First outcome from the Turkish coup attempt

Why now?

The coup-d'état came up in a peculiar moment, while Erdoğan has been trying to come to terms with the last year's adversaries and retreat, after dismissing his grandiose thinker and interventionist PM Davutoglu.

Like in the civil war against the Kurdish population (which he started obviously in order to win the elections), as in Syria and Iraq (by apparently accepting the accomplished facts, at least until the U.S. presidential elections) and Russia (after the jihad attack on the Ataturk airport he dealt in practical matters with Russia, as the blogger from India explains)

In short, Erdoğan moved in order to calm down the military, which was tired of dying for his appetite. The coup organizers obviously wanted a return to "lawfulness", because one of their few actions was to call the 1000-1500 soldiers illegally at Mosul back to Turkey.


Who is behind it?

The coup was clearly motivated by U.S. Not because americans dislike Erdoğan, or because the army has good relations with the americans. These are circumstantial evidence. Able but not necessary conditions.
 
What revealed the american position was the first announcements by Kerry on the matter: "I hope there will be peace and stability". No mention of democracy. This is further supported by several leaks claiming Erdoğan had asked for asylum in Merkel's compassionate arms, but she refused like a bad witch. These were obviously an attempt to outlaw Erdoğan as a sanctuary seeker, but in fact he appealed to his supporters through the internet for resistance.

In general, although Erdoğan had been at first their own offspring (so the alliance with Gülen, whom today Erdoğan accuses for instigation of the coup), he showed some clear tendency of autonomy and hegemony into the Middle East, which americans did not like at all.

Obama's statement to "support the democratically elected government" came afterwards to fill in the gap of Kerry's own initial statement. Which is an interesting point (see 4).
 

Le Coup is so passé

It is obvious that coups are a little out of date. This can be seen in the "weakness" of the coup organizers to kill several thousands from the beginning, which possibly reflects the lack of the nation's legitimization for such an act. In older times, these acts were excused by the fact that the dead had been allegedly communists and there had been a somewhat imminent danger. Today, this polarizing effect does not seem to glue Turkey.

In short, the coup suffered from illegitimacy. The coup since its first declarations showed no goal other than finishing up with the AKP. And this obviously was not enough a reason to mobilize the soldiers into a carnage against the rest 50% of Erdoğan supporters in the streets.

The most violent attacks appeared to be driven by air squads, which shows that the coup organizers had not been fully supported by the soldiers, who finally refused to start a carnage. A fanatic inside a helicopter (or in a truck as in Nice) suffices for killing 50-100 people, but since the police forces disarmed the soldiers (as many videos show this) we obviously conclude that they had no will to kill.

El-Sisi in Egypt had one of the few successful coups of this decade, seizing power endorsed by half the population, who disliked the democratically elected Muslim Brothers (and by the way, Erdoğan friends).

The political situation in Turkey is equally polarized (50% pro Erdoğan, 50% against) but the 50% against Erdoğan are seriously divided; most of them would not have offer support to the military (Kurds for example) or would do it afterwards, not from the beginning, as happened with el-Sisi coup.

This reveals that the military coup had no real contact with society in order to mobilize people, no matter if Gülen had been behind it or not. Gülen (who lives now in the USA) was never a fellow of the army, instead he had been Erdoğan's primary ally against it, using his influence on the police force and the judiciary to disarm the military, ten years ago.


Now what?

Failure of the coup is an even more interesting development than its possible success. We want to see how Erdoğan is going to react, in domestic and foreign affairs, which makes things very fascinating (and I have put a pan to heat for popcorn).

In case of the coup's success, Turkey would return on to the american dominance track. It would become again a good ally from a naughty one, it would forget the ottoman dreams for a while, and would turn into an introspect because the military (likewise el-Sisi) would seek to legalize themselves through elections of unclear political reasons.

Its case of failure, however, brings more questions. As I wrote at the beginning, since the last two months Erdoğan tried to normalize a situation which he himself had destabilized before his defeat in the first elections (those with the HDP bombing incident).

This normalization may have been his attempt to avoid the coup, conceding in practice to some demands from the other side.

Erdoğan did not invade Syria despite artillery bombing, even when his own jihadi fighters were likely to disappear from the map of Azaz, and looks like he has opened a dialogue with the Kurds, and the normalization of the relations with Russia satisfies the most westernized (and tourist-depended) part of the Turks.

With victory against the coup in his hands, Erdoğan and his followers can do anything they want now. Surely they will demoralize their opponents in the system of power, but this is our least concern.

Where things become more interesting is how Erdoğan will face two important issues. The first one is the internal polarization. At this moment, Erdoğan is the proud winner and able to impose easily a "dictatorship" of the democratic majority, aligning with his policy in the past two years, but now awarded as a hero of democracy ?

If he were wise, he would take a french mask, become more presidential and more democratic, offering generously space to his opponents (as the Gezi park protestors and the Kurds are not exactly his friends) and he would keep governing Turkey on to his death. But Erdoğan's last five years showed nothing like this political genius.

The second issue is his external relations. While purging the army, any idea for military expeditions in Syria or Iraq is fading away. For now. On the other hand, we do not know how this experience of the coup is going to alter his relations with the US and EU (which stayed behind waiting for the coup game to end). It is not impossible to think that Erdoğan will search for new allies far from the West, but it is still early and popcorn is still warming.
 

And the rest

Two side notes: Judging from the result, some claim that Erdoğan staged the coup to benefit. This is totally wrong. That he will benefit from its failure, is not proof of his staging. The most realistic scenario according to this claim, is that Erdoğan knew when the coup is triggered and did nothing to evade, considering that most of the army will support him. Extremely dangerous game, but not impossible; we are talking about a man who started a civil war against his former allies (the Kurds) after 15 years, in order to win an election.

The same moment that the coup attempt failed, the well-known useless international media junk began a fairy tale of how weak is now Erdoğan's position and this coup be a message to him. Such a story direct us better to recognize the american instigation of the coup attempt.

In fact Turkey is a country amidst a low profile civil war against a substantial part of its population (the Kurds); the same time secret agents seize their autonomy (like the jihad attacks in Turkey); beyond all these, a considerable part of the people (and the army) is not willing to sacrifice their lives for the sultan's adventures in Syria and Iraq.

All of these have been demonstrating the weak position of Turkey well before the coup emerged. Its failure gives more power to Erdoğan than he had last week. Yes, Turkey hence has been driven into Pakistanization since the last two years; what is worse, Pakistan survives for decades in its strange state of half-sovereignty, but we cannot say now if Turkey (a classic nation state) can withstand such a partial sovereignty.

But claiming that the coup had been what is driving Turkeys weaknesses, is only some damage control tried by spin doctors, who expected to write something like "we hope that Turkey will soon return to normality and the military will yield power to the political personnel".

In a few days a more elaborated version of the initial spin will prevail to blur things, that is why first hand reactions are valuable.

A last point that I would like to write about in another article, but is worth mentioning at least, concerns all the rest of us. If there is a message of what happened in Turkey, it is an old classic one. Not only you need weapons, but also an illusion in order to win a war. The coup organizers had pronounced arms superiority, but Erdoğan supporters were ready to die for their faith. Let us keep that in mind for later use in the world affairs.