The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President back in control after failed coup in Turkey
265 dead, most of them members of security forces.
ISTANBUL — Thousands of soldiers and officers purged from the military. A helicopter shot down over the capital. Hundreds of people lying dead on city streets.
As dawn broke Saturday, the citizens of Turkey emerged sleep-deprived and angst-ridden after a night of violence that felt more like life in war-stricken neighbors like Syria or Iraq.
And trying to assert control was President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, targeting plotters in the previous night’s coup and other perceived enemies of the state.
The embattled president, after a confusing absence in the early hours of the coup, emerged early Saturday to speak to the nation. He exhorted his followers with the FaceTime app from his cellphone, resorting to the kind of medium he has long sought to suppress.
That stunning scene, televised nationwide, at first seemed an embarrassment for a leader who presents himself as all-powerful and suggested his end.
But it was actually the turning point, as Erdogan called on his followers to take to the streets and gather at the airport in Istanbul, which the military had shut down, to resist the coup.
By Saturday afternoon, after a standoff in Ankara, the capital, the government had wrested back an army headquarters building held by coup plotters. Erdogan, who had frequently talked of conspiracies afoot to undermine his power, was back in control, seemingly as powerful as ever.
The attempted coup, as it unfolded, suggested an alarming unraveling for a country that is seen in the West as a crucial partner in the fight against terrorism and an anchor of stability in a region full of trouble.
The United States has sought close cooperation with Turkey in the fight against the Islamic State, while Europe has relied on Turkey to help stem the flow of refugees from war-torn countries of the Middle East to the Continent.
“The whole night felt like doomsday,” said Sibel Samli, an independent film producer in Istanbul. “People flocked to the markets to get bread, eggs and water. People were going to cash machines to draw out cash.”
A steamy Friday night was just getting going when the first hint came that something was not right: The military sealed off two bridges across the Bosporus.
Then, fighter jets and helicopters began flying low over Istanbul and Ankara, rattling residents enjoying a night on the town, and sporadic gunshots rang out.
Suddenly, Turks were transfixed by their cellphones, or the televisions in bars and restaurants, trying to figure out what was going on.
No one seemed to know where the president was.
As rumors swirled that the military was maneuvering to thwart a terrorist plot, or that a hijacked airliner was in the sky, many Turks, given their nation’s history of military meddling in politics, began to wonder if a coup was afoot.
Soon enough, they had their answer: The prime minister, Binali Yildirm, spoke on television and said a renegade faction within the military was trying to mount a coup. And a military group, later calling itself the Peace at Home Council — a reference to a mantra of Turkey’s secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — issued a statement saying it had seized control of the country.
So began a surreal evening that stretched until daybreak, punctuated by violence that killed at least 265 people, most of them members of the security forces, as various factions fought for control.
Samli had been sitting with friends at a rooftop bar of a chic hotel on the European side of Istanbul, when a helicopter passed low over their heads.
“We didn’t think anything of it at first because we knew the city was on high terror alerts following recent attacks,” she said. “Then we started getting the calls and WhatsApp notifications about the start of a military coup. People were calling one another telling them go home.”
The first signs that the coup might not succeed emerged as it became clear that the military failed to secure important government buildings, or to seize elected officials.