Turkey failed coup: mobile phone pivotal to fate of Erdogan

It fluttered from public buildings, lay draped across the facades of chic department stores and was hoisted triumphantly out the windows of beeping cars. Istanbul was awash with the red-and-white of the Turkish flag yesterday as jubilant supporters of President Tayyip Erdogan wrapped themselves in the national colours to celebrate the thwarting of the coup.

“This is not a 12-hour affair,” Erdogan told his followers, urging them to stay out on the streets. They duly complied. At Ataturk airport, where some of the critical moments in the botched attempt to dislodge the president played out on Friday night, crowds cheered every passing car. At Taksim Square, an open-top bus decked in red and white zoomed around in circles, eliciting cheers of approval from some passersby. “Allahu Akhbar,” supporters called.

For the ruling AKP, it was a time to celebrate, but also – as it became clear through the weekend – a time to purge. “This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army,” Erdogan said in the early hours of Saturday.

He was as good as his word. By last night, more than 6,000 members of the armed forces and the judiciary – all of them suspected supporters of the attempted putsch – had been arrested. Among them was the commander of the Incirlik air base, from which US aircraft launch airstrikes on Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. At a rally over the weekend, Erdogan supporters demanded that the coup leaders be executed. "Let's hang them!" chanted the crowd in Ankara's central Kizilay square. Erdogan told them that parliament may consider a proposal to bring back the death penalty.

Some 265 people were killed in the chaos of Friday night, while a number of government buildings, notably in Ankara, were extensively damaged. Yet, to observe central Istanbul yesterday, it might never have happened at all. Shopkeepers did a busy trade, tourist boats operated on their normal routes and families whiled away the hours in Gezi Park. Maritime authorities had reopened the Bosphorus to transiting tankers, having shut the major trade route from the Black Sea to the Aegean early on Saturday for security and safety reasons.

Yet the remarkable scenes of Friday night – tanks on the streets of Istanbul, helicopter gunships firing at state buildings in Ankara, the president appearing on television via FaceTime – won’t be quickly forgotten. It came as a shock to many Turks that Erdogan could face such a challenge to his power from an institution that, notwithstanding its long record of involvement in Turkish politics, was thought to have been cleared of meaningful dissent in the past decade.

And if the prospect of a military takeover spooked Turks, it will have positively alarmed world powers to see a such an important regional player and a long-time haven of relative stability come so close to a coup.

Or was it really that close? In the early hours of Saturday morning, Turks were treated to the surreal sight of the president addressing the nation through a mobile phone held up to camera by a newscaster on CNN Turk. Speaking from an undisclosed location – presumed to be Marmaris, the Mediterranean resort where he was on holiday – Erdogan reassured his audience that he was still in control and urged his supporters onto the streets in defence of his democratic mandate.

“Let’s gather as a nation in the squares,” he said. “I believe we will remove this occupation that has taken place within a short time. I am calling on our people now to come to the arenas and we will give them the necessary answer.”

At the time, the image of Turkey’s strongman peering through an iPhone screen seemed to have given the coup its defining moment: a political demise captured on FaceTime. By that point, soldiers had erected roadblocks on the Bosphorus Bridge and there were reports of gun attacks on the parliament building in Ankara. In Istanbul, queues were forming at ATMs and people were beginning to stock up on food and water.

Yesterday, however, that video call was regarded as the point at which the pendulum swung decisively in Erdogan’s favour.

The plotters’ ill-preparedness, and their failure to gather critical mass within the military, meant they were unlikely to succeed anyway, but Erdogan’s televised appearance allowed him to show he was safe and at liberty, and to bypass public television (which had been seized by soldiers aligned to the putchists) so as to speak directly to his followers. They heeded his call.

In the dead of night, mosques in the major cities conveyed Erdogan’s exhortation to resist. Crowds spilled out onto the streets, defying the soldiers to shoot them. Once again, technology came to Erdogan’s aid. The rebels had seized bridges and roads, but they had not succeeded in shutting down mobile phone signals or social media. That meant Erdogan’s base could mobilise and co-ordinate street demonstrations. The irony was not lost on Turks; a running accusation among Erdogan’s opponents is that he is actively hostile to free media.

Also working in the ruling party’s favour, however, was the rapid condemnation of the coup from all three main opposition party leaders.

Those declarations of support were followed, later in the night, by statements from the United States and Germany rejecting the coup attempt and rowing in behind Erdogan.

By the time the president arrived at Ataturk airport around 4am, to be greeted by thousands of flag-waving supporters, it was clear that all the momentum was his. “We are in charge and we will continue exercising our powers until the end. We will not abandon our country to these invaders,” he declared. Within two hours, television images showed rebels surrendering at dawn on the Bosphous Bridge.

The coup attempt had crumbled. But its reverberations are only beginning to be heard.