Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused of plotting the attempted coup against him on Friday, says it's possible Erdogan actually plotted the coup himself as an excuse for payback against his political enemies. reporters. "It could be meant for court accusations and associations.
"It appears that they have no tolerance for any movement, any group, any organisation that is not under their total control," he said.
Erdogan told a crowd of cheering supporters demanding the death penalty for the coup-plotters that he might consider it.
Bloomberg notes that Erdogan's political career has been shaped by military coups, real or imagined, for more than four decades. Friday’s attempt is likely to prove the most consequential, and potentially empowering, of them all.
Whatever goals the rebels had, they may have ended up securing Erdogan’s position at a time of multiplying challenges to his popularity: Islamic State terror attacks, a war with militant Kurds, a failing foreign policy and weakened economic growth.
When the coup attempt was at its height on Friday night, some of Erdogan’s most ardent supporters heeded his call to take to the streets, facing down the guns and tanks of the soldiers. There was no such public show of support for the rebels, even from those in despair over Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule.
As a result, the officers will have encouraged Erdogan, 62, to intensify his drive to change Turkey’s political system from a parliamentary to a presidential democracy, accelerating the concentration of power in his vast new presidential palace.
“Erdogan will use the sympathy the coup creates for him to his advantage,” said Henri Barkey, director of Middle East studies at the Wilson Center in Washington. But he warned, too, that there were risks for Erdogan and Turkey: The coup was also a sign of deep unhappiness within the military, and if the president presses too hard with purges against his perceived enemies, it could prove a pyrrhic victory.
“He will be more paranoid so he is likely to go hard with his purges, and in the process hurt a lot of people,” said Barkey. “Nobody will come out of this well.”
Friday night’s effort to seize power, which Erdogan blamed on a former ally turned enemy, U.S.-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, wouldn’t be the first coup to create political opportunities for him.
The son of a domineering Istanbul ferry captain, Erdogan entered politics in the 1970s. At the time, the 50-year old Turkish Republic had just endured a second coup by the military and was in a state of near anarchy. Ultra-nationalists, communists and, to a lesser extent, Islamists fought in the streets, leaving an estimated 5,000 dead.
Erdogan joined the Islamists. Two of his friends were killed in the violence -- one by a bomb, another shot -- he recalled in a 2011 interview. At the same time, he had a job at Istanbul’s transport authority, but after a third military coup, in 1980, he had to resign. The new boss, an army colonel, ordered men to shave off their beards, considered signs of religiosity -- and Erdogan refused. The new regime also banned the Islamist political group to which he belonged, the National Salvation Party.
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