Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) appears to have staged a rocket attack on the palace of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan three days after a failed coup in order to bolster the perception that the threat of a putschist attempt was still alive and to rally public support for the government.
The failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016 in Turkey and the infamous Reichstag fire in Germany in 1933 had many similarities, with both allowing the leaders of those countries to amass more power to oppress their opposition, journalist Can Dündar said in his commentary for German Radio Cosmo on Thursday.
A year after the Turkey’s coup attempt, there are still many questions that need to be considered. Ismail Sezgin of Hizmet Studies, in this video, summarizes the findings that makes the coup attempt so curious and the positions of the Turkish Government, Gulen Movement, and Turkey’s Western allies.
Turkish-Armenian linguist and writer Sevan Nişanyan, who escaped from a prison in İzmir in July, shared his take on a failed coup in Turkey last year, saying it was staged in order to cleanse the Turkish military of followers of US-based Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
Like many autocratic leaders, Erdogan was quick to blame members of opposition and sympathizers of Gulen Movement for the coup attempt. He particularly singled out the United States-based Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen as the mastermind of the coup, even when it is on record that the highly-respected cleric publicly condemned the coup when it was still on.
What really happened on the night of July 15, 2016 in Turkey? Why thousands of judges and prosecutors were the next day? Why hundreds of journalists were arrested and media outlets shut down after the coup attempt by Erdogan? Was the failed coup attempt Erdogan’s Reichstag Fire?
Erdogan became quite successful in his two very basic goals right after the coup. First and foremost, for putting all the blame squarely on the Hizmet movement, led by Gulen, and then carrying on a huge cover-up to hide other segments of the coup plotters. The problem is, while he has been quite successful in Turkey – he was not able to convince many in Europe and in the US.
A year later, Western intelligence officials and top Turkey analysts aren’t nearly so sure of Gulen’s complicity. Earlier this year, German spy chief Bruno Kahl revealed that Ankara has failed to convince the BND foreign intelligence agency that Gulen was behind the ill-planned and executed coup plot. “Turkey has tried to convince us of that at every level, but so far it has not succeeded,” Kahl told the German weekly Der Spiegel in March.
Mr. Erdogan’s own statements have also raised questions about the sequence of events. In an account posted on the president’s website, Mr. Erdogan said he was first warned of unusual military activity at 4:30 p.m. by his brother-in-law. He tried to contact Mr. Fidan and Mr. Akar around 5 p.m., he said but was unable to reach either of them.
The report uncovered a critical information that the plot was actually kicked off on July 11 with secret orders given by generals who corroborated with Turkey’s autocratic President Erdogan’s defense and intelligence chiefs in disguising the plan as unconventional action plan. Only a handful men were let into the secret plot while many were led to believe a drill or an urgent response to a terror threat is underway.
“Last year’s failed coup attempt in Turkey [was] nothing but a false flag orchestrated by Turkey’s autocratic President Erdoğan and his henchmen to create a pretext for [the] mass persecution of critics and opponents in a state of perpetual emergency,” SCF concluded.
Last year’s failed coup attempt in Turkey is nothing but a false flag orchestrated by Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayip Erdoğan and his henchmen to create a pretext for a mass persecution of critics and opponents in a state of perpetual emergency, a new detailed study titled ‘July 15: Erdoğan’s Coup’ by Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) concluded.