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Update on the Attack in Nice and the Failed Turkish Coup
Gokhan Tan/Getty Images. This photo is already justifiably famous.
Editors have been writing and calling me all weekend to ask if I can comment on events in France and Turkey. Of course, this would happen be one of the very few weeks in the past decade that I’ve neither been in France nor Turkey.
But I’ve been following the news closely in both places. I wrote this piece about the attack in Nice for City Journal. It was monstrous and terribly depressing, but not surprising. I’ll be back in France tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll then be able to tell you a bit more then about the investigation and how France is reacting.
As for Turkey, to tell you much beyond what’s in the news, I’d have to be there. It’s a catastrophe, and people there will suffer for a long time because of it.
Many aspects of the story so far make no sense to me — why did the putschists bomb the Turkish Parliament, of all insane things? Why was the coup attempt so incompetently executed? That doesn’t mean there’s no explanation, only that I don’t yet understand it.
Although Vox isn’t where I’d usually go for incisive commentary, they interviewed someone to whom I would turn for that. As Dani Rodrik points out, the whole coup attempt is very puzzling:
For one thing, it seems to have been very poorly planned. For example, most TV channels were left operating and there does not seem to have been an attempt to take Erdogan in. … Second, it is not clear who would benefit from a coup. The military is no longer the secularist stronghold with a strong esprit de corps and sense of mission it once was. (Hence the widespread theory in Turkey that this was a coup staged by Erdogan himself, designed to pave the way for an Erdogan dictatorship. But this doesn’t quite ring true either, in light of Erdogan’s recent attempts to mend fences with Russia and Israel to strengthen the economy. He must know that even a failed coup would wreak havoc with the economy.)
And it’s very unclear how anyone could have imagined that bombing parliament in Ankara and blocking bridges in Istanbul would overthrow Erdoğan, not least because he wasn’t in Istanbul or Ankara. He was in Marmaris.
The theory that Erdoğan staged this himself is insane, even if a number of my friends suspect so. Many real people have died. Were they all actors? How did he persuade so many people to sign up for a suicide mission in service of this theater? What’s pretty clear is that he’ll be the beneficiary, however; and this will give him cover to persecute any opposition remaining and pass a new constitution arrogating all power to himself. That’s an unqualified disaster.
It’s perhaps more plausible that he knew there was a faction planning a coup and chose not to disrupt their plans. But even that seems implausible — it’s a wild risk to take; how could he be so sure it would fail? But the lack of organization and inefficiency might be because they prepared for or at least entertained the idea of a coup, but somehow the preparations were discovered, forcing them to act prematurely. This is just wild speculation on my part, though.
It has already been followed by a massive purge of the judiciary and the army. The numbers change depending who’s reporting it, but they’re in the thousands and obviously go way beyond any evidence that could have been uncovered since Friday. Thousands of judges have been sacked and hundreds more arrested. Not only does this leave me wondering who will be left to judge the alleged coup-plotters, it makes me wonder whether everyday jurisprudence will now be in short supply. Who’s going to be left to adjudicate contract disputes and traffic tickets?
Erdoğan is unsurprisingly placing the blame on Fethullah Gülen; he and many in Turkey believe that we’ve been sheltering Gülen explicitly for such purposes. His demand that we extradite him has the potential to escalate quickly to a crisis. Last night a Turkish minister, Süleyman Soylu, explicitly blamed the US for the coup attempt: “The instigator of this coup is United States,” he said, and “Behind the terror in [Turkey’s] southeast, and troubles in Syria and Iraq, is the USA’s ambitions and plans.”
Last night Erdoğan announced that those who stand by Gülen would be “at war” with Turkey. As of last night, Incirlik was shut down, with much speculation that it would remain that way until Gülen was returned. I don’t know if this is true, but if it is, it will at least temporarily starve anti-ISIS forces in Syria of air support.
Over the years I lived in Turkey, I wrote a few pieces that might be useful as background to this. Here I ask, who is Fethullah Gülen? I wrote more about the relationship between Erdogan and Gülen in Turkey’s Two Thugs.
Murat Yetkin is probably the best journalist to follow for detailed timelines and accurate English-language reporting from Turkey. See, e.g., Anatomy of a Failed Coup.
I’ll be writing a bit about this over the week and I’ll post the links here.
Of course, I’m worried about my friends in Turkey.
Published in General
As for the incompetence of the coup attempt, a couple of things. One is that this wouldn’t be the first coup that was poorly planned and/or poorly executed. Lots of similar efforts around the world have been similarly done.
The larger factor, I think, is that Erdogan has been slow-motion purging the military’s top leadership for a couple of years. It’s entirely possible that the skill and talent, especially in the planning and execution leadership were gone, and this was the second string’s effort.
Eric Hines
He’s always had that sympathy, and he’s never liked al Sisi.
Eric Hines
Carey,
Well, this is better than the Red Army Purge of 1941 because Trotsky had already been assassinated in 1940. With Gülen still alive this is a twofer. Erdogan gets to purge the army, the legal system, and the government all because Gülen. Stalin was purging throughout the thirties all because Trotsky. Unfortunately, Stalin had Trotsky assassinated in Mexico in 1940 so he couldn’t go on using him as an excuse in 1941. Even absolute dictators can’t have everything.
Regards,
Jim
I find it very difficult to believe that you imagine an argument has to be made at this point. The sultan has decided, arguments are irrelevant.
Absolutely, but what is he signaling by signaling it now?
Politico proving once again that Rush Limbaugh is a genius:
Truck kills dozens in latest French attack
With Zach Montellaro, Austin Wright and Connor O’Brien
Not until the next paragraph do we read that the “rampaging truck” had a driver.
There’s no signal in doing it now; he’s just repeating an ongoing meme of his as he lashes out at all of his enemies, real and perceived.
Eric Hines
“Not surprising.” The most depressing sentence this week.
Hugely looking forward to your reports when you get back to Paris.
I can imagine few actions that would better play into Islamist appeals to American Muslims.
One needn’t buy into Leftist fables about Islam being indistinguishable from Christianity or Judaism — it is, and in ways that are almost wholly complimentary to Christianity and Judaism — to think that it’s both unjust and foolhardy to act as if all Muslims are the problem.
Any decent human being would either disassociate themselves from an ideology which calls for such vile behavior or shun (and report) any Muslim who advocates or engages in such behaviors.
By their fruits you shall know them. The fruits of Islam are evil.
“For show me anything that Mohammed instituted new: you will only find what is bad or inhuman, such as when he orders in decreeing that the belief that he preached should be advanced by the sword.” – Manuel Paleologos II
Can I get some specifics on which behaviors you have in mind?
There are plenty of ideas that are very mainstream within at least some parts of Islam for which I would wholly agree: anything that approaches the kind of bigotry and supremacy you get in Wahabbi-like Islam absolutely deserves the kind of shunning and condemnation you describe.
That is, however, a far narrower category than “Muslims.”
Being out of the country is SOP for African coups. One reason leaders are reluctant to leave the country.
Perhaps you meant complementary….
Eric Hines
If Edrogan is aiming to be a dictator, why would he care that a few people got killed, even if some of them were his supporters?
THR & Claire,
They interviewed some of the soldiers. They didn’t know anything about a coup. They thought they were on a training exercise. If it was a real military coup there would be massive fighting still going on. You aren’t going to end a full military coup in 24 hours any more than you are going to decide to purge 2500 judges in 48 hours. It really smells.
Regards,
Jim
Complimentary: [1.] expressing praise or admiration for someone or something [2.]: given for free
I am prepared to concede that not every Muslim wants my head or wants to have Sharia law supplant our US Constitution. But the structure of Islam, as I understand it, and the differences from modern Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism make it difficult to evolve in ways that expel the violent jihadis and stop rendering cover and aid. So in effect some portion of Islam constitutes a criminal conspiracy; funds are collected and funneled to violent jihadists, radicalization is either accepted or encouraged, and adherents render various levels of moral and emotional support to the cause of expanding Islam violently. That is beyond dispute — but how to name and characterize that part of the body of Islam is in great dispute. And that dispute weakens our ability to develop and implement defensive strategies.
I think Eric was being a little sarcastic there.
Nope. I was misunderstanding; Mr Meyer corrected me.
Eric Hines
I agree with the point Mr Meyer is making that it’s counterproductive (I’ll say destructive to our own cause) to condemn all Muslims for the misbehavior of a significant fraction of Muslims, and to condemn all of Islam for the misbehavior of some sects and of some collections of Islam styling themselves, for instance, Daesh or al Qaeda.
However. As I understand the protocols for reading and understanding the Koran, the later, more recent surahs supersede the earlier, older surahs, and conflicts between two surahs should be resolved in favor of the more recent one. And the Koran gets more violent, especially toward non-believers, as the surahs become more recent. If that understanding is correct, the Koran itself then makes it difficult to discriminate, and it puts an even larger premium on Islam’s priesthood publicly and loudly condemning these terrorist acts and issuing their own fatwas against them.
Eric Hines
To be fair, my initial reaction was “Oh, crap. Hines is probably right and I’m an idiot.”
The AKP is a Turkish version (political) of the MB. RTE’s beliefs are hardly a secret.
I believe that when he speaks of Egypt he’s referring to the illegitimacy of Governments installed by military coup rather than through elections.
All those FN-FAL’s lying around.
As you are a follower of the faith I am very pleased to hear your reassurance in this regard. Unless of course that is not the case and you are merely talking out of your ass.
Claire Berlinski retweeted this info earlier today: “‘At least two F-16s harassed Erdogan’s plane while it was in the air and en route to Istanbul. They locked their radars on his plane and on two other F-16s protecting him,’ a former military officer with knowledge of the events told Reuters.”
“‘Why they didn’t fire is a mystery,’ he said.”
Ah, it feels good to be back. :)
Preaching, advocating, or otherwise supporting jihad. That includes making excuses for jihadists. Looking the other way when other Muslims do such things. Failing to speak out against jihadists.
When Christians do stupid stuff that gives Jesus a bad name, I don’t make excuses for them. I don’t support them. And if I knew somebody was getting ready to blow up stuff in Jesus’ name, I’d damn sure drop a dime on them.
For what it’s worth, while I don’t practice Islam, I’m a licensed Islamic Finance specialist and studied Islam in both legal and theological academic contexts before taking the additional qualification that led to my working for the Iraqi government, living in almost entirely Muslim company. Perhaps my endorsement of Tom’s statement of the obvious is also worthless, but I though it was worth trying.
I agree whole-heartedly. My argument is that we should focus on that (rather substantial) portion of Islam.
He is Halal Certified, y’all!