After bloody night, Turkey’s president declares coup attempt foiled

2016-07-16

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ISTANBUL — A military coup attempt plunged Turkey into a long night of violence and intrigue on Friday, threatening its embattled president, leaving dozens dead and injecting new instability into a crucial NATO member and American ally in the chaotic Middle East.

The coup attempt was followed hours later by an equally dramatic public appearance by the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose whereabouts had been unknown for hours after the plotters claimed to have taken control. Flying into Istanbul Ataturk Airport from an undisclosed location early Saturday, Mr. Erdogan signaled that the coup was failing.

“A minority within the armed forces has unfortunately been unable to stomach Turkey’s unity,” Mr. Erdogan said after the private television channel NTV showed him greeting supporters. Blaming political enemies, Mr. Erdogan said: “What is being perpetrated is a rebellion and a treason. They will pay a heavy price for their treason to Turkey.”

Mr. Erdogan suggested that the plotters had tried to assassinate him, referring to a bombing in the Turkish Mediterranean resort town of Marmaris after he left on Friday. “It would appear that they thought I was there,” he said.

There were indications that the coup’s leaders, at a minimum, did not have a tight grip on many parts of the country. Supporters of Mr. Erdogan took to the streets of Istanbul to oppose the coup. The state-run Anadolu Agency reported that 754 members of the armed forces linked to the plot had been detained across Turkey, including a brigadier general in the country’s northeast.

Nonetheless, the abrupt turn of events in Turkey left Mr. Erdogan’s grip on power uncertain. The country has been reeling from a wave of deadly extremism by the Islamic State militant group, struggling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war in neighboring Syria and fighting a resurgent Kurdish rebellion in the Turkish southeast. Mr. Erdogan, an Islamist who has dominated politics for more than a decade, has also alienated many Turks with his increasingly autocratic behavior.

Martial law was declared after the coup attempt in the country, which has been convulsed by military takeovers at least three times in the past half-century.

Before he made his televised remarks from the airport, Mr. Erdogan was forced to use his iPhone’s FaceTime app from a secret location to broadcast messages beseeching the public to resist the coup attempt.

“There is no power higher than the power of the people,” he said amid contradictory accounts of who was in control. “Let them do what they will at public squares and airports.”

After Mr. Erdogan spoke, many followers obeyed his orders to go into the streets, and mosque loudspeakers urged his supporters to protest the coup attempt.

Anadolu Agency said 17 police officers had been killed in a military helicopter attack by coup plotters on a police special forces headquarters outside Ankara, the capital. The prosecutor’s office in Ankara said 42 people, mostly civilians, had been killed in clashes in the city.

CNN Turk reported that 12 civilians had died in an explosion at the Parliament building.

The United States Embassy said in a statement that “shots have been heard in Ankara” and urged Americans to take shelter. Social media outlets worked intermittently or were blocked.

The events began unfolding around 10 p.m. Friday as the military moved to stop traffic over two of Istanbul’s bridges, which cross the Bosporus and connect the European and Asian sides of the city.

There were reports of gunfire in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, where pro-Erdogan supporters had gathered, but there were no reports of injuries, and it appeared that security forces were acting with restraint. On the Bosporus Bridge, closed earlier in the evening by the military, there were reports of gunfire as protesters approached, and according to NTV, three people were injured.

Some military figures spoke out against a coup, including the commander of the First Army, Gen. Umit Guler, who issued a statement, carried by a pro-government news channel, saying, “The armed forces do not support this movement comprised of a small group within our ranks.”

Leaders of opposition political parties, who have otherwise worked against Mr. Erdogan’s government, also spoke out against a seizure of the government by the military.

“This country has suffered a lot from coups,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main secular opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, known by its Turkish initials, C.H.P., said in a statement quoted by The Hurriyet Daily News. “It should be known that the C.H.P. fully depends on the free will of the people as indispensable of our parliamentary democracy.”

By 2 a.m., a large group of protesters had gathered at Ataturk Airport, and the military had begun withdrawing, according to CNN Turk.

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In the back streets of Istanbul’s European districts, bars and restaurants were showing footage on television of scenes at the bridge, while partygoers were glued to their mobile phones trying to learn what was happening.

“Some people illegally undertook an illegal action outside of the chain of command,” Prime Minister Yildirim said in comments broadcast on NTV. “The government elected by the people remains in charge. This government will only go when the people say so.”

After Mr. Yildirim spoke, factions of the Turkish military issued a statement, according to the news agency DHA, claiming it had taken control of the country.

“Turkish armed forces seized the rule of the country completely with the aim of reinstalling the constitutional order, democracy, human rights and freedoms, to make rule of law pervade again, to re-establish the ruined public order,” the statement quoted by DHA said. “All the international agreements and promises are valid. We hope our good relations with all global countries goes on.”

Senior Pentagon officials in Washington said they were still trying to determine what was occurring in Turkey. They said the United States had not adjusted its military posture in the region.

The Defense Department has roughly 2,200 uniformed military personnel and civilians in Turkey. About 1,500 of them are based at Incirlik, an air base in southern Turkey near Syria. The United States has used the base to launch airstrikes against the Islamic State. Since March, Incirlik has been on an “elevated force protection level” amid concerns that militants were targeting it. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter in May ordered all family members of military personnel based at Incirlik to leave the country.

Mr. Erdogan blamed followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who lives in exile in Pennsylvania and who was once an ally before the two had a bitter falling-out in 2013 over a corruption inquiry that targeted Mr. Erdogan and his inner circle, for the coup attempt. Over many years, followers of Mr. Gulen built up a presence in Turkey’s police and judiciary, and Mr. Erdogan blamed them for the corruption inquiry.

Mr. Erdogan and his allies then purged the judiciary and the police of those linked to Mr. Gulen, going so far as to call him the leader of a terrorist organization and seeking, unsuccessfully, to have him extradited from the United States.

Mr. Gulen denied any role in the attempted coup, saying he condemned it “in the strongest terms.”

“As someone who suffered under multiple military coups during the past five decades, it is especially insulting to be accused of having any link to such an attempt,” he said in an emailed statement. “I categorically deny such accusations.”

Since the founding of modern Turkey in 1923, the military has staged coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980, and intervened in 1997. The military had long seen itself as the guardian of the secular system, established by the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. But in recent years a series of sensational trials had pushed the military back to its barracks, which analysts said had secured civilian leadership over the military.

Across Istanbul on Friday night, rumors swirled and evening plans were upended. In the Arnavutkoy neighborhood, people flooded out of bars and restaurants, hailing taxis and urging loved ones to get home to safety. “There’s a coup,” one man shouted in the street. “There’s a coup, and blood will be shed.”

Mr. Erdogan attracted a wide-ranging constituency in the early years of his tenure, including many liberals who supported his plans to reform the economy and remove the military from politics. But in recent years he has alienated many Turks with his increasingly autocratic ways, cracking down on freedom of expression, imposing a significant role for religion in public life and renewing war with Kurdish militants in the country’s southeast.

“The people tried to stand up against President Erdogan, but they couldn’t, they were crushed, so the military had no choice but to take over,” said Cem Yildiz, a taxi driver.

Mr. Yildiz said that recent terrorism in the country attributed to Islamic State militants, including a recent attack on Istanbul’s main airport that killed dozens, was “the tipping point” for him. He blamed Turkey’s policy on Syria for the terrorist attacks. Early in the civil war there, Turkey supported rebel groups fighting the Syrian government. Many of the fighters who traveled through Turkey to Syria joined the Islamic State, and critics have blamed Mr. Erdogan for enabling its rise.

“He has destroyed this country, and no one will stand up to him but the military,” Mr. Yildiz said. “There was no choice but this.”

Seyda Yilmaz, a teacher who was out in Istanbul on Friday when the news broke, said: “The country is in chaos, and Erdogan needs to be put in his place, but I’m afraid. I’m very afraid because in the past a lot of innocent blood was shed in these coups. I’m anxious. I don’t know what to say at this point. We are all in shock.”