Mirror: Turkey 'coup': Live updates as explosion and gunfire reported in capitol Ankara

[visionary]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/how-erdogan-made-turkey-authoritarian-again/492374/

How Erdogan Made Turkey Authoritarian Again

 

It wasn't so long ago that the Turkish leader was seen as a model democrat in the Islamic world. What happened?

 

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/07/23/world/europe/ap-eu-turkey-military-coup.html?_r=1

Turkey Seizes Over 2,250 Institutions in Post-Coup Crackdown

[visionary]

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/07/24/the-turkey-coup-through-the-eyes-of-its-plotters/

“We’ve shot four people. Everything’s fine.” The Turkish Coup through the Eyes of its Plotters

 

A group of plotters of the failed Turkish coup attempt used a WhatsApp group to communicate with each other. Bellingcat has transcribed, translated, and analysed the conversation, thereby cross-referencing the messages with photos, videos, and news reports of the evening, night, and morning of July 15-16.

 

The transcript is composed of two different sources. The first source is a video which was uploaded to Twitter in the morning of July 16, and appears to show the conversation on the phone of a surrendered, captured, or killed coup plotter. This video revealed the WhatsApp conversation from its start at 21:15 to 22:45. The second source is 21 photos that show the rest of the conversation, has already been transcribed. The photos are courtesy of Al Jazeera Türk’s Selahattin Günday, and we are thankful that he was willing to share them with Bellingcat. We owe many thanks to “Has Avrat” for fully translating the transcript, as well as contributing to the analysis. All times mentioned are in the local time zone, which is EEST (UTC+3).

[BornaSkinsFan83]

Mahir Zeynalov

@MahirZeynalov

Turkish govt mouthpiece claims that US commander is behind the Turkey coup. https://t.co/zj2a7FbBT4

[twa]

large fire started outside NATO base

[visionary]

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/757471392757493760?lang=en

BREAKING Turkey issues arrest warrants for 42 journalists after coup: TV

3:03 AM

[China]

Thousands of Turkey coup prisoners 'raped, starved and hogtied'

 

Turkish troops imprisoned after the failed military coup are being raped, starved and left without water for days, it is claimed.

 

Many of the 10,000 detainees are locked up in horses’ stables and sports halls - some hogtied in horrific stress positions, according to human rights campaigners.

 

Amnesty International has called for immediate access to prisoners after the coup a week ago which sparked a brutal crackdown and a three-month state of emergency.

 

More than 200 died in the uprising which aimed to topple dictatorial President Recep Erdogan - and 1,500 were injured.

 

Amnesty says it has ‘credible evidence’ Turkish police are holding detainees in stress positions for up to 48 hours, denying them food, water and medical treatment and in the worst cases some have been subjected to severe beatings and torture, including rape.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[visionary]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zeynep-tufekci/wikileaks-erdogan-emails_b_11158792.html

Wikileaks Put Women in Turkey in Danger, for No Reason

Journalists and anti-censorship activists who I am in touch with in Turkey have been combing through the leaked documents, and I am not aware of anything “newsworthy” being uncovered. According to the collective searching capacity of long-term activists and journalists in Turkey, none of the “Erdogan emails” appear to be emails actually from Erdogan or his inner circle. Nobody seems to be able to find a smoking gun exposing people in positions of power and responsibility. This doesn’t rule out something eventually emerging, but there have been several days of extensive searching.

 

However, this dump does include massive databases containing sensitive and private information of millions of ordinary people, including a special database of almost all adult women in Turkey.

 

Yes — this “leak” actually contains spreadsheets of private, sensitive information of what appears to be every female voter in 79 out of 81 provinces in Turkey, including their home addresses and other private information, sometimes including their cellphone numbers. If these women are members of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (known as the AKP), the dumped files also contain their Turkish citizenship ID, which increases the risk to them as the ID is used in practicing a range of basic rights and accessing services. The Istanbul file alone contains more than a million women’s private information, and there are 79 files, with most including information of many hundreds of thousands of women.

[FanboyOf91]

Julian Assange really doesn't like women, does he?

[visionary]

https://twitter.com/AmichaiStein1/status/758382898848423936?lang=en

BREAKING: Turkey media shutdown:
3 news agencies
23 radio stations
16 TV channels
45 newspapers
15 magazines
29 publishers
3:25 PM

[Predicto]

The Reichstag Coup has been very successful.

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-idUSKCN10A0HH?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social

Turkey releases 758 detained soldiers as Erdogan drops lawsuits

 

Turkey on Saturday released more than 750 soldiers who had been detained after an abortive coup, state media reported, while President Tayyip Erdogan said he would drop lawsuits against those who had insulted him, in a one-time gesture of "unity".

 

More than 60,000 people have been detained, removed or suspended over suspected links with the coup attempt, when a faction of the military commandeered tanks, helicopters and fighter jets and attempted to topple the government.

 

Turkey's Western allies have condemned the coup, in which Erdogan has said 237 people were killed and more than 2,100 were wounded, but have been rattled by the scale of the crackdown since.

 

The purges have targeted supporters of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of masterminding the July 15-16 failed coup. The cleric denies the charges and Erdogan's critics say the president is using the purges to clamp down on dissent.

 

State-run Anadolu Agency reported that 758 soldiers were released on the recommendation of prosecutors after giving testimony. A judge agreed, calling their detention unnecessary, Anadolu said.

 

Another 231 soldiers remain in custody, it said.

 

Turkey's military, the second-largest in NATO, has been hard hit in the wake of the coup. On Thursday, 99 colonels were promoted to the rank of general or admiral, following the dishonorable discharge of nearly 1,700 military personnel over their alleged roles in the coup.

 

About 40 percent of all generals and admirals in the military have been dismissed since the coup.

 

Turkish Defence Minister Fikri Isik told broadcaster NTV on Friday that the shake-up in the military was not yet over, adding that military academies would now be a target of "cleansing".

 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/turkeys-powerful-spy-network-never-saw-coup-coming-1469823062

Turkey’s Powerful Spy Network Failed to See Coup Coming

 

Juggling terror threats from Islamic State and Kurdish separatists, Turkey’s vast intelligence service struggled to make sense of clues before plotters sprung to action on July 15

 

In the months before Turkey’s failed coup, the country’s spy agency penetrated online chat rooms and decoded millions of secret messages but found no mention of the plot, senior Turkish intelligence officials said.

 

Agents checked tips pointing to a coup that led nowhere. Analysts studied the video sermons of an imam who the government alleges directed the plot and speculated if the color of his robes relayed secret orders to his followers.

 

Turkey’s spies, juggling terrorist threats from Islamic State and Kurdish separatists, struggled to make sense of clues that never seemed to add up until the conspiracy they feared most materialized on the night of July 15.

American officials say they suspect followers of Mr. Gulen participated, but the U.S. doesn’t have access to primary sources in Turkey to determine independently who did what in the coup attempt. So far, they said, there is no credible evidence of Mr. Gulen’s personal involvement.

 

Some of Turkey’s Western allies have expressed concern that Mr. Erdogan is using the coup to widen the purge well beyond the alleged participants.

 

This account of the July 15 coup attempt that left 246 people dead in Istanbul and Ankara was based on interviews with senior Turkish intelligence officials, U.S. and other Western diplomats, and followers of Mr. Gulen.

[visionary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/world/europe/turkey-coup-erdogan-fethullah-gulen-united-states.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

Turks Can Agree on One Thing: U.S. Was Behind Failed Coup

 

A Turkish newspaper reported that an American academic and former State Department official had helped orchestrate a violent conspiracy to topple the Turkish government from a fancy hotel on an island in the Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul. The same newspaper, in a front-page headline, flat-out said the United States had tried to assassinate President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the night of the failed coup.

 

When another pro-government newspaper asked Turks in a recent poll conducted on Twitter which part of the United States government had supported the coup plotters, the C.I.A. came in first, with 69 percent, and the White House was a distant second, with 20 percent.

 

These conspiracy theories are not the product of a few cranks on the fringes of Turkish society. Turkey may be a deeply polarized country, but one thing Turks across all segments of society — Islamists, secular people, liberals, nationalists — seem to have come together on is that the United States was somehow wrapped up in the failed coup, either directly or simply because the man widely suspected to be the leader of the conspiracy, the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, lives in self-exile in the United States.

 

“Whenever something shocking and horrific happens in Turkey, the reflex is conspiracy,” said Akin Unver, an assistant professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.

 

That response goes back almost a century, to the end of World War I, when the West carved up the defeated Ottoman Empire. A Western plan to divide what became modern Turkey failed after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the country’s founder, waged war against the occupiers. But the effort forever ingrained in the Turkish psyche a fear of Western conspiracies.

 

In the case of the failed coup, there is much more at play than fanciful conspiracy theories, many Turks say, because of the nearly universal conviction that it was engineered by Mr. Gulen, who for 16 years has lived in a secluded compound in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.

[visionary]

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN10G01B

U.S. says evaluating new Turkish documents on alleged coup leader

 

The United States is evaluating new documents sent by Turkey to push for the extradition of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, the alleged mastermind of the country's recent failed coup, a State Department spokesman said on Thursday.

 

"The Turkish authorities (made) several deliveries of documents to us and we're in the process of going through those documents," spokesman Mark Toner told a daily news briefing.

 

Toner said the first batch "did not, we believe, constitute a formal extradition request."

 

He added: "We subsequently received more documents. We're looking through them ... and I don't think they've reached that determination yet."

 

The U.S. Justice Department is the main agency poring over the documents to see whether they amount to a formal extradition request for Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999.

 

Turkish officials, including Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, have warned that ties with the United States will be affected if it fails to extradite Gulen.

In New York, Kamil Aydin, a Turkish member of parliament from Erzurum, said the U.S. Justice Department had received 85 boxes of documents from Turkey related to Gulen so far.

 

"They are in the process of evaluating these documents," he said, without giving any details on the files.

 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-not-persuaded-to-extradite-imam-over-turkey-coup-1470357556?mod=rss_middle_east_news

U.S. Not Persuaded to Extradite Imam Over Turkey Coup

 

U.S. officials don’t expect to extradite an imam Turkey blames for masterminding a failed coup because they aren’t convinced by the evidence Ankara has presented and are troubled by threatening public statements from Turkish officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-idUSKCN10I0CZ?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=57a7552604d3011588267234&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

Turkey's Erdogan stages mass rally in show of strength after coup attempt

 

More than a million Turks gathered in Istanbul on Sunday for a rally called by President Tayyip Erdogan to denounce a failed coup - a show of strength staged in the face of Western criticism of widespread purges and detentions.

 

The "Democracy and Martyrs' Rally" at the Yenikapi parade ground, built into the sea on the southern edge of Istanbul's peninsula, marks the climax of three weeks of nightly demonstrations by Erdogan's supporters, many wrapped in the red Turkish flag, in squares around the country.

 

Banners read "You are a gift from God, Erdogan" or "Order us to die and we will do it". But it was also the first time in decades that major opposition parties joined a rally in support of the government in the nation of almost 80 million.

 

"We're here to show that theses flags won't come down, the call to prayer won't be silenced, and our country won't be divided," said Haci Mehmet Haliloglu, 46, a civil servant who traveled from the Black Sea town of Ordu for the rally.

 

"This is something way beyond politics, this is either our freedom or death," he said, a large Turkish flag over his shoulder and a matching baseball cap on his head.

 

The parade ground, built to hold at least a million people, was overflowing, with access roads clogged by crowds. The events were broadcast live on public screens at demonstrations across Turkey's 81 provinces.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37003819?ocid=socialflow_twitter

 

 

https://twitter.com/CNNTURK_ENG/status/762309128047951872?lang=en

Turkish President Erdoğan, PM Yıldırım, leaders of 2 oppos parties (CHP, MHP) at Yenikapı in anti-coup rally.

11:27 AM

 

https://twitter.com/WashingtonPoint/status/762299848750084097?lang=en

Turkey's pro-Kurdish HDP leader S.Demirtas, 3rd big party w/ ~6 million votes did NOT get an invitation for this "unity" rally.
10:50 AM

[TheGoodBits]

 

[visionary]

 

 

[visionary]

 

[No Excuses]

Turkey has started dismantling its education system:

 

https://news.sol.org.tr/government-remove-evolution-high-school-curriculum-171440

 

Removing Evolution from Biology courses and replacing it with a vague "Living Beings and The Environment" topic.

 

Reducing information on the secularist founder of Turkey, Ataturk.

 

It is really depressing watching this happen to a country that could have really been a model to so much of the Islamic world.

[No Excuses]

Anyone following the developments on the referendum vote? Seems like it will pass although being voted down in the three big cities (Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir).

 

A great reminder that basic tenets of your constitution shouldn't be up for change through a simple majority vote. This is a horrible development.

[visionary]

 

[No Excuses]

This is pretty much the end of liberal democracy in Turkey (of whatever that was left).

 

 

Erdogan and AKP are going to purge the **** out of whatever is left of their opposition.

[Mr. Sinister]

The world is steadily moving backwards

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FrFan]

The vote tampering consequence is that the dictatorship makes one more step towards tyranny

[visionary]