Turkey a year after its botched coup

Can Cumurcu is the elected chief of Çengelköy, an affluent neighbourhood on the shores of Istanbul's Bosphorus Strait. He remembers the evening of July 15th, 2016, very well.

“I was with my wife at around 10pm; it was very hot so we picked up some ice-cream. I parked the car and saw local youths running towards me, towards my office. In the distance I could see soldiers behind them. Something was happening,” he says.

“I went straight to the police station, and we could hear from the chatter on the walkie-talkies that something serious was happening in Istanbul. I went outside and saw an army major in the street, and he was firing his weapon in the air.

Cumurcu approached the major. “What are you doing?”

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“Empty the streets – the army is taking over,” the army officer replied.

"What did you drink? Are you drunk?" Cumurcu asked, enraging the soldier. The putschist officer pointed his gun at Cumurcu "for 30, 40 seconds" but soon he was encircled by angry locals. He fired his weapon again, into the air, to disperse an increasingly hostile crowd that had swelled to several hundred civilians. They refused to move. The army officer retreated to the nearby Kuleli military school, but soon returned with reinforcements. A military coup was under way in Turkey.

In the following hours, locals used the police station as a base from where to erect a street barricade. They scrambled together a roadblock of cars to block the advancing soldiers from reaching the Bosphorus bridge that links the European and Asian districts of the city. Meanwhile in Ankara, air strikes targeted the parliament building as a faction within Turkey's military mounted its coup.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was holidaying in southern Turkey as the drama unfolded in Istanbul and Ankara, and narrowly escaped capture. He Facetimed with a television news station to entreat Turks to take to the streets to defeat the coupists. Thousands of civilians responded and within hours Istanbul's main airport was overrun by pro-government civilians, allowing the president's jet to land there in triumph.

Failed takeover

By dawn, 17 people were dead in Çengelköy but the coup had been defeated. More than 265 were killed across the country. The Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, whose followers occupied positions across a swathe of Turkish state institutions, was blamed for orchestrating the failed takeover. Though he has repeatedly denied any involvement, Gülen is now Turkey’s top terrorist target.

Cumurcu was shot through the groin, centimetres from the femoral artery, and is lucky to be alive. He now walks with a limp and carries the mental anguish of what happened in his sleepy neighbourhood that night. “I was not afraid,” Cumurcu remembers, though he breaks down when speaking of the hundreds of children left fatherless by the violence.

In the year since the bloody and ultimately hopeless coup attempt, the authorities have struck back hard. A far-reaching government-led purge has resulted in more than a dozen leading opposition politicians jailed, including both leaders of Turkey’s third-largest party, the Kurdish-rooted HDP. More than 130,000 people, the majority state employees, have been fired or suspended; about 50,000 have been detained for suspected links to terrorism or the coup plotters, or both.

Turkey’s once-effervescent independent press has been hollowed out by the jailing of more than 120 journalists and editors, and the forced closure of dozens of media outlets; many public protests have been banned and a crackdown on Kurdish elements – thought to have played no role in the botched coup – continues unabated.

The single biggest consequence of the failed coup, says Kemal Kirisci, director of The Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution, is "the collapse of democracy and the rule of law". In the eyes of the government, he says, "Anyone presenting an alternative line is seen to be a stooge of external powers and a terrorist."

Role of parliament

President Erdogan has continued to battle on. A referendum to change Turkey’s constitution, placing increased political power in the hands of the president to the detriment of the role of parliament narrowly passed in April.

Yet few doubt that had the coup succeeded, democracy in Turkey would have gone up in flames overnight. "It was really very traumatic, for all Turks. We came very close to the edge of the cliff," says Turkey's ambassador to Ireland, Levent Murat Burhan, who says he has no doubt Gülen was behind the attack. "We regret that at that time our European friends and allies did not understand the gravity and severity of the situation."

But if Turks in the immediate aftermath of the coup reluctantly banded together in their opposition to what it could have wrought, today little else unites the country. The families of thousands of unemployed state workers are without incomes or are banned from working in their professional fields. Turkey’s universities shy away from the independence essential to their mission, because speaking out against the government’s filing away of democracy may lead them straight to prison.

As the repression grows, so too have the voices opposing it. Last Sunday saw the biggest gathering of opposition groups in Istanbul for more than four years. Long-standing allies to the ruling AK Party have railed against the purge’s vast scope and the concentration of power in Erdogan’s hands.

“After the coup, the government decided on an intense security crackdown that gave them the power of putting in prison anyone that is against their theory,” says Gülsah, a teacher in Istanbul. “There is a theory that Gülen was not behind the coup but the government itself let it happen, and used it to get the increased power they need.”

Martyrs Bridge

This week, a series of events have been organised to mark victory over the would-be coupists. The bridge overlooking Çengelköy, which was seized for a short time on July 15th last, has been renamed the “July 15th Martyrs Bridge”, and will be the location for a “national unity march” on Saturday to honour those killed.

Erdogan will speak in Turkey’s parliament 12 months to the minute it was bombed by the coup faction’s F16 jet. Turkish television stations have been broadcasting rolling interviews with the grief-stricken parents of those killed during the clashes for hours on end.

"By no means is Turkey less democratic now," says Can Cumurcu, who was granted the status of gazi or "warrior" for his part in defeating the coupists. Twelve plaques illustrating his role in leading the defence of the bridge line a desk in his office.

Yet with independent voices now silenced and a state of emergency set to continue for an indeterminate period, the fear and paranoia that has descended over the country may not lift anytime soon. Thousands of suspected Gülen supporters have been released from prison but remain under court monitoring.

How will the people of Turkey view the botched coup in 10 years’ time? “It will depend a lot on who prevails in the years to come,” says Kirisci of the Brookings Institution. “If Erdogan’s rule continues, it will be remembered as when his concept of democracy finally prevailed, where there is none of the usual values associated with democracy.”