An unbelievable night it was, yesterday :S I live in ankara the capital, and our house shook with jet shockwaves and bombs till 5 a.m. (could not get a proper sleep, obviously).

Things seem to have settled down today. It was a very, very immature and idiotically conducted coup attempt, mistakes were way too amateur, especially considering turkish army's expertise on how to "restore democracy" in its history.

First off, as a very brief intro to power struggle in turkey; there are secularist nationalists, which have been dominant ideologically in state and military through all republic's history. Then erdogan's islamist party won elections and in 14 years, first time in republic's history, has managed to purge secularists from army, police departments and judiciary system so extensively. Via show trials, planted evidences, false accusations, etc., they have put all secularist army personel in prison with accusations of coup attempts. Some of the officers were not very innocent (army is known to have ousted islamist govts before), but in overall, very few and immature real evidence was expanded by way more lies, used to purge almost all secularists in army.

Then there is a religious sect following the cleric fethullah gulen (who has been residing in pennsylvania for some time now). They have been hand in hand with erdogan in coming to power and all of secularist-purging operations all these years, they are also ideologically compatible with erdogan against the modern, pro-western secularists and other leftists. But eventually, they had come to a power struggle with erdogan and went in full scale war with hım with phone tapes disclosing massive corruption and hidden unlawful funds by erdogan and his circle. Accusations and detention operations have been exchanged and erdogan has come victorious from that too. (I will refer to gulen organisation as "cemaat" from now on.)

As any one with too much power and popularity, erdogan is now seeking to secure even more power (to form a total one man dictatorship with strong personality cult, to be precise) by changing the constitution and fundamentals of republic. He could not manage to gather enough political support (though he has a 45%-50% voter base) and deliberately made the country into a living hell, letting massive syrian refugee groups into country without proper preparations and security (some of which are isis affiliated); breaking the peace talks with kurd insurgents and provoking them by means of bloody military operations into their cities; subtly (and sometimes openly) supporting isis and not taking a strong stance against their terrorists inside the borders (he constantly cracked down on leftist students and intelligentsia whereas caught isis terrorists were being kept a few days under detention and easily released). We have been enduring frequent and horrible terror bombings at vital points in ankara and istanbul for about a year now. Most people, unfortunately (this is actually a classic, though) consolidating around him with extensive propaganda and with hopes that he will provide a strong leadership to stop this mayhem (with the irony, of course, that he is the one mostly responsible for all this bloodshed).

Now...

The coup attempt was done yesterday, without any apparent support whatsoever from opposition parties, civil organisations or foreign countries. They could not manage to seize erdogan or any other govt ofiicials. They could not manage to disrupt media or communications (except a coup declaration from the national channel), whereas erdogan managed to make a media coverage with teleconference, calling the people to get down on streets and protest the rolling tanks. Coup staff has bombed security and intelligence headquarters (they are very loyal to erdogan), and eventually the parliament building itself with jets. They made incredibly stupid moves, did not arrest any govt personel, could not prevent media's pro-erdogan propaganda calling people to streets, could not seize erdogan where even i myself could keep track of his presidential aircraft from air traffic websites. No leader for coup emerged, people could not even determine the ideology of the rebels, lest show any support. In the end, it was ousted. Here are the few theories for the coup attempt:

1- The coup was sincerely a coup, pulled off by still remaining few secularist generals veeery clumsily and failed.

2- It was conducted by cemaat generals, knowing that they will also be purged at the next defence counsel (poor translation?) in a desperate attempt to hold on to their last chances.

3- It was mit (intel office of turkey, reputed to be loyal to erdogan nowadays) falsely informing the generals with a secularist coup plan, where they were given missions that will create terror but not actually do any harm to erdogan's staff, claiming the critical jobs like arresting erdogan, seizing media, etc. were allocated to *some other general*. They took their parts with high hopes, only to discover they were deceived and suddenly left with blood on their hands with insufficient power to finish what they started. In desparation, they threw everything they have, bombing the assembly building and shooting around. This theory sounded like the most likely to me.

4- It was a total hoax by erdogan.

Whatever it was, we appear to be doomed now. Erdogan consolidated his power, he's going to arrest whoever he likes and nobody's going to question his rationale. His supporters have been brought down to streets and are now highly provoked, possibly leading to random violence and moblynching against minorities and opposers. He's gained great sympathy from other rightwing voters (he's been using an anti-coup rethoric all along his carreer, posing as the aggrieved of constant aggression from military staff as an elected entity himself). Calls to public to gather at the airport and guard erdogan were made from mosques all through the night with religious verses (wtf, really?! apparantly they like to depict this as a coup against their invisible friend up in the skies).

I am very worried for the countries' future, and for myself. This is the current situation. Any comments are welcome.

7:08 PM, July 16, 2016, Rayzer <rayzer@riseup.net>: