Something huge is happening. EVERYBODY in Turkey is watching the news at the moment. The military is rushing in every major news station, there are battles between the police and the military, every flight in istanbul is cancelled and the two bridges to europe
in istanbul are closed by the military. So much going on. I don't know if the people there are happy, unsure or feared of the situation. BUT: it's a weird coup: no massive presence of the military on the street like you would suspect. Just at some major places like the palace in ankara and the mentioned bridges. To repeat me. This is by far the best newsfeed in english: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/15/turkey-low-flying...
Still a huge lag to the turkish sources but at least.. I for myself get my news and information from good friends and their whatsapp groups. And it is so terrifying.
Turkey’s recent-to-the-job prime minister, Binali Yildirim, announced: “I am sure that we will return ties with Syria to normal, we need it. We normalized our relations with Israel and Russia. I’m sure we will go back to normal relations with Syria as well.”
The prime minister said this a couple of days ago. A huge shift in policy and now suddenly a coup. I'm guessing Erdogan saw the writing on the wall and tried to shift gears, but it seems the military went ahead with the coup anyway.
Ataturk (first President of Turkey) was an officer and fiercely wanted Turkey to be secular. It seems more or less a rule for the Military to force elections if the head of state gets too Islamic.
> The military has had a record of intervening in politics. Indeed, it assumed power for several periods in the latter half of the 20th century. It executed coups d'état in 1960, in 1971, and in 1980. Most recently, it maneuvered the removal of an Islamic-oriented prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, in 1997.
> On 27 April 2007, in advance of 4 November 2007 presidential election, and in reaction to the politics of Abdullah Gül, who has a past record of involvement in Islamist political movements and banned Islamist parties such as the Welfare Party, the army issued a statement of its interests. It said that the army is a party to "arguments" regarding secularism; that Islamism ran counter to the secular nature of the Turkish Republic, and to the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Army's statement ended with a clear warning that the Turkish Armed Forces stood ready to intervene if the secular nature of the Turkish Constitution is compromised, stating that "the Turkish Armed Forces maintain their sound determination to carry out their duties stemming from laws to protect the unchangeable characteristics of the Republic of Turkey. Their loyalty to this determination is absolute.
Most of the major coups that come to my mind are the military preventing a government with a very extreme ideology from taking a country past the point of no return.
Usually it's something that takes place when the military itself is getting infiltrated and it either needs to act or be taken over by the ideology itself.
Does the army really care about secular or not? Or it's just an excuse to cease power?
What about the people?! Erdogan received a huge win in the latest elections AFAIK. I mean you can what you want about the man, but there's no European politician that comes close to his numbers in terms of vote percentage.
The AKP got 40% of the votes in the last parliamentary election, 9% down from the previous. Erdogan claimed outside interference, and with the AKP refusing to negotiate a coalition deal for the full parliamentary term, new elections were scheduled.
The november elections had its share of problems [1], but ultimately saw the AKP return to a 50% share.
The word is they're affiliated with the "Gülen movement". Apparently an Islamic movement. Is that true? Anybody can provide a tldr on their likely views wrt major policies?
Gulen is a moderate imam, currently in American exile after Erdogan's administration labeled him a terrorist. No charges have been filed, but the Turkish government has been pressing for his extradition.
Fethullah Gulen is a Turkish Islamic religious leader in exile in the Poconos, founder of a movement called Hizmat, an Islamic offshoot, also known as Gulen.
Gulen's followers represent a large portion of Turkey's police and attorneys, at least before the latest moves of President Erdogan.
Current Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan used the Gulen movement as allies to gain power, as they both shared the goal of abolishing the existing secular character of the state.
However, once in power, Erdogan turned on Gulen, attempted to purge his followers from the police and judiciary, then used the movement as a "fifth-column" type scapegoat.
Recently, Erdogan has moved to consolidate power, taking steps that would allow him to cow the legislative and judicial branches. It appears he was trying to install himself as "President for Life."
It's very important to note that secularism in Turkey was born at the point of a bayonet. In contrast to many regional Islamic governments, Turkey's government is both secular and democratic, due to the founding father of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk. While Ataturk was a brutal dictator, he also used that power to rebuild a Turkish national identity, secularize the government, and eventually transition to democracy.
Turkey's secular and Westernized form of government facilitated its membership within NATO. NATO, an organization designed to contain Soviet influence, has been very uneasy with Erdogan heading a state that can invoke Article 5 of the collective defense pact. In particular, his recent moves of downing a Russian fighter, have made tensions rise.
While events are in flux, and precise reasons for the coup are unclear, Erdogan did announce yesterday that he was realigning himself with the government of Assad in Syria, a Russian ally, which could be seen as anti-NATO. However Turkish institutions and governance are so severely degraded that domestic reasons could be purely to blame.
This thread is probably going to wind up being the containment thread for that subject because of it.
Given that this is an event of legitimate importance to some people here (albeit an off topic subject for HN) I would personally encourage people to leave this specific thread alone and hide it rather than flag it, since it's flown under the radar (and every other thread is bound to be flagged to oblivion.)
What's the rationale behind flagging stories like this? While it may be off-topic as tech news, in my eyes the HN community is quite cosmopolitan and threads like these usually end up being quite interesting and informative for me.
Being off-topic is reason enough. Purely political stories like this can overwhelm the site if not dealt with quickly. Hacker News just isn't the proper venue for mainstream news.
"Updated May 15, 2016 7:37 p.m. ET". What's weird is that we're discussing a two months-old article on current events. I suppose it's useful background knowledge...
I'm less scared of a coup than I am of Erdogan turning into a Putinesque figure. I know strongmen are fashionable right now, but I don't really like that trend.
The military and old elite in Turkey are very corrupt, but they've never squashed freedom of press the same way Erdogan has. If you believe in personal liberty, the military is actually better than the democratically elected strongman, however absurd that sounds.
Isn't Erdogan noturious for consolidating his power by putting his people in all branches of government including the military?
Is all of the military loyal to the coup makers?
If the connections between Erdogan and Islamic State are real; then ousting Erdogan through a coup sends more powerful people, money, public sympathy in the way of IS.
The Wikipedia page for the 1997 one is bordering between hilarious and amazing:
> At the National Security Council (MGK) meeting on 28 February 1997, the generals submitted their views on issues regarding secularism and political Islam on Turkey to the government. The MGK made several decisions during this meeting, and Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan from the Welfare Party was forced to sign the decisions, some of which were:
* Eight years of primary school education
* Shutting down many religious schools opened during his term
* Abolition of Tarikats (sectarian groups)
I'd be expecting those demands from a liberal group, not the military! :)
A.k.a. the most well armed constitutional court on the planet.
Given the rate at which Erdogan has supposedly already replaced kemalists in the military leadership, i wonder if this might actually be a false flag operation to lure the last remaining critics into the light and in front of courts. That would certainly be an effective way to finally break any risk of armed defense of the constitution.
and the US supposedly keeps nukes on Turkish soil at the Incirlik air base, as part of its NATO role.
it seems incredibly unwise to me, given its a Muslim country bordering ISIS, Syria, Iraq. and its a Muslim country with a known history of coups. a messy/failed coup attempt could degrade into a civil war, or, continuing anarchy. in such a situation, I can picture scenarios where the US nukes at Incirlik fall into the hands of... people who may wish us harm. For example, ISIS or another terror group.
I think the US gov does lots of dangerously irresponsible things, this is just the latest example of one of them being brought into sharp focus.
This could always happen in the US. US military officers swear an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, but they don't swear an oath to other officers or elected officials. That said if an elected president violates the constitution the US military could qualify a military coup to restore law.
Many posters in here indicate oddness that a military force could represent secularism. I am curious why that is. Most uniformed militaries I have observed have always seemed more secular than the people they represent. Let us not forget the Islamic Brotherhood was democratically elected in Egypt, which attempted to instill sharia law. A military coup ended that nonsense. Also, Hitler was democratically elected and was not immediately supported by the military.
> US military officers swear an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic,
True, but...
> but they don't swear an oath to other officers or elected officials.
... this part is, interestingly true, but only of officers. Officers don't swear an oath to other offices or elected officials, but enlisted personnel do both -- first to the President and second to the officers appointed over them, and all subject to the UCMJ. [0]
Not, of course, that oaths constrain behavior, but, to the extent oaths are relevant, in any case, the Constitution names the President Commander-in-Chief of the military and gives Congress the power to regulate the military, so an oath by a military member to support the Constitution necessarily involves a degree of commitment to elected officials, and to the extent those elected officials have used their Conditional powers to establish and appoint superior officers, those other officers.
Perhaps the necessary enough justification could be that an elected president does something that directly and literally violates an article written into the actual constitution and the military seeks to appoint a new leader from the line of succession. That way there is no violation of the principals of Cincinnatus and an elected civilian retains the position opposed to an unelected military figure.
It could. Also pigs could learn aviation. It is unlikely for either to happen, however.
The U.S. has a built-in coup mechanism: the president effectively serves at the convenience of Congress. While he/she is an elected official and in a different branch of government, the constitution was pretty clear on who runs the show. The House and Senate can, at any time, remove the president from office.
It'd be a helluva thing to do, but military coups are fairly spectacular also. On any given day that both houses were in session, given a hated enough president, you could probably do the entire thing on a voice vote in an hour or so. At that point the military and police authorities would be responsible for removing the president and swearing in the new one.
You might be able to spin out some scenarios for a U.S. coup d'etat, but there is a very long line of tradition in the states that the military serves the civilian authority. I think most command-level officers are fairly well indoctrinated in avoiding that scenario at all costs.
> Many posters in here indicate oddness that a military force could represent secularism. I am curious why that is.
My hypothesis is that the average English speaking tech worker is both more secular than their nation's population and more secular than their nation's military, making it more difficult to think of militaries as secular organizations. I know I tend to think of the U.S. military as full of religious conservatives, but that probably says more about how secular I am than about how religious the military is.
The Knox laws are still in force. There is no legal framework for an American military coup, setting aside that the Commander in Chief is an elected office.
Part of running a coup in a democratic country is that your ground troops have to be on your side. This is much more difficult when every single soldier is made completely aware during indoctrination that domestic military action is almost completely illegal. Adding in the fact that there is no conscription in America, the likelihood of a military coup today is vanishingly small.
Thank you everyone. Everybody close to me is currently OK. We bought enough food and water stock just in case. It is currently forbidden to go outside by official announcement from the army officials. Let's see what happens.
First of all, I really hope everything is ok with you and your family!
I was in southern Turkey in 2010, and one thing that did felt "strange" back then was the ban of sites like youtube. That is plain unacceptable for a modern state at the door of Europe. I guess that's what happens when religion gets mixed with politics and people think that they know what is best for you!
There's currently limited information, but I really hope that things turn out for the best there!
Social media is quite slow, some news sites are innaccessible.
Using Hotspot Shield to bypass any possible blocking. Latest installed legislation granted the government to slow down/entirely block any destination IP they want without notice.
> Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan urged people to take to the streets to protest against what he described as a coup attempt by a minority faction within the military, vowing that it would meet with a "necessary response", Reuters reports.
Such an asshole. People fighting against military. Is this what he wants to happen in order to continue his dictatorship?
Turkey is a little different here. Their military is supposed to take power when the president gets too radical. They're then supposed to run an election for a new president. AFAIK this has happened a number of times in their history.
Sorry, I didn't mean to do that. That's the explanation I've heard before and it was never brought to my attention they were painful processes for the people. The way I was told about it, I thought it was a pretty streamlined process that impacted only the people in power.
I haven't investigated too carefully, but the word floating around now is that the military in Turkey takes power about every ten years when the government gets too Islamist, and has a decent track record of returning control to a civilian government.
Even democratic government that was turning towards religious extremism, routinely shut down freedom of speech and press, and was well down the path to turning into classic strongman dictatorship?
Finally, a coup. Not that I particularly like coups, but I believe that a coup was and is the only way to get that Islamistic dictator Erdogan off his post.
On a sidenote, one of the conflict parties has blocked access to the major social networks; it is yet unclear who did it. If anyone here is in Turkey, use TOR, it is reported to work.
Maybe I'm just relying too much on IPA conventions :)
"j" is a silent consonant in all Roman and Germanic languages (i.e. most of mainland Europe). It's only in English that "y" has taken over that role (otherwise, "y" is a vowel -- like in English words ending in -ey).
Army winning the PR war. Army has the Government TV station. President trying to get through on Facetime. Twitter and Facebook down. Coverage from central square in Istanbul via Skype.
Update: Government TV station off air. President calling on people to take to the streets. Military declaring curfew.
I wonder if Russia plays any role in this. It wasn't long ago that Moscow and Ankara were quarreling over a Russian jet that's been shut down in November by Turkish forces.
Then recently there was a reconciliation but it happened a bit too quickly in the eyes of many observers.
It's interesting that all the posts on the terrorist attack in Nice(, France) yesterday were flagged on HN and this one is not.
If you want to get away from live/sensational news, rumors and dangerous debates it makes sense to wait a few days before starting a discussion on the subject. So why moderating the french attack and not this?
How about any mention of Sibel Edmonds claims that Turkey has been operating an intelligence apparatus in the US to overtly and covertly support them, often through blackmail. Or the fact that many they were actively trying to turn doubles in our surveillance engine?
“The Government of Turkey had illegally infiltrated and influenced various U.S. government institutions and officials, including the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and individual members of the United States Congress.”
I suppose I shouldn't expect journalism from the wsj.
