Reports
Hardline president orders mass arrests as army rebels surrender after night’s carnage
TURKEY has a record of military coups but when helicopters were seen thrumming over Istanbul on a balmy Friday evening, no one dreamed that for all its recent political difficulties history was about to repeat itself.
It is 20 years since the last such putsch and in the central Taksim district, casually dressed men and women were enjoying a beer and kebab as the first alarming reports came through.
Without apparent explanation, Istanbul’s two main links to Europe, the Bosphorus Bridge and the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge had closed, with army lorries blockading the carriageways, diverting motorists away.
The link between Europe and Asia had effectively been cut. It was just after 10.30pm and on social media, news spread quickly, as did reports of gunfire in Istanbul – although many initially assumed it was a terror attack.
“We went inside a café and everyone was on their phones looking worried, texting,” said Gabriel Turner, 23, a holidaying management consultant from north London. “Lots of people were running to catch a ferry – because the bridges were shutting and people wanted to get home. Then policemen came out of the ferries on their walkietalkies, looking very alert.”
News of other deployments spread quickly: troops clattered into Istanbul’s main Taksim Square while unexplained delays at its Ataturk International airport suddenly became a full closure as tanks pulled up at the terminal.
Ahmad Ozcan, who works in a café opposite Taksim Square, saw 100 soldiers arrive and order onlookers to go home, as they were conducting an exercise and the square was now theirs.
“We dismissed it until we heard troops had blockaded the bridge, then we knew this was something big,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.
As the rebels fanned out across the city, the air was suddenly filled with the sonic boom of F-16 fighter jets, their afterburners lighting up the night sky. Confusion reigned, with ordinary people in the street unsure if the pilots were loyal to the government or to insurgent military forces.
The coup was carefully orchestrated, however, with the plotters apparently communicating via the WhatsApp mobile service according to messages released by the state news agency confirming that the city’s bridges, airports and major police station had all been taken down.
Although it was impossible to verify if the messages were genuine, they indicated rebels were prepared to use violence. “The [pro-Erdogan] AK Party city group is on the way,” read one, to which another replied: “Don’t let that group pass. Firing is permitted.”
If there had been any lingering doubt as to what was happening, it was ended shortly after 11.20pm when a shocked newsreader on state broadcaster TRT read out a statement from an unnamed faction of the Turkish military.
“Dear Turkish citizens,” she began, later revealing that she was being held at gunpoint. “The working system of the government has been eroded systematically. The laws and systems that our government runs on have been made invalid.”
“The power in the country has been seized in its entirety,” the statement concluded, announcing that a “Peace Council” had been established and that a new constitution was to be prepared “as soon as possible”, without giving further details.
Whatever, whoever, made up the Peace Council, they clearly were not in control as first Binali Yildirim, Turkey’s prime minister, and then its increasingly authoritarian and polarising president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began to reimpose themselves.
With the authority of the state cast into doubt, Mr Yildirim was the first to try to restore order, acknowledging “an illegal act” by part of the Turkish military was under way, but vowing “we will not allow any activity that would harm democracy”.
Even as he spoke, frantic attempts were being made to connect Mr Erdogan with his public – he was on holiday 400 miles to the south in the Mediterranean resort of Marmaris.
As advisers hustled him to safety and blasts were heard across town, reports came in that rebel soldiers had entered TRT offices in the capital, Ankara, seizing staff phones. The head of the army was said to have been detained.
Shortly after midnight Mr Erdogan managed to address the nation – not from an imposing presidential lectern, but via a shaky FaceTime link on the mobile of a CNN Turk reporter who held it up to a camera.
Defiant and angry, Mr Erdogan dismissed the uprising by what he called a “parallel structure” – code for the Hizmet movement, an anti-Erdogan faction run by exiled cleric Fetullah Gulen, who the Turkish president constantly accuses of plotting but who denied any hand in the revolt.
President Erdogan launched his fightback, announcing he would return to the capital and urging supporters to take to the streets to confront plotters, while promising that loyalists in the government would mount the “necessary response” to subdue the coup.
But even as he spoke, two huge explosions rocked Ankara within minutes of each other just before 1am.
Ten minutes later a rebel-operated helicopter opened fire in the capital, raking the Golbasi special operations department with gunfire, killing 17 people, as tanks were deployed in front of the Turkish Parliament.
Witnesses reported three shells were fired into the National Assembly as politicians fled to shelters and plumes of smoke rose into the sky. Several people in the building were wounded.
As fears esclated that the coup was gathering force, in capitals across the world a concerted diplomatic offensive was mounted to back Mr Erdogan and the rule of law – notwithstanding growing concerns in recent years over the Turkish leader’s authoritarian stance.
John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, said he had phoned the Turkish foreign minister to underline his “absolute support for Turkey’s democratically elected, civilian government”.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said it was vital to “avoid bloodshed” and urged issues to be settled in a constitutional framework. Donald Tusk, the European Council president instrumental in brokering a deal with Turkey last year over the migrant crisis, called for a swift return to constitutional order, saying tensions could not be resolved by guns.
On the streets of Istanbul, meanwhile, the first signs of a fightback were emerging as – long before dawn – the city’s mosques sounded the call to prayer, the cries of the muezzins this time urging the faithful on to the streets in support of Mr Erdogan.
By 1.45am Taksim Square was filling with pro-Erdogan groups facing down the soldiers who had gathered there on the orders of their superiors – many young troops looking uncertain. The crowd began booing the soldiers, before retreating rapidly as they fired into the air then surging forward again, refusing to disperse. The troops seemed surprised at the reception, with some protesters screaming “traitors” at them. One soldier said he had been assured by more senior organisers of the coup that if they took to the streets they would have the support of the people.
“The soldiers were clutching their guns to their chests, not knowing what to do. They were young and afraid and it was then they realised we were not with their revolution, we were against them,” said Mr Ozcan, the café worker from Taksim Square.
“Soldiers started pushing Erdogan supporters to the ground, many were injured. Protesters got more defiant, shouting ‘Allahu Akhbar’.”
Over at the neck of the Bosphorus Bridge it was a bloodier story that unfolded. Shortly after 1am, as gunfire and explosions continued to rock Ankara, rebel troops opened fire into the Erdogan supporters as they tried to surge forward over the blocked crossing. “People rushed to the main square, to rush to the tanks and the armoured carriers – it was a bloodbath,” Piero Castellano, an Ankara-based photojournalist told the BBC. “It was unexpected. There is a very strong link, or maybe there was until last night, there was a very strong link between the Turkish people and their military.”
But despite the bloodshed the supporters of Mr Erdogan’s ruling AKP were not to be deterred. Tens of thousands turned out onto the streets, many directed by text messages telling them when and what time to meet.
“My family all support Mr Erdogan’s AKP, but I’m staunchly against them,” said 28-year-old student Aysa Goksin, recalling the scenes yesterday.
“A family friend of mine was killed after being hit by a tank driven straight into the crowd by rebel soldiers. It looked like Tiananmen Square, not Turkey. I was shocked the military were capable of such brutality.”
With support growing on the streets, the government forces received another boost shortly after 2am when one of those F16s – flying on the government side as it turned out – shot down a Sikorsky helicopter operated by the
‘The government has been eroded systematically. The power in the country has been seized in its entirety’
plotters, in a clear signal that the state was now rising to reassert itself.
Some 40 minutes later supporters of the Turkish government, led by labour minister Suleyman Soylu, entered the offices of the state broadcaster to begin taking back control. By 3am TRT was once again back on air.
With the battle still raging in Ankara as tank shells struck the parliament building, Mr Erdogan then made a dramatic return to Istanbul, his plane touching down at Ataturk International where he promptly gave an address condemning the plotters and urging his supporters to reclaim the streets.
“They have pointed the people’s guns against the people,” he told a throng of supporters in remarks that were broadcast across Turkish TV networks just after 4am.
“The president, whom 52 per cent of the people brought to power, is in charge. This government, brought to power by the people, is in charge. They won’t succeed as long as we stand against them by risking everything.”
Mr Erdogan’s confidence had been bolstered by the news that had come through just minutes earlier that some 30 rebel soldiers in Taksim Square had laid down their weapons after being confronted by armed police.
The popular support that coup supporters had been promised had not ma- terialised. In Ankara, as dawn broke to reveal the parliament building blackened and damaged, there were signs that government forces were also managing to regain the upper hand, with 13 soldiers reported to have been arrested at the presidential palace.
With sounds of sporadic gunfire still reverberating around the capital, however, pictures posted on Twitter just before 6am showed coup soldiers being marched out of CNN Turk by armed police, in another signal that authority was being restored.
Mr Erdogan remained at Istanbul airport, again urging his supporters to remain on the streets until total control had been reasserted.
Just after 6.30am, government forces secured another victory, as 50 soldiers involved in the coup surrendered on a bridges across the Bosphorus, abandoning their tanks and armoured vehicles before marching into captivity with their hands raised in the air.
The scene was broadcast live on CNN Turk and showed loyal police forces manhandling the plotters through the crowd, the soldiers’ weapons, helmets and webbing left strewn across the bridge where they had dumped it before giving up. But as the first names of the alleged plotters were released at around 7am, uncertainty still clouded the overall picture as authorities announced that Umit Dundar, the head of Turkey’s First Army, would be acting chief of military staff.
The whereabouts of the country’s most senior soldier, Hulusi Akar, were still unknown after he was taken hostage by coup plotters. It was not until after 11am that he was finally located and released.
At 7am, with most of the strategic locations apparently retaken, the bloodshed was still not over.
This time it was supporters of Mr Erdogan who attacked a group of soldiers who had already surrendered on one of the Istanbul bridges.
In scenes too gruesome to be broadcast and which may presage the rounds of revenge and repression that many now fear will follow this failed coup, there were reports that one rebel soldier was beheaded before police intervened to rescue others.
Pictures which were shared on social media showed one apparently decapitated body lying on a blood-soaked street as Erdogan loyalists looked on.
Operations to clear up the revolt continued throughout the morning, but it seemed clear when a Turkish army Blackhawk helicopter landed in northern Greece with eight soldiers on board requesting political asylum that the coup was indeed destined for failure.
Rebel commanders had fled after Turkish officials announced around 8am that the country’s main military headquarters were under the control of pro-government forces but small groups of rebel soldiers were still resisting.
An hour later, some 29 colonels and five generals had been removed from their posts, in just the start of Mr Erdogan’s promised purge of rebel military elements.
General Dundar, the acting army chief, said the rebels had come from sections of the air force, the gendarmerie internal security force and some “armoured elements”.
By midday, Omer Celik, Turkey’s EU minister was confident enough to say that the situation was “90 per cent under control” although some commanders were still being held hostage.
The human cost was also being totted up, with officials announcing the deaths of 265 people – 104 were alleged rebel soldiers – as well as 1,440 wounded while 2,839 army members were detained, from rank and file soldiers up to senior officers.
This, it was soon clear, was only the beginning of Mr Erdogan’s move to tighten his grip on power that over the previous 12 hours had suddenly seemed so tenuous.
Even as the plotters’ tanks were being driven back to Istanbul’s Selimiye army base, it was announced that 2,745 arrest warrants had been issued against judges for alleged links to the exiled Fetullah Gulen.
But it was clear that efforts to stabilise Turkey would not be simple, as the country’s far-Left DHKP-C terror group called on its followers to arm themselves to fight any police crackdown that might follow the failed coup.
As Mr Erdogan’s security apparatus wound up into gear, pictures were released of the shattered and bombed ground floor of Turkey’s National Assembly building in Ankara.
After a night of such bloodshed and widespread chaos, there will be those who already fear that Turkish democracy may prove far more difficult to repair.
‘They pointed the people’s guns against the people. This government is in charge. They won’t succeed’