What was the motivation of the Turkey Coup?

[edhopper]

I have not seen any good analysis. Power grab? Religious conflict? (I think Erdogan is moving the country away from secularism and the Military is opposed to this). Were Erdogan and the Military infighting?

Any one read or see anything about this?

[killbotfactory]

1. Seems like the coup plotters were trying to head off the mass purge going on

Erdogan had a list of thousands ready to dismiss and arrest, a couple hours after the coup attempt, so it was clearly prepared before anything happened.

[Qutzupalotl]

2. There was an informative series of tweets about this:

https://twitter.com/SuzanEraslan/status/754073075495399429

[REP]

3. An excuse for Erdogan to be even more of a tyrant

It's still not clear if this was a staged coup or a true break with his fundamentalist supporters. It is clear it was not a constitutional coup (the Turkish constitution requires the Army to overthrow the government if it stops following the constitution). Whatever it was, Erdogan has seized the opportunity to be even more of tyrant.

[Warpy]

4. It was staged. A real coup would have consisted of more than

tanks driving down the street and blocking a few bridges with jets buzzing the cities overhead. There would have been real damage to the cities.

This is his pretext to get rid of the Gulen movement, his allies until they investigated his cronies for corruption a few years ago. This is his Night of the Long Knives.

He's consolidating his power. Soon the military will have to act for real. If they don't, Turkey will become another vicious Islamist dictatorship.

[REP]

10. He has neutered the military and inserted his puppets in key positions

The Turkish people are losing hope.

[On the Road]

7. Have Never Heard This:

the Turkish constitution requires the Army to overthrow the government if it stops following the constitution.

Do you know if any previous coups or coup attempts in Turkey over the last hundred years invoked this provision?

[REP]

9. It has been exercised three times since 1921.

Turkey has not existed for quite 100 years yet.

[ancianita]

5. It's not simple, it's been going on awhile. It's about money. Long-term siphoning off of Western

currency through a huge schooling network that seeks, in the US, to privatize public education in charters.

In Turkey, Erdogan's goal is to stop the eroding of secular education in Turkey. So that's the opposite of what many DU'ers say is going on. While it might seem counterintuitive to think much of how schools can siphon off public monies that can then be sent to Islamist causes elsewhere in the world, when we talk public school funding we're talking billions. And Gulen runs the biggest charter school network in the US.




Wikipedia offers a good read on Fethullah Gulen.

Some of my sources here are Turkish.

Here is some background info I got from a San Francisco pro-union site.

Ertuğrul Kürkçü who is a member of the parliament of Turkey representing Mersen and
the Peace and Democracy Party, discusses the political situation in Turkey, including the
the role of the AKP, the working class, the Kurdish people and the political role of the Gülen
Islamic movement including their support for education changes that are destroying secular
education in Turkey and the United States.


Ahmet Şık was one of the 94 journalists jailed for writing about the Gülen movement connection to the
police in Turkey.

Kürkçü also talks about the role of the United States and the Turkish government in the
MIddle East.

Turkey, Labor, The Islam Gulen Movement & The US: An interview with Ertuğrul Kürkçü

&feature=youtu.be


How they hire in the US:

?552

The Gulen network's NGO building partners:

?560


May 8, 2012 in Ankara, Turkey.
For more information on the role of the Gülen schools in the US go to:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/largest-charter-network-in-us-schools-tied-to-turkey/2012/03/23/gIQAoaFzcS_blog.html%20

http://parentsacrossamerica.org/2012/04/the-gulen-movement’s-connection-to-the-largest-us-charter-network/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/world/middleeast/turkey-feels-sway-of-fethullah-gulen-a-reclusive-cleric.html?_r=1&ref=world

Information on journalists jailing
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/03/turkeys-jailed-journalists.html
http://turkeypressfreedom.wordpress.com/


May 13, 2012 7:04 PM on CBS: Largest U.S. charter school chain tied to powerful Turkish Islamic cult imam-Recieves $150 Million In Public Funds "Backdoor Madrasa"

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57433131/u.s-charter-schools-tied-to-powerful-turkish-imam/?tag=currentVideoInfo;videoMetaInfo

Gulen schools are stealing millions of dollars of public funds and demanding kickbacks from teachers of the cult brought from Turkey to teach at their chain of charter schools.

There's a lot of stuff, but it's been years in the making.

I don't have a unified theory, and Obama and Kerry (watching from Luxembourg) aren't talking. But my theory is that ending Western currency siphoning to Islamists helps the US economy, NATO countries' economies, and helps keep two-faced Turkey in the good graces of NATO and the West. If Edmonds is right, a message to the Saudi fundamentalists who get safe harbor within the Gulen monetary system.

Here is Sibel Edmonds opinion on how Turkey is The West's buffer and may have another coup:

[6chars]

6. My sense is the US and EU are pretty cool with the purge

http://in.reuters.com/article/turkey-security-idINKCN0ZZ12Z
Erdogan targets more than 50,000.

This is the second most heavily armed member of NATO, a major economy bridging Europe and the Middle East, the model of a modern democracy in a Muslim majority country. Basically getting turned into a dictatorship under a person with what we might call old-fashioned religious views that he wants to have institutionalized.

Happening under our noses. And no one here really gives a shit at all.

[ancianita]

11. Oh, a bunch of us care! I'm pretty sure it's not a dictatorship, either. Yes, it's strong arming

people out, true.

But I think crying "victim" and "dictator" is just one of the lines that Islamists use to garner international sympathy when they're losing the climb to governmental control. They like to claim to want democracy until they're the majority, and then they put their theocracy in place by majority vote.

That's the fight that Erdogan is pre-empting, and very much at the behest of NATO.

I just don't think a leader forcing religion and mullah creep out of his country's government is a dictator. I think religion creates dictators.

[6chars]

12. Please explain

Are you saying something like: Gulen is really behind the coup, and has this parallel system and the goal is to establish a theocracy at the level of Iran (except Sunni)? And that Erdogan is not moving in a theocratic direction?

I would be delighted if that were the case. But with the number of people being arrested or fired so quickly, and the move to instate the death penalty, this looks like what we would call a purge in any other country. Also, my understanding of Turkey's pollitics and population is that there are about about 1/2 who are pretty western oriented, more in the western part of the country, and about 1/2 who are pretty traditionalist (and sympathetic to Islamist parties) more in the middle and east of the country, and these are Erdogan's main support, plus there are the Kurds who are permanently on the outs with the rest of Turkey. So, if the guy with the Islamist support is doing the purging, is he just purging the people who are even more religious than he is?

Not trying to argue, really getting the sense you have a lot of knowledge about Turkey and since your opinion is a surprising one, I am hoping to gain some of that knowledge in addition to what you included in your lengthy post above (whether or not it convinces me).

[Blue_Tires]

8. Well, as coups go, this was strictly amateur hour from start to finish

So either some folks had a LOT more balls than brains, or this was some kind of setup, as evidenced by the fact that Erdogan clearly had a LONG assed list of political undesirables and was looking for the slightest provocation to get rid of the lot...

Yeah, I know Greenwald and all the cool kids on the emoprog left are twisting themselves in knots trying to pin this on Gulan and Washington, but that dog won't hunt.

[ancianita]

13. Might as well read something from an online Turkish site about this.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/10-maps-that-explain-the-global-war-between-erdogan-and-gulen.aspx?pageID=238&nID=63342&NewsCatID=338

[edhopper]

14. Thanks for that

seems religious division rears it's ugly head again.