Necati Doğru, a columnist for the Kemalist daily Sözcü, queried the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government over persisting questions about a failed coup attempt on July 15, asking whether it was a fake coup attempt.
“Since July 15, August, September, October, November, December, January… six-and-a-half months have passed, totaling almost 200 days and nights. Light has not been shed on who the core members of coup plotters were, how many of them there were and what their names were. Why it has been prolonged, why are new names constantly mentioned? Stretching it out it for so long brings this question to mind: Was it that the coup was fake?” said Doğru in his column published in Sözcü on Saturday.
Criticizing the government for taking German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday to the Turkish Parliament, which was bombed by jets on the night of July 15, Doğru said: “They must have thought that Merkel would not believe them if they had said ‘Some people attempted a coup, bombed Parliament, attempted to overthrow us’; therefore they took Merkel to visit the demolished parts of Parliament. Their respectability has decreased so drastically that they were trying to be credible by having Merkel visit the parliament building.”
A report prepared by the EU Intelligence Analysis Centre (IntCen) revealed that although President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Turkish government immediately put the blame for the July 15 failed coup on the faith-based Gülen movement, the coup attempt was staged by a range of Erdoğan’s opponents due to fears of an impending purge, according to a report by The Times newspaper on Jan. 17.
“The decision to launch the coup resulted from the fears of an incoming purge. It is likely that a group of officers comprising Gülenists, Kemalists [secularists], opponents of the AKP and opportunists was behind the coup. It is unlikely that Gülen himself played a role in the attempt,” said the report, dated Aug. 24, 2016.
The Aldrimer.no website reported last week that NATO sources believe the coup was staged by the president of Turkey himself.
Although the sources admit there is no written NATO documentation to support the claim due to its sensitivity, the website said that “the dominant NATO assessment is quite clear.”
Speaking to vocaleurope.com, a former Turkish officer who served at NATO headquarters in Brussels but was sacked and recalled to Turkey as part of an investigation into the failed coup on July 15 claims that the putsch was clumsily executed and never intended to bring down the government, but rather served as a vehicle for President Erdoğan to eliminate opponents and the ultranationalists to take a prominent role in the military and impose their “Eurasian” agenda on the country.
Strongly denying having any role in the putsch, Fethullah Gülen called for an international investigation into the coup attempt, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.
In a currently ongoing post-coup purge, over 135,000 people, including thousands within the military, have been purged due to their real or alleged connection to the Gülen movement, according to a statement by the labor minister on Jan. 10. As of Feb. 1, 89,775 people were being held without charge, with an additional 43,885 in pre-trial detention.