#open posts

Turkey is a professedly secular country and the vast majority of the public has traditionally been wary of any one religion, particularly Islam, from gaining political power. Turkey’s military, one of the largest and most powerful in the region, has preserved this status by occasionally undertaking coups in order to remove the national government from power. The last such coup before today was in 1997. 

Current President Recip Erdogan has been in power in some capacity, he was previously Prime Minister, since 2002. During his time in power, greater emphasis on Islam in society has occurred and Erdogan has repeatedly changed the constitution to his advantage. He has also quarreled with the military repeatedly, attempting to undermine its historical authority by politically emasculating its leadership. Recent terror attacks in the country, along with the success of Kurdish rebels against ISIS near the Turkish frontier, has aggravated the strained relationship between Erdogan and the military as well as the rest of the political establishment. A coup, in retrospect, was almost inevitable at this point.

As someone pointed out earlier on Twitter, successful coups move fast, otherwise they are not successful. A new, temporary governing council has already been declared by the military, but it is still not clear who is leading this coup and whether it is the entire military establishment--reports that the Army’s commander-in-chief is being held hostage at his headquarters in Ankara could indicate something--or just a faction within it. There are dire implications either way; the military if acting as a whole must be trusted to restore democratic governance as soon as possible, as it has in the past, or, if this is only a faction of the military and the remainder is loyal to Erdogan, we could be witnessing the start of a civil war. I don’t think I need to explain just how traumatic this would be in this part of the world, especially given that Turkey, as a member of NATO, is a key U.S. ally in the region. 

The next several hours are going to be very interesting. We’re going to open blog this in the comments. I suggest following these Twitter accounts: @CNNTURK_Eng, @lrozen, @ForeignPolicy, @BBCWorld, @AP, @Stratfor, @AlArabiya_Eng, @SkyNews, @mrubin1971. If you have any further suggestions or just come across any singularly interesting tweets, leave ‘em in the comments.