{"id":35351,"date":"2016-07-19T03:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T07:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35351"},"modified":"2016-07-18T15:17:08","modified_gmt":"2016-07-18T19:17:08","slug":"sorting-through-the-possibilities-in-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/07\/19\/sorting-through-the-possibilities-in-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorting through the possibilities in Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the situation in Turkey stabilizes, Tom Kratman<\/a> says it probably<\/em> wasn’t Erdo\u011fan’s version of the Reichstag fire:<\/p>\n

So what are the possibilities?<\/p>\n

A. The coup attempt could have been more or less spontaneous, incited by word that Erdo\u011fan\u2019s government was about to start arresting soldiers that either adhered to liberal Islamic cleric, Fethullah G\u00fclen, or on some other pretext.<\/p>\n

B. It could have been preplanned for a later date and only moved ahead because of the fear of arrest.<\/p>\n

C. It could have been a small scale plot, as per B., above, but one of which Erdo\u011fan was fully apprised, and the timing of which he was able to control by issuance of arrest warrants, as per A. and B.<\/p>\n

D. It could have been, start to finish, Erdo\u011fan and his party\u2019s attempt at a Reichstag Fire, a staged incident, employing ignorant dupes, started and sabotaged in order to justify massive repression, bloodshed, and tyranny. You know; getting off the train.<\/p>\n

E. It was a subplot of a larger Armed Forces-run plot for a real coup.<\/p>\n

We can probably dispense with D right off; conspiracies of this kind are too difficult of execution, too unlikely to come off well, that it\u2019s not for anyone but a fool to try. Erdo\u011fan may be many things, and is possibly all of them, but a fool he is not. Likewise, one is inclined to discount E. Again, when the Turkish Army decides to do something it tends to do it forthrightly, competently, and without any undue restraint. If the Turkish armed forces as a whole had been not just doing the planning for a coup, but had such plans and preparations for execution well in hand, or, at least, well advanced, then the coup actors\u2019 calls for assistance and support would not have been so ignored and the streets of Turkey would have seen enough soldiers on them, quickly enough, that defiance would have been unlikely in any case, and massive in no case.<\/p>\n

A and B are both plausible, and there is evidence for both of those and C, but I\u2019m going to go out on a limb and suggest that what really happened was C, that there was a plot on a minor scale, that Erdo\u011fan knew about it in considerable detail, that he let it go forward intending to dictate by his actions the time for the coup, and at the worst possible time for the coup, and that he was prepared to countercoup and to take full advantage of the opportunities that would open to him via a successful countercoup.<\/p>\n

None of the evidence for C rises above the circumstantial, of course, but taken together, the body of evidence is persuasive. Consider: 1) Erdo\u011fan was out of town at the precise right times, yet, 2) he was able to get back to Istanbul at the precise right times, while 3) easily avoiding capture, 4) having lists already prepared of military officers to dismiss, very nearly the entire Turkish officer corps above the rank of captain, I\u2019ve heard, and 5) also had extensive<\/em> lists of prosecutors and judges to purge.<\/p>\n

That last one is the most persuasive to me, because we don\u2019t have any evidence that the judges or prosecutors had anything to do with the coup. Mere opportunism? Maybe, but the speed of the thing and the thoroughness, given the lack of time\u2026no, I\u2019m not buying opportunism; Erdo\u011fan was ready!<\/em> Why? Because he knew!<\/em> How? Because he was forewarned, possibly well in advance, even as to timing because he dictated<\/em> the timing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the situation in Turkey stabilizes, Tom Kratman says it probably wasn’t Erdo\u011fan’s version of the Reichstag fire: So what are the possibilities? A. The coup attempt could have been more or less spontaneous, incited by word that Erdo\u011fan\u2019s government was about to start arresting soldiers that either adhered to liberal Islamic cleric, Fethullah G\u00fclen, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,84,5],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-35351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-government","category-military","tag-turkey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9cb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35352,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35351\/revisions\/35352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}