Drowsy Emperor

I still don't understand why people think either candidate will herald a drastic change. Even though I'm rooting for Trump for entertainment value and spite, I see it just as a typical drummed up pre-election frenzy. People forget that Trump comes from the same social class as Hillary and other US presidential candidates. He's part of the financial elite that runs the country. And he's not going to rock the boat nearly as much as he's trying to convince everyone. Its just that he's upsetting some long standing interests in the Republican party, but at the end of the day, he's cut from the same cloth. The only real difference I see is the change in political discourse, that has become more crude and more savage than ever before - but seems to be a universal thing and hardly a Trump specialty. As for creeping authoritarianism, that started way before Trump, and seems to progress regardless of who is in charge.

Its sometimes a sound strategy to start a coup when the relevant political leader is abroad because if the thing is done properly, he won't have anywhere to come back to. But him merely being in another part of the country, apparently out of reach of the coup forces doesn't seem sound.

With these mass arrests I have a suspicion that figures within Turkey may have expected a purge incoming and tried to act preemptively with the coup. That could explain their relative weakness during the whole execution.

I'd love to know how they rationalized the coup among the commanders/soldiers. As in, what they were actually "fighting for". We didn't get to hear any of that unfortunately.

Well, as we say back home "pukovnik il' pokojnik", which in direct translation would be something like "colonel or corpse", meaning all or nothing. They didn't really go for broke and now they're at Erdogan's mercy. Along with a ton of people that are going to be swept away using the coup as an excuse.

The mistake was not getting important political figures and eliminating them fast. They rallied withing a few hours, which shouldn't really have been allowed to happen.

Turkey has been a state for a very long time, whereas Ukraine barely qualifies for the term.

Obama & co. threw their support behind Erdoğan, but they weren't too quick to do it. From what I saw, only after it was plain that the coup was full of fail, did they come out and demand respect for 'constitutional order' and such. I'm thinking if the coup had been successful, they would instead 'express deep concern for the recent events in Turkey' or some diplomatic rubbish along those lines, but little else. Rule of thumb with coups d'état, if you can't present everyone, within and without, with a fait accompli, you'll end up before a firing squad. Question is whether this will weaken Erdoğan's position in the long run, or strengthen him as his enemies within are defeated for good. They were on the fence in the start, but the fact that no major power really supported the coup suggests that they were going to slog through this thing alone. And for that they needed to be a lot more vicious. CNN was practically shilling for Erdogan from the start, helping to relay his message in a key moment when he was cut off from everything. When I saw the videos of soldiers letting "protesters" climb on the tanks with open hatches it became plain they don't have the resolve to see this thing through.

Well I guess every cloud has a silver lining.

I am dissappoint But late last night when various public figures were supporting the government and even Obama said something to that effect I realized they had actually done the unthinkable, attempted a coup without securing outside support from the major powers. It would never occur to me the army would actually try a genuine local revolt, without preparing the political foundations. This is why they failed. Stuck without political support the whole thing crumbles before it can stabilize. Failing to capture and kill Erdogan straight away was a mistake, failing to execute the top political figures while they had them at their mercy and allowing Erdogans supporters to get to the streets without many casualties - all too meek. That is not how things are done if you're not sure of the outcome. Kudos to Zoraptor for seeing the big picture.

Shots fired, russian source, google translate: In other words, they don't know whose F16 it is.

I was in a coup and all I got was this lousy Iphone.

Erdogan's supporters at the city senter chanting Allahu Ekber and "resisting" tanks, one of which was filmed crushing a cab. Army shooting up some other supporters on the bridge that are probably throwing rocks at them. I don't think he has the critical mass to reverse this.

My logic is that if a group hasn't appeared to support Erdogan through force of arms at this stage, its less likely (practically impossible) to appear with each passing hour. Would we know if there was? If units on the Syrian border, say, were loyal to Erdogan it would take them a long time to get to Ankara let alone Istanbul. And any fighting would likely take place in army bases or rural areas and not be reported by the state media which is controlled by the coup forces. With much of social media not working there's plenty of scope for fighting or loyalist troops to be around and for us to simply not know. After all, it's in the coup's best interests to minimise coverage of any resistance so as to discourage any others who are thinking of resisting either in the civilian populace or military/ police/ intelligence. Also while we may dislike the AKP and Erdogan it has to be remembered that he genuinely, regularly, won elections with actual majorities and not just pluralities. There are a lot of Turks who like him every bit as much as there are a lot of external and internal people who dislike him. I dunno, people like him usually stay in power by marginalizing the military and favoring the police because the police are more dependent. I recall him preventing a coup a few years back by arresting some officers. I don't think he has much support in military circles.

Guess it was that time of the month https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/754071903044632576/photo/1

Well, from my news I'm hearing they are responding. Guess they're a bit more government-faithful than us Western citizen's (but seriously, who would put their life on the risk for them?) Yes in mine as well, although I find the delayed response strange. On the other hand, there are probably a lot of people in his party that are going to be out of a job tomorrow if the coup succeeds so they have to try something. I see that CNN is shilling for Erdogan with the on-air time and plastering his call to take to the streets all over the front page (which neither the BBC nor RT have done) so I'm guessing the US administration isn't too thrilled with how things are going. On the other hand, the guy Erdogan accuses for instigating the coup lives in the US and is effectively protected there from the Turkish judiciary (most-wanted on terrorist list). Of course they could simply be playing both sides at the same time, which would probably be the best thing to do anyway.

That tells you he's done for. If there was anyone to answer they'd already be on the streets, not wait for his Skype call.

My logic is that if a group hasn't appeared to support Erdogan through force of arms at this stage, its less likely (practically impossible) to appear with each passing hour. At this point it would have to be mobilized externally, but I don't see who would go to great lengths to defend him as the new government just wants the status quo (albeit with itself in power).

El presidente, your skype is breaking up

I think the powers that be decided that Erdogan was past his expiry date. Trying to make up with the Russians out of the blue in retrospect smells of desperation. Some poster on RT says France closed its embassy in Turkey a few days ago due to "security concerns".

But then they might get into the EU :/

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Erdogan tries to topple Assad for 5 years Gets toppled in an evening This is too good

What's a huge number of muslims. Yugoslavia was never a huge state and the muslims were one of the smallest groups within. The population of Bosnia is around 4 million, half of which are muslims, the majority of which have never emigrated anywhere. The actual numbers should be incomparable to the waves of the last years. I think that more enter Europe per year in the last few years than the entire refugee wave of all of the Balkan wars combined (and that includes all nationalities).

I'm going to guess you mean peaceful coexistence, when you speak of integration. No, that's only going to get worse. An ever-increasing wealth gap, quickly deteriorating prospects for an entire generation that never learned to deal with frustration in a healthy way, a largely manufactured gender discourse that has led to identity issues for a lot of young men, anti-immigration sentiments and rhetoric coming to a boiling point, authoritarianism on the rise, etc. It's a recipe for disaster. If you think "the problem" is with Islam, you have an extremely narrow perspective. I think all of that are genuine problems but I'd also consider Islam one of them. Or to be precise, not Islam itself (as a religion/civilization existing in so many countries) but mass migration from Islamic countries as a "solution" to Europe's population problems. I think that's a disaster at best, a crime at worst. I would call it a leftist thing, but even quasi right party figures such as Merkel embrace it so at this point I don't know how to describe it other than as a pan-European elite project. IMO these people are so subservient to the corporate and market circles that they'd rather sacrifice their own nation by mass importing another civilization to keep wages low and the gears of the economy turning - than try to reform the system in such a way that the locals... you know... want (and can afford) to reproduce. Something is ****ing wrong in Europe and all these stopgap non-solutions will end in agony for everyone included.

"Every major terrorist attack in the last few years was committed by Muslims" -- you mean except those that weren't, or those you handwave away, right? I'm sorry, but facts just don't back you here. And they don't back you regarding the "cultural incompatibility" of Muslims at large either, because of the undisputable fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims living in the west are peaceful, law-abiding citizens. We're talking about millions of people, but you insist in using statistical outliers to illustrate a general principle. That's... not very rigorous, to put it mildly. @Meshugger: "civil war" warnings are preposterous, but I wouldn't completely discount a wave of violence à la St. Bartholomew. Divide and conquer. Are we really going to equate Breivik's solo show with the coordinated strikes on Bataclan that presumably involved a network of people working towards a common goal? Again with this head in the sand thing? Aren't there millions of basically every nation living across countries in Europe, and among those millions is it not the Muslims that are the sole common denominator to which almost every recent terrorist act is traced? At this point its just intellectual dishonesty to claim that the problem isn't with Islam. The fact that the masses are living in peace doesn't mean they like France or Germany (in fact a lot of the ones I see show open disdain for the countries they live in) or that integration was remotely successful. Peace is a negatively defined term. It just means absence of conflict at the moment, it doesn't imply that the situation is good or on a trajectory to getting better. Let me ask you a question. Do you think, given the current trends, that the internal problems with integration will increase or reverse?