this dude or something? Should we like his political meddling he does within the Turkish immigrant communities here?

Egypt is simply less relevant at the moment. Egypt was not on track to join the EU and receives money for it. Big surprise: EU countries get upset when a country that has wanted to join the EU for a long time suddenly starts going the other way.

Plus, we are talking about Turkey, not Egypt. This defense of you for Erdogan by deflecting the issues and pointing to the West again is just strange.
 

hEist

Member
don't know if I missed it, but so far there were no real evidence presented that the coup was indeed planned/initiated by Gulen("-Group") or?
 

Machina

Banned
I really don't know what the true story was behind the scenes, perhaps it was a legit coup attempt perhaps it wasn't, but I will say this: regardless of what it really was, I trust Erdogan about as far as I could drop kick him.
 
I think the people who carried out the coup believed they simply had to make the first move and all those Gulenists and other Erdogan opponents would make sure the coup succeeded. The coup was coordinated in a Whatsapp group, that's how well planned it all was.

There is this classic board game called Junta where a player, usually a general, can start a coup against El Presidente by announcing they are the First Rebel and they get to move their units first. Then, all other players decide if they want to join by moving their units as well. That awkward silence when everyone declines to move and join the rebellion is what happened here I believe. Or El Presidente had saved up a bunch of cards to bribe rebel units.

hsxNdKv.jpg
 

leroidys

Member
it exposes the ludicracy of US foregin relations and one of the reasons i didnt vote Clinton was her support of this style of warfare, of backing terrorists to fight terrorists. the US is both at war and not at war depending on what is politically convenient.

this is all standard US operating procedure. throwing guns and money at a problem of our own making. look at Operation Cyclone in the 80s, when we fought the Russians by creating the Taliban.
Where did this come from?
Do you have an exclusive scoop that the US had anything to do with this?
 

Jay Sosa

Member
All I know is that Erdogan is a fully fledged dictator now and every european country failed miserably at stopping him in his tracks (everyone with a brain saw that coming from a mile away, same with putin). So yeah, I would have liked the coup to be a success.
 
If the coup was successful it would be similar to the coup in Egypt that overthrew Morsi, it has nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever.

It has nothing to do with Gulen neither. Just read up on the history.
 
I think most internationally know it was Erdogan who instigated it.

Its a classic trick dictators use to grab power, which is what he has now. It was an easy way to imprison his opponents.

Other countries will do nothing because Turkey is the most important state in the whole region, there cannot be instability there.

They'd rather have a strongman who has control than yet another failed state in the middle east.
 
Either it was instigated by erdogan himself he acted way to fast purging opposition. Or he knew it was being planned and let it happen. Then the coup leaders are amateurs, to not go for erdogan first and let him rile up the people from his plane.
 

El Topo

Member
don't know if I missed it, but so far there were no real evidence presented that the coup was indeed planned/initiated by Gulen("-Group") or?

A Spiegel article from yesterday explains that there are very well things that point towards an involvement by Gülen followers. It also highlights how shitty the Gülen movement is, calling it "eine Art Mafia" (a kind of mafia).
For those that speak German, this is the article: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausla...-putsch-versuch-imam-der-armee-a-1157974.html
 

Devil

Member
Around Germany it's not that important WHO did it because there are various possibilities and everyone looks suspicious. Neither the Gülen- nor the Erdogan-conspiracy are viewed as more likely, both are discussed a lot in talk shows and documentaries but in neutral, professional news outlets they always say "the Turkish government holds Gülen responsible.." etc. without going into too much detail of the conspiracies.

The result of the failed putsch gets much more attention because we are worried about the decline of a possible partner and a stable nation which is a literal bridge between Europe and a region in constant crisis. Erdogan is viewed as a madman currently.

What infuriates me most is how many Turks from Germany are not able to make a distinction between criticism against Erdogans rule and criticism against Turks in general. They often state how unfair the media portrays Turkey which is just not true. They criticize Erdogan and the AKP, not Turkey or Turks in general. There is still an opposition in Turkey and they don't get the samw shit unless they give us reasons.
 
Either it was instigated by erdogan himself he acted way to fast purging opposition. Or he knew it was being planned and let it happen. Then the coup leaders are amateurs, to not go for erdogan first and let him rile up the people from his plane.

He also got tipped off by Putin. So Pitin was already betting on Erdogan before the (amatuer) coup, it worked out really well for Putin.
 

Maedre

Banned
Yeah, he is the bad guy for wanting his own policy.... Of course not because he is putting religion front and center again in Turkey, wants the death penalty back, imprisoned 50.000 people and fired 150.000 and counting in a purging of the education and justice system, for trying to give himself more power and picking fights with European countries that divide immigration groups there.
Thank you dear neighbor.
 

sflufan

Banned
It was such a ham-fisted, inept, incompetent, bungling attempt that I really have to wonder if Erdogan was actually behind it to begin with. In other words, it was Turkey's version of the Reichstag Fire
 

LakeEarth

Member
Yeah, I am not one to jump to conspiracy theories, but the fact that he wasn't even in Turkey at the time... it just doesn't sit right for me.
 
What are you even trying to add to this thread? You know just because you don't support Erdogan doesn't mean you are right.

Erdogan is still the best thing that has has happened for alot of people in Turkey, many people now have access to social services.
While I didn't support his Yes/No vote for that parliamentary thing, I still think that there are no better options out there. And aslong as CHP keeps screwing up there will be no change.
Erdogan is the best thing to have happened to Turkey? You talk like as if his successes weren't already laid out for him from previous administrations mishaps.

I can't respect someone that supports Erdogan, like pick up the phone today ffs and listen to the dial tone.

How the fuck are people so easily fooled by these dictators?
 
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