Erdogan Rising by Hannah Lucinda Smith

Author:Hannah Lucinda Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-08-05T13:00:00+00:00

9

THE COUP

14 July 2016

One day before the coup

People had been warning that it was coming – though rarely openly, and not in so many words.

‘This is coup shit,’ friends told me as we spoke about the tumult that was spreading across Turkey like cancer throughout 2015 and the first half of 2016 – the refugee crisis, the breakdown of the PKK peace process, and then the terror attacks. First there was the dustbin bomb in Diyarbakır in June 2015, then a month later the suicide bomber in Suruç. In October 2015 came the deadliest terror attack in the history of the Turkish republic – 109 people blown apart by two suicide bombers in the heart of Ankara during a peace rally. Then the carnage reached Istanbul. One bomber blew himself up next to a group of German tourists outside the Blue Mosque in January 2016, and another two months later next to an Israeli group on İstiklal, the grand boulevard running through the heart of the city. In June two men blasted their way into Atatürk airport with assault rifles and then detonated their explosive packs. All in, the terror attacks left more than two hundred dead in the space of thirteen months: to people whose lives are ruled by opaque forces, these things are never unlinked. Each of Turkey’s previous coups had been preceded by similar chaos.

Two people were bold enough to say what everyone was thinking: Mehmet and Ahmet Altan, renowned journalists and brothers. When they appeared on the panel of a chat show on the evening of 14 July 2016, they spoke about the likelihood of the army again intervening in Turkish politics, as it had so many times before.

‘Whatever the developments were that lead to military coups in Turkey, by making the same decisions, Erdoğan is paving the same path,’ Ahmet Altan said.

‘It is not certain when it will take its hand out of the bag and how it will take its hand out of the bag,’ Mehmet added.

A day later they were proved right. But this time the coup would be different. The generals would come out the losers and by the end of Turkey’s darkest night, Erdoğan’s power would be galvanised further. And the Altan brothers, instead of being lauded for their foresight and plain speaking, would find themselves accused of sending subliminal messages to rally the coup-makers. They were both sentenced to life imprisonment. Though their convictions have since been overturned, Ahmet Altan remains behind bars.

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