Turkey is still a developing country, but its strategic location and military power make it a focus of interest as well as a point of concern in the global arena.
With Turkey’s military power – it has the second largest standing military force in Nato after the US – and its geopolitical location, a proper analysis of Turkey’s failed coup on July 15, 2016, and its impact on the country, is needed.
The failed coup gave Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the ammunition he needed to increase his grip on power and silence all of his critics at home.
At the time of the coup Erdogan was struggling to rein in discontent over his fake university degree and the corruption allegations that had surfaced in 2013, which implicated him and his family. The coup was nothing short of a godsend for Erdogan, his family and his close inner circle.
Up until then, Turkey’s army had successfully resisted all attempts by Erdogan and his cohorts for the country to become embroiled in the Syrian civil war.
But what the coup has done is it has allowed Erdogan to purge tens of thousands of key people from state institutions – those viewed as most likely to be critical or not look favourably on his actions.
By doing this he has managed to effectively eliminate the corruption case against him and his family.
And to further make sure he and his cohorts would remain off the hook and control what happens in the country, Erdogan managed to end Turkey’s 98-year parliamentary system and created an executive presidency that wields extensive power with very few checks and balances in place.
Erdogan’s regime still plays the victim card, even though it is now close to five years since the failed coup.
But was this coup real? Or is it simply a false flag? In Monopoly terms, was it a fake “get out of jail” card that he has now ruthlessly exploited?
There are more than 40 contradictions that point to the July 2016 coup being a Turkish Intelligence operation for Erdogan to reassert his power.
The first and biggest contradiction is that Turkish Intelligence (MIT) claim they had no inkling a coup attempt was about to take place on July 15, 2016. However, amazingly, within the 48 hours following the coup attempt, at least 35 000 individuals were rounded-up or dismissed from their positions.
From having no information to being able to implicate 35 000 people within 48 hours is a feat that even North Korea would be hard-pressed to match.
While MIT is without doubt a very capable and ruthless organisation, it did not, and does not, have the manpower to investigate and implicate 35000 people within 48 hours. The lists could only have been prepared before the coup.
Erdogan himself says he learnt of the coup attempt from his brother-in-law, but he has contradicted himself by mentioning four different times about when he learnt of the coup. One hardly forgets such an important event in one’s life.
On the day of the coup, Erdogan, who is a practising Muslim, inexplicably and without reason decided to miss the important and compulsory Friday afternoon prayers.
What is more interesting is that the so-called coup-plotters never arrested any politicians from the ruling party.
During previous coups in Turkey, the plotters swiftly took control of key nodes of power and shut down the governments’ ability to communicate with the security forces and with the public as soon as possible.
During the July 2016 coup attempt, the coup-plotters made a very feeble attempt and only seized the national broadcaster, but left the private broadcasters totally alone.
Erdogan blames exiled cleric Fetullah Gulen and his followers for the failed coup, but with so many anomalies in what happened during that strange coup, even Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP), has repeatedly said that the failed coup was a controlled coup and helped Erdogan to build his authoritarian regime.
The Pro-Kurdish HDP’s jailed former co-leader Selahattin Demistas has also pointed to the fact that Erdogan did not attempt to prevent the coup attempt but effectively waited and plotted his own coup that usurped the constitutional order by declaring emergency rule and running the country without the rule of law.
Recently the SA portfolio committee on defence in Parliament questioned why the National Conventional Arms Control Committee allowed six Turkish military aircraft to take arms from South Africa.
Daily Maverick and IOL articles raised questions over whether these arms might end up in Libya.
President Cyril Ramaphosa and International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor warned their Turkish counterparts not to deploy the army to Libya.
Erdogan’s former finance minister and president of the newly formed Deva Party, Ali Babacan, has urged that the December 17-25 corruption case which targeted Erdogan should be re-investigated in accordance with the rule of law.
South Africa, which knows all too well the suffering that totalitarian and authoritarian regimes can inflict on their own citizens, should also support international calls for the July 2016 coup to be properly investigated. It should not supply arms to the Erdogan regime, as it may find itself inadvertently prolonging the Syrian and Libyan civil wars - a stain on its record that it surely does not want.
* Aydin is a journalist and political analyst based in South Africa.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of IOL.