Ezra Mannix

Thoughts on the coup attempt

It’s after one o’clock in the morning and there are reports of shots being fired in different parts of the city. The coup reactions have filtered down to the people and people are moving through the stages of grief, to anger. Erdoğan told everyone to not accept what is going on right now and get on the street.

We are sitting in utter disbelief (UPDATE: the parliament building is damaged). The newsman asked Erdoğan if he is still the head of the armed forces, but its clear that he is panicking about what is going on. He is trying to remain strong but it seems like he doesn’t know what is happening. If it’s acting, it’s pretty good. TV is showing shots of people on the streets marching, for the time being it’s peaceful, and no one seems to be hurt. It’s important not to panic.

You realize how quickly you yourself can get swept up in the hysteria. People are making runs on banks. We get a call from a friend who says there is a huge line at the Garanti ATM. She’s always a bit hysterical, you try to convince yourself. Abdullah Gul is on Factime, he is shouting, clearly in Freak Out Mode, but he isn’t saying anything about how scared it is. He is saying Turkey isn’t Africa! Turkey is Africa right now. Turkey is every unstable country. Stability can be only skin deep here.  A bubble.

My wife is telling everyone to take a shower and go to sleep; hopefully everything will be OK tomorrow. For those who lived through the 1980 coup, this is like a bad nightmare, the clown from Stephen King’s It, coming back to torment the people. Erdoğan said everyone on your feet. How could the military not have thought about what kind of reaction this would bring? How could Facetime be so powerful? Do we forget that it’s a two way street? The good guys and the bad guys can use video chatting?

It’s after 1 am. The call to prayer is being read. That’s a bad sign, a really scary sign. A little Iranian flavor. The ezan is going off again. More than a half hour continuously, calling people to the streets.

It’s the next morning at around 9 AM the day after. We look out the window. The garbage truck is making rounds. We walk to the hypermarket and buy some groceries for breakfast. The store manager says yeah, everyone was uncomfortable last night; we don’t want people to be uncomfortable. Other than that, people are working, construction on the new apartment building, like thousands being built all the time, resumes.

The fact is, the vast majority of people do not want this, nor do world leaders. As bad as Erdoğan is, with unconstitutional reforms, restriction of the press, disregard for other perspectives, closed mindedness. As bad as it is to have imams calling people out on the streets to support Islam/Erdoğan etc. — and this IS scarier than a military coup — a coup is not what the vast majority of people want. We need to face this.

But why? If he were so popular, why would he stage this bold and deadly play? Perhaps Erdoğan want early elections to hasten the process of direct presidential elections, because the opening the conflict with the PKK hasn’t hastened this enough. What I found most strange is how the so-called fringe faction of military perpetrating this could get so far as to take over TRT, the state broadcasting company. He might want to appear all the more powerful so that.

Journalist Ilber Ortayli and Andrew Anglin have noted that they went about the coup all wrong. First you capture the leaders, then the media, then you shut down the internet, then you tell the people to take to the streets to support the coup. In this case, it was all done backwards. The people defending the regime took to the streets, and the perpetrators told everyone to go home.

I do not necessarily support these theories. It looks like the coup attempt is real. It’s past noon now, and Prime Minister Yıldırım is speaking. Let’s see what happens. Perhaps we will never know.