The failed military coup in Turkey that began on the evening of July 15 left nearly 300 dead and 1,400 injured. It was the fifth coup attempt in Turkey since 1960, but the first in which the military turned its fire against its own citizens. Unthinkably, and inexplicably, the aspiring junta also bombed the Turkish parliament, the symbol of the democracy it claimed to be acting to rescue.
On Monday, Air Force commander general Akin Öztürk appeared in court, visible bruises on his neck and face. “I am not the person who planned and directed the military coup,” he said. He claimed to have an alibi; he had been at a wedding during the coup preparations.
If not him, who? President Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, and many politicians from different parties believe the person who planned and directed the coup was the U.S.-based Islamist ideologue Fethullah Gülen. Borrowing from the American historian Robert Paxton—who coined the term “parallel state” to describe a collection of institutions that are state-like in their organization, management, and structure, but not part of the legitimate state—the Turkish government calls Gülenists within the Turkish state a “parallel structure organization.” Sources within the military, according to the well-connected Turkish journalist Murat Yetkin, likewise claim that the plotters were known or suspected Gülen sympathizers.
Gülen has strongly denied any involvement. He has denounced the coup attempt, and accused Erdoğan, in turn, of staging the coup as a pretext for the brutal crackdown now underway on those suspected of involvement. This has already led to some 8,000 arrests and to calls for reinstating Turkey’s death penalty. The European Union’s high commissioner for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, has warned that this would automatically end Turkey’s accession process, for no country with the death penalty can be an E.U. member. The penalty would have to be applied retroactively—a clear breach of the Turkish constitution. Any remaining pretense of rule of law would be gone.