In the early hours of July 16, 2016, a team of elite Turkish troops advanced in the streets of Marmaris, a touristic destination on the shores of the Mediterranean. The target was capturing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who was vacationing in a nearby hotel. A few hours before this operation, another team had already closed the Bosphorus bridge. Armored units took to the streets. F-16 jets were flying over Ankara and Istanbul with thundering voices. Helicopters were breathing fire in the streets. Erdoğan supporters were confronting troops in the streets. For a few hours, the country tumbled into a scene of civil war.
Nevertheless, President Erdoğan had left Marmaris hours before the elite team’s arrival. Police and Erdoğan supporters overwhelmed troops in the streets. The coup attempt failed just as strangely as it began hours before. By dawn, police already began its operations to arrest senior officers, and thousands of judges and prosecutors among others all around Turkey.
In the next days, and years, police continued such operations. President Erdoğan finally defeated the last bastion of the Turkish state which could still act autonomously until July 15, 2016. Arrests and investigations reached tens of thousands of officers, judges, prosecutors, police officers, diplomats, and rest of the civil and armed bureaucracy as well as civil society and the business world. The government confiscated at least $50 billion of private property, closed hundreds of schools, newspapers, TVs, universities, NGOs, etc. The failed coup attempt was not the beginning of Erdogan’s authoritarian takeover but a great leap forward to that end. It was the last night of Kemalist Turkey. The country woke up to Erdogan’s Turkey by dawn. President Erdoğan declared a state of emergency and centralized authority with presidential decrees. Only a few months later, Erdoğan officially launched a campaign that ultimately enshrined his one-man rule.
The July 15 coup attempt was a turning point for Turkey in many ways. Turkey’s political system, foreign policy, economy, and society have transformed radically.
However, what exactly did happen at that night?
Even after ten years, it is still controversial. There are still many unknowns. Yet, the information that was revealed in the post-coup courts explained many things about the night.
A Gulenist Coup?
For the Turkish government, this question has a very clear and simple answer. It was a Gulenist coup, masterminded by Fethullah Gulen who died in the United States in 2024 and carried out by Gulenist officers. Even in the early hours of the coup attempt, the government was sure it was Gulenists. In the parliamentary hearing, Ankara police chief said he understood that Gulenists were revolting when he saw the first F-16 in the air – although there was almost no military activity in the streets by then. The chief prosecutor in Ankara learned even before him and gave instructions for a criminal investigation against the coup. Likewise, President Erdogan accused Gulen of the coup in his famous Facetime speech at 00:30 am.
In the following days and months, the official coup attempt narrative began to take its form. According to this narrative, upon Gulen’s instructions, Gulenist officers made a plan and preparations to initiate their operation at 03:00 am on July 16. Yet, when an obscure helicopter pilot tipped off the intelligence (MIT) and the Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar, the Gulenists panicked and began their operation unprepared at around 19:00 on July 15. They captured General Akar and tried to convince him to lead the coup. Despite physical and psychological pressures, Akar heroically resisted against the Gulenists. This pressure over Akar continued till the morning, but Akar did not give up. To the contrary, the arrested Akar asked Gulenists to stop the operation and pull the troops immediately. When Erdoğan supporters and police defeated the putschists in the streets, the Gulenists were left with no choice but to surrender and release Hulusi Akar by dawn.
The pro-government media widely covered confessions of Gulenist officers in the early days. Although the heavy torture and pressures that officers and their families underwent raised suspicions about this story, there was almost no clear information in those days.
Trials and Truth
As the coup trials began mostly in 2017, more information began to emerge. Although the trials were far from being objective or fair, they at least allowed us to hear what those officers would say. First and foremost, they rejected their initial testimonies taken under physical force, rape, and threats of rape against families. As thousands of those soldiers testified and more evidence came out, today we have much more information to understand the night. It is possible to explain the events of the night with few major points.
First, Hulusi Akar who later became Defense Minister as one of the champions of the night, appears as the leader of the coup in the courtrooms. Officers argued that they just implemented Akar’s orders. Indeed, testimonial information from both high- and low-ranking soldiers as well as camera footage showed that he was not only free but also had the full command as he should have.
Officers claimed that Akar had frequently voiced his intention for an intervention throughout the months up to July 15. His advisor testified that Akar asked him to draft a coup plan. He also ordered the Turkish military attaché in Washington to inform the Pentagon about his intentions to topple Erdoğan.
Indeed, all the officers who played key roles in the operation were Akar’s close men, such as his protection officers who coordinated arrests of some senior officers or the officer who led the team to arrest Erdoğan, or the ones who organized dispatching troops to the streets in Ankara and Istanbul.
In fact, the testimonial information does not give any other alternative person of authority contesting Akar’s authority. The government accused the former Air Force Commander, Akın Öztürk, as the leader of the coup. Yet, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found “no reasonable suspicion” for Öztürk’s involvement, let alone leadership, in the coup attempt.
Hulusi Akar, however, did not face his own men in the court. He gave his testimony in a private closed session. He did not even respond to the invitations of the Parliamentary commission to investigate the coup attempt.
Second, the government was well informed and prepared against the operation. The police took position around the General Staff headquarters before events began. They mobilized their forces earlier than troops. Likewise, Erdoğan supporters were organized and got into action before the troops. In their social media analysis of the coup night, H. Akin Unver and Hassan Alassad showed that civilian mobilization against the coup began before the first troops got into the streets. Many testimonial information from civilians supports this analysis.
The government, however, did not use its intelligence and operational superiority to stop the attempt but to fan the flames even more. Erdoğan and key loyalist figures stayed silent until the troops took the streets instead of giving officers a public or private warning.
Moreover, instead of urging them, police allowed or even in some cases helped officers to dispatch and move forces to places where the confrontation with civilians would occur. Meanwhile, police armed civilians with semi-automatic rifles against the troops. According to the radio communication transcripts, police chiefs told their men to move their police insignia, blend into the civilian protestors, and led them over to the troops. Such a counter-coup strategy could have ended with a much bigger massacre if troops acted more aggressively. Radio communications showed that they mostly abstained from confrontation with crowds.
Some officers realized that things were not right and wanted to pull the troops to avoid bloodshed. (Notably, in none of such accounts of troop withdrawal, Akar’s name appears.) More interestingly, when the officers wanted withdrawal, but police did not allow, forcing confrontation. In some cases, tanks escaped police and raced back to barracks pursued by civilian vehicles.
There are other indications of the government acting for more bloodshed, such as pre-arranged snipers shooting against the civilians, loyalist officers giving orders for random summary executions or intentionally bringing their own troops into armed confrontation.
While chaos was unfolding, Hulusi Akar seemed to be safe, free, and having command over his men. Nevertheless, neither President Erdogan nor his intelligence chief or the police suspected Akar’s loyalty. Instead, in the early hours, a police chief declared all military officers as suspects except Hulusi Akar via the police radio. When Akar was on his way to meet the Prime Minister, the news was celebrated by the government as his freedom from capture. Later, Erdogan promoted him as Defense Minister.
Post-Truth Politics After the Coup
There are still many unknowns about the night. For instance, police arrested four civilian Gulenists near the same airbase where Hulusi Akar passed the night. Why were those civilians there? Why did the court release one of them? These and many other questions went unanswered, as the government acted in discreet, not transparently, about the events of the night. The trials were divided into around 200 different courts around the country. Only a limited amount of digital evidence, particularly the security camera footage, was shared with courts.
The pressure over the officers continued during the trials. Officers around Hulusi Akar said they could not tell every detail due to the fear of harm to their families. One prominent figure claimed that the government urged them to stay silent about Akar. Indeed, in the testimonies, the orders given by Akar do not exist in testimonies. Officers who were with him till the morning could not say anything meaningful, except veiled implications.
Almost ten years have passed since the coup attempt. The officers recently made their last remarks in the umbrella court case of July 15. As Akar fell from grace in 2023, they were more courageous to unveil more about Akar even if it is unlikely to change the court’s decision. However, Turkish politics does not care about the trials anymore. There was only one veteran journalist and a parliamentarian who attended the trials and listened to what those officers revealed.
The 2016 coup attempt has become the foundational ground of Turkish politics. The governing coalition between Erdogan’s party, the nationalist party, and the Eurasianists was sealed in this post-coup politics. They filled the emptied positions within the states together and shared the confiscated properties of Gulenists. Even the opposition parties sided with Erdogan and supported the crackdown over the Gulen Movement.
Challenging the official coup attempt narrative is a red line in Turkey. Revelations about the night could shake the foundations of the current political order. This explains the lack of interest among the politicians and journalists in the coup trials. Nevertheless, the path to return democracy and rule of law for Turkey is still hidden in the darkness of that night.
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