Turkey coup: facts we know and don't know

Military forces in Turkey attempted a coup a coup on Friday‎, plunging the country into a long night of violence and intrigue. Scores of people were killed, and the embattled president’s location was unknown for hours. He later emerged and signalled that the coup was failing.

What We Know

• President Recep Tayyip Erdogan returned to Istanbul early Saturday. Speaking at Istanbul Ataturk Airport,‎ early Saturday. ‎he blamed “a minority within the armed forces” for the coup attempt and said those responsible would “pay a heavy price for their treason to Turkey.” He suggested that the plotters had tried to assassinate him on Friday with a bombing in the Turkish Mediterranean resort town of Marmaris.

• Supporters of Mr. Erdogan responded to his call to take to the streets in Istanbul, and by Saturday morning, the coup appeared to be unraveling. The state-run Anadolu Agency said more than 1,500 members of the armed forces linked to the plot had been detained. Photographs and videos showed soldiers surrendering and civilians climbing onto tanks and waving flags.

• Anadolu Agency reported that 90 people had been killed and more than 1,100 wounded. Seventeen police officers were killed in a helicopter attack on the outskirts of Ankara, and 12 people were killed after a bomb was detonated at Parliament.

• Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania, whom Mr. Erdogan has accused of plotting against him, denied any role‎ in the coup attempt, saying in an emailed statement that he condemned it “in the strongest terms.”

What We Don’t Know

• It was not clear to what extent the coup forces had managed to gain control of important state facilities and institutions.

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• It was not clear who was behind the coup attempt, how much of the Turkish military supported it, or why it had been mounted now.

• The abrupt turn of events left Mr. Erdogan’s grip on power uncertain. The country has been reeling from a wave of deadly extremism, hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war in Syria and a resurgent Kurdish rebellion in the Turkish southeast, and Mr. Erdogan has alienated many Turks with his increasingly autocratic behavior.

The Key Players

• Turkish Armed Forces

The country’s military is a trusted institution, seen as the guardian of the secularist principles on which modern Turkey was founded. It has intervened in national politics a number of times, including three previous coups since 1960, and it maneuvered to oust an Islamist prime minister in 1997.

The military has historically opposed interventions abroad, but it is not known how senior officers, many of them appointed by Mr. Erdogan, feel about his recent interventions in Syria.

• President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

An Islamist and populist who has been the dominant figure in the country for more than a decade, Mr. Erdogan came to power promising to overhaul the economy and give the country’s rural, more religious majority a bigger voice in the capital. More recently, he has grown increasingly autocratic‎ and alienated many Turks as he cracked down on protests, took control of the news media ‎and renewed war with Kurdish militants in the country’s southeast.

• Fethullah Gulen

Mr. Gulen is a former imam and onetime ally of Mr. Erdogan who now lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, with an extensive following in Turkey. He has promoted a more liberal stream of Islam, and his ideas are popular ‎with the country’s police and intelligence establishments, though not necessarily the military. Mr. Erdogan accused Mr. Gulen and his supporters, whom he has called terrorists, of being responsible for the coup; he has repeatedly accused Mr. Gulen of plotting against him in the past. The Gulen movement denied involvement in the coup attempt and denounced any military intervention in Turkey’s domestic affairs.

• Republican People’s Party

The leftist main opposition party is considered not as pro-American as the governing Justice and Development Party. It has been trying to find a way to break Mr. Erdogan’s political grip, but it would not be likely to benefit from a coup; in the past, the military has tended to sideline leaders of all political parties when it took power.

• NATO and the United States

Turkey has been an American ally and a NATO member since 1952. Though the Obama administration has criticized Mr. Erdogan’s crackdown on civil society in Turkey, the United States sees him‎ as a stabilizing and mainly pro-Western leader in a volatile region. The American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq makes heavy use of Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

Source: New York Time