Turkey: Troubled by ghosts of a coup attempt

Seeing the light rain pelting the restaurant’s window as we ate the last morsel of our breakfast gave me hope that after two days of nipping cold, Ankara was taking us into its warm embrace. Since we arrived the Turkish capital in mid November, every hour had been cold and very cold. So, when the […]

Seeing the light rain pelting the restaurant’s window as we ate the last morsel of our breakfast gave me hope that after two days of nipping cold, Ankara was taking us into its warm embrace. Since we arrived the Turkish capital in mid November, every hour had been cold and very cold. So, when the third day started with rain, I got a false notion of a rise in the temperature.   

Out of the hotel’s lobby, we were greeted yet by the biting cold and the rain, which, at that moment, was beginning to pour in hard torrents.

That day, 15 of us journalists – from Nigeria, The Gambia and Ethiopia – were visiting Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) in Ankara, as part of the events that were lined up for us for the five days we would be in the country by our host the Turkish government. 

The question about whether there was a real coup attempt on that fateful day or a staged-managed one has become a subject of debate internationally. Ankara, therefore, had invited us to prove that there was a coup and a mastermind and that the mastermind has our countries all in the sight of  his gun.

The public TV and radio station was one of the prime targets of the soldiers that tried to topple the government of Recep Erdogan and it was there that they forced a female newscaster to broadcast the takeover.  

As we drove a few minutes, the weather added another mixture into the cocktail. On getting to an area of lower temperature, we came into a snowfall, fresh flakes putting white caps on the field, the shrubs and trees, the road, and now, our vehicle. It was quite an enthralling climatic activity to behold.

The TRT’s news coordinator, Fatih Sahingoz, took us through the mosaic of the “ugly” events that unfolded there when the putschists, disguised as a fresh security deployment, tied up the guards and took everybody hostage. The tortuous experience for the staff came to an end after the citizens, answering the rallying call of Erdogan, stormed the building and rounded up the soldiers, effectively breaking the siege as well.

A staff of the station, who was off duty at the time of the incident, told me that when the sounds of blasts took over the whole capital that night, she feared it was a “Daesh (ISIS) attack.” That was the fear that swept Turkey in the early hours of the coup, obviously because ISIS had attacked Nice in France a short while ago and had claimed responsibility for previous attacks in Turkey. A female staff of the Directorate of Information and Press said she had the same fears. “At first, I didn’t know what it was, but I later concluded it was Daesh.” 

The beaming of the Turkish leader on TV calling on the citizens to go out and confront the coupists, put her in the real picture of the trouble that was unfolding around her. “So I went into the living room. I have a 2-year-old boy who was asleep at the time. So, I would not [go out] with or without him,” she said. 

A total of 312 staff of the station were sacked for having links with the alleged coupists. “Their prosecution is going on and if there are others with links to the group, they will be fired and prosecuted,” Sahingoz said.

The soldiers bombed TRT’s satellite station to stop its broadcast, but it recommenced normal broadcast the morning after the coup failed. The Presidential Palace and the Turkish parliamentary complex were hit much harder by jets and helicopters.

A bomb, fired by an F-16 fighter jet, left a gaping hole in the massive parliamentary building. 

Flown by the coupists, the first aircraft missed its target; the second dropped its ordnance right on the main building, damaging its roof and second floor. 

“We will keep this as a monument for the next generation,” the parliamentary guide told us, pointing at a hole, twisted steels, broken windows and dangling roofing sheets.

Another official said the attack was “the wildest” in the history of Turkey’s coup d’états. Between 1960 and1993, Turkey witnessed four military interventions of different forms and occurring just about a decade apart. But until the recent unsuccessful coup attempt, the parliament was never targeted.

The coup has another first; it was the only one that was challenged and defeated by the people.

According to official figures, 265 people died in the attempted putsch, just as many others were injured. Sixty-two-year-old Rifat Uzer survived it with eight shrapnel still buried deep in his body, he told us at a meeting with him and another “veteran,” Muammar Polat. “My wife has two [shrapnel in her body],” he said. 

The retiree, who said he visited Nigeria on the entourage of a Turkish Prime Minister in 1996, recalled that they were shot at by a military helicopter and soldiers as they tried to stop the coupists from marching on the Presidential Palace.

He and his wife had teamed up with others and approached a group of soldiers that was moving towards the palace.

“We tried to convince them not to go into the presidential complex,” he said. The soldiers responded with their guns and mowed down the protesters, killing many.

Polac too had been wounded in his chest and legs. He was at a park with his wife and son when bombs were dropped on the police headquarters in Ankara. When they found out what was happening, his wife refused to allow him to join the anti-coup protests that were gathering a momentum around the capital, he explained.

“I told her I will not stay behind and watch this country go the way of Syria or Iraq,” he told us. 

In the street, Polac and the group he joined confronted some soldiers driving tanks, and challenged them to stop using Turkish arms to hurt its people. “They (soldiers) first took our words before their commander got angry and ordered them to shoot at us. A helicopter fired at us, killing many people,” he explained.

Officials said government had given out homes to families of those who were killed and placed the wounded on salaries.

Without being told, it is not difficult to spot the new sense of patriotism that the coup has sparked in the Turkish people around their state and its leaders. New Turkish national flags, portraits of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Artaturk, and that of President Erdogan adorn high-rise buildings across Ankara.

What Erdogan lacks is the world’s acceptance of his government’s narratives of the events of July 15, 2016. He has been criticized over the massive arrests and detentions that followed the coup, with his government condemned for using the incident as a cover to clamp down on supporters of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and a former associate of Erdogan.

The government accuses Gulen of masterminding the failed coup through his network of Gulenists that have infiltrated the country’s security agencies, judiciary and other vital sectors. The cleric repeatedly denies the allegations. About 32,000 people from the military, police, intelligence services, judiciary and the academia, have been detained and thousands of others fired from their jobs over their alleged links to the cleric and the coup. 

The crackdown has also drawn pillories from media right groups, accusing the country of muzzling freedom of the press and stifling free speech with the arrest of about 100 journalists and closure of media outfits.

The opposition parties that hitherto united behind the president during the failed coup attempt have disapproved of the emergency laws the Turkish parliament passed to enable Erdogan deal with the coup. They insisted that the country must be returned to parliamentary governance as innocent people were being detained.

Using the emergency powers, the government closed down schools, media houses and fired more than 50,000 civil servants and suspended thousands more. 

Turkey’s challenge in the aftermath of the coup have been to unite the world in accepting the coup and the measures it has been taken against the alleged perpetrators and their interests across the world.  

An extradition request to the U.S. for the Pennsylvania-based Turkish religious preacher, Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara accused of masterminding the failed overthrow, did not sail through because the US wanted evidence.

In The Gambia, Gulen affiliated Hizmet schools have been shut on Turkish government request. While our visit lasted, Pakistan ordered staff of Turkish schools out of the country over alleged Gulen links.

Nigeria turned down a request to shut down 17 institutions in the country that are affiliated to the Hizmet movement, asking for proofs. And when in October the Nigerian media reported the detention of 50 Nigerian students schooling in Turkey by the country’s authorities over alleged links to Gulen, Nigerians reacted harshly and some lawmakers even called for retaliatory measures against the country.

So, Turkey wanted to put the record straight.

In Ankara, government officials denied any Nigerian had been arrested. During a meeting with two Nigerians studying in the capital, they gave an interesting account of life in the country and the conviviality of their hosts.

A message was only needed to be passed around their respective schools by a fellow student earlier that day before the two showed up to freely chat with us.

Abubakar Balarabe Karaye, from Kano, has gone back to Hacettep University for his PhD in Accounting and Finance after going there for his master’s degree on the Kano State government’s scholarship during the second tenure of former Governor Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso. He is now on the scholarship of the Turkish government.

Usman Hashim, from Zaria, studies medicine at the Ankara University and has spent over five years in the country. They painted a rosy picture of their years of experience in Ankara.

Officials of the Turkish state said after the fcoup attempt, it was uncovered that the Gulenists or supporters of Gulen, also known as the Gulen or Hizmet movement, have over the years infiltrated the military, police, judiciary, academia and other organs and institutions of state with the aim of forming a parallel government under the control of Gulen.

There were about 65,000 of them in the intelligence service alone, according to the President of Turks Abroad and Related Communities, Kudret Bulbul.

The Director General of Press and Information in the office of the Prime Minister, Mehmet Akarca, said recent investigations had shown that the group was behind the release of series of scandalous sex tapes that led to the resignation of the country’s first female prime minister and six other vice presidents.

He accused the Gulen supporters of placing hidden cameras in their rooms to obtain damaging clips they used to discredit them. The goal, he argued, was to redesign the power equation in Turkey, to place in position of authority, some Gulen lackeys who he would use to “control the affairs of the country from Pennsylvania.”

They have also been blamed for the November 2015 downing of a Russian jet near the Turkey-Syria border, which strained the two countries’ relationship.

The Vice President of Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), Ali Maskan, blamed the group for the rise in cross-border attacks by ISIS in Turkey, saying the Gulen movement was aiding the terror group with “intelligence and financial assistance.”

Turkey has since named the movement as FETO (Fethullah’s Terrorist Organization).

Mr Arkarca added that “graduates of FETO schools focus on joining the police, military and judiciary, which are the key elements of the system” and warned that they were infiltrating the systems in many countries.

This claim was reinforced by Bulbul: “FETO aims to create a world that is in tune with their perverted religious beliefs and their perverted ideologies.” 

Until they “take control of a country,” he said, they operate under different identities, hiding their real goal. He cited an example with a Turkish military commander who was “tied up and trampled on the head” by his guard of eight years, after receiving orders from the group on the night of the coup.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s became the springboard for the Gulen movement to jump to fame, rendering humanitarian services in the former Soviet states that have ties with Turkey, officials said. There, the organization started a scholarship scheme for those emerging ex-Soviet entities. 

The organization is currently running schools in over 180 countries. 

“We loved them and were proud of what they were doing,” Bulbul said, “until they revealed their true identity. The pilot that bombed our people (on the night of the coup) also bombed my friend, who died leaving a wife and children.” 

“FETO is replicating in other countries what they did in Turkey,” he warned. 

“Why we have to warn you”

Turkey argues that the Gulenist will stop at nothing until they impose their ideologies and control on the governments of countries they are operating in, by indoctrinating the “children of the elite” through their school system.

For those countries, the movement constituted an existential threat, a number of officials at Turkey’s Directorate of Foreign Affairs claimed. According to them, the students, upon graduation, would be used to take over the reins of power and receive directives from Gulen.

“He has an Imam in Nigeria, in addition to others in other African countries and a Chief Imam for the continent,” a female official who did not want to be named, said.

When I asked her for proofs that the group is posing an immediate and imminent threat to Nigeria, she replied: “No immediate threat, but be careful for your own security. They will undermine Turkish-Nigeria relations; that is the imminent threat that needs to be understood by the Nigerian authorities.”

Asked further if we could be allowed to speak to some of the alleged coup plotters in detention, to hear their side of the story, the official shoved the request aside, explaining that international law does not allow suspects to be interviewed by journalists.

“They are under detention, there are judicial processes and they will be brought to court,” she added.

However, the Hizmet movement in Nigeria has consistently denied having any hands in the failed coup attempt.

Turkey’s trouble now is to get the world to listen to and accept its account of the bitter experience of July 15.  

As we flew out of the Esenboga International Airport that evening, my mind joggled the thoughts of the winter, with its admixture of rain and snow; the coup, with its answered and unanswered questions. And the Bosphorous, were we would see a different kind of convergence.