Turkey has managed to piss off both the US and Russia and is facing a lot of pushback at home. It's easier to get your way when the press can refer to you as a "strongman" and crushing dissent is a great way to start. Keep in mind also that Turkey's biggest domestic problem is the PKK. The US is backing the Kurds in Syria, who are the same people as the PKK. What the US and Europe and Russia want out of Turkey isn't at all what Erdogan wants out of Turkey and being able to blithely defy international law and trade agreements gives you the ability to do what you want domestically. This whole "my enemy lives in the Catskills" thing he's got going on is entirely about ginning up a gamepiece to play against US hegemony. I mean, Incerlik is shut down at the moment and Turkey has been a strategic partner of the US military for a very, very long time.
Since it happened, and Erdogan came swooping out of the sky to come back to "save his country", I've had suspicions he was involved. Even the western media was reporting that turkish people felt that this coup attempt was weird and different. If it's filtering down to CNN etc... Idunno. It just makes me suspicious, and I'm not your usual conspiracy enthusiast. I think it's interesting that the PKK came out against the coup as it was happening. the PKK is, as you say, the biggest domestic problem. I wonder if they came out against it not because they didn't want it to succeed, but because they wanted it to be harder for them to be blamed for it if and when it failed. It's also interesting that the man that Erdogan blamed as organizer is a former ally who now lives in like, Pennsylvania or something. If the US doesn't want to extradite him back to Turkey, it may be used as bargaining chips (or at least, I imagine that would be the idea) - i.e. "you won't give me this man, at least give me the weapons to stabilize my country." I'm probably overthinking this.
I think the construction matters less than the blowback. Either (A) Erdogan is sly as a fox and set up his own failed coup (B) Erdogan got lucky and stumbled across a larval coup and arranged for it to blow up when he could handle it or (C) Erdogan's opposition is clumsy enough that his opposition didn't put in the work to actually succeed. Regardless, the end result is classic chilling effects Reichstag-ashes martial law bullshit. George Friedman has said a couple things - the first of which is that there have been rumours of coups swirling about for years, and this is the one that stuck; the second of which is that military coups historically have an extremely high success rate which makes a failed one seem suspicious by default. I'm no expert on Turkish politics. The impression I get of the PKK - regardless of whether they've earned it or not - is that they want the legitimacy of democratic support. They want the people to support Kurdistan. That gives them a reason to pay lip service to the democratic process. I think. I'm skating on thin ice there and will happily learn of my incorrectness. The Catskills Cleric angle gives credo to (B) and (C). I kinda get the impression that this was a bigger deal than the Turkish intended, and that sycophancy is replacing counsel within the Turkish government at exactly the time it shouldn't be.
So, some interesting stuff has happened. deputy mayor in Istanbul Shot in the Head, in Critical State Vast Purge in Turkey as Thousands are detained in post-coup backlash including around 13,000 public sector, non military people. Turkey coup attempt: Risk of Nato suspension as Erdogan's purge intensifies they're also talking about bringing back the death penalty, which would prevent them from joining the EU. not bad for 72 hours work?
...wow. That's an amazing quote if it's something he actually said.
"One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a GWAR concert." - Stalin It appears the actual quote isOnly your small-minded German philistine who measures world history by the ell and by what he happens to think are ‘interesting news items’, could regard 20 years as more than a day where major developments of this kind are concerned, though these may be again succeeded by days into which 20 years are compressed.
Embedded image 3:44 PM - 18 Jul 2016 https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755171322288861184Coming Tuesday: The #ErdoganEmails: 300 thousand internal emails from Erdoğan's AKP - through to July 7, 2016.
https://wikileaks.org/akp-emails/ It's all Turkish to me, but all the gmail (and hotmail!) addresses and reliance on Google Groups for mailing lists is kind of appalling for a political party anywhere.