Featured Turkey's coup flew da coop!?

Turkey is a democracy, but not a Western-style one. And it will be less so. (Unless you consider Germany after the Nazis won a plurality of the Reichstag a democracy.)

Since the days of Ataturk, Turkey has been committed to being a secular state. The army, for good or bad, has been the guarantor of that commitment.

Erdogan has increasingly pushed toward 1) Islamism and 2) authoritarian rule. The ill-considered coup apparently was in opposition to both impulses.

And the coup likely will only intensify both impulses. Secularism will be discredited, allowing a further slide toward Islamism. And it likely will strengthen Erdogan's hand in continuing to enhance his own power and stifle civil liberties.

The coup is pretty much a disaster for the West. Turkey will be a less reliable NATO ally and may be come unstable, the last thing the West needs in the region. (Turkey has traditionally been a friend a Israel; Erdogan recently offered a rapprochement with Israel after some difficulties — but that might become problematic with increasing Islamicism in Turkey.) Increasing authoritarianism and Islamisicm in Turkey will make Turkey's entrance into the EU even less likely, which will increase the alienation between Turkey and the EU and NATO, which would result in the loss of what had been an important bastion against radical Islamism.

 

As to the OP:

Aside from psychics, no one saw this coming. Erdogan has been problematic, but his expansion of power had not generally been seen as egregiousness enough to justify a coup. Erdogan is not especially an ISIS sympathizer. (U.S. forces have continued to operate against ISIS from Turkish territory, after all) and he's been stuck in a vice between ISIS and Syria and Europe. The major problem between Erdogan and the West has been his battle against his own Kurdish rebels, which has made cooperation with the major anti-ISIS force, the Kurdish Peshmarga, a bit of a problem.

 

Please go elsewhere, because you have nothing to contribute to this discussion. Turkey is "full" of Muslims because it is a largely Muslim country. Turkey is traditionally supportive of Israel and, compared to the Saudi-inspired theocratic regimes, is relatively tolerant of its religious minorities.

 

And let's get this straight: Turkey will not recognize the supposed "caliphate." The Ottoman Turkes for four centuries ruled over the bulk of Islam and its successor (to Ataturk's dismay, perhaps) is not about to let these thuggish Muhammad-come-latelies present themselves as the legitimate heirs of the Prophet, peace be upon him.

 

Yes, some things look fishy, but none of the objections prove it was a put-up deal.

Having the president out of the country in some ways simplifies things because (traditionally) he wouldn't be there to rally support. If it was a coup, the leaders were working from old models: seize some government offices and the TV stations. What they hadn't counted on, in particular, was the new technology that allowed Erdogan to bypass the traditional media and appeal directly to the people.

It's helpful to have senior officers in a coup, but it's often been done by junior officers. In 1936 a group of Japanese field grade and junior officers launched a bloody coup. It eventually failed, but the effect was to give the military more power over the civilian government and remove most of the officers who wanted to attack the Soviet Union and not expand in China (whose earlier invasion had been engineered by field grade officers.

Gaddafi, you may recall, was a colonel when a group of young officers successfully ousted the Libyan government in 1969.

 

You're right. He was a captain before the coup. Afterward made himself colonel and eliminated every other officer above that rank.