The attempted coup in Turkey lasted less than 12 hours, but its failure will have repercussions for months to come
This is the last attempt of the secular sectors because now Erdogan will crack down on them in a brutal way
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has arrested over 6000 soldiers allegedly involved in the overthrow attempt and there is talk of reinstating the death penalty to deal with them. More than 2000 judges have been purged from their posts though they seemingly had little to do with the armed revolt. An exiled Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania whom Erdogan blames for the abortive putsch has raised the stakes in the conflict between Washington and Ankara. Watch for the fate of Fethullah Gülen to be a litmus test of Turkish-American relations.
The dust has settled but it is so far unclear exactly what happened. We know that a small faction in the military attempted to take control of state institutions and capture Erdogan at a seaside resort. We know that Erdogan made a nationwide appeal for Turkish citizens to take to the streets and resist the military takeover in large numbers which they dutifully did. In the early hours of the crisis some commentators even suggested that Erdogan had staged his own coup and would use the fallout to crack down on his political opponents.
For Mordechai Kedar an Israeli scholar of Arabic literature and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University that’s an unlikely scenario.
Create a free account to keep reading.
