A report drafted by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) on a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016 has repeated an earlier claim made by the party’s leader suggesting that the coup attempt was a “controlled” one and that there were some Turkish authorities who knew about the coup plans but did not take any measures to prevent it.
The 307-page-long report, prepared by CHP deputies Zeynel Emre, Aykut Erdoğdu, Sezgin Tanrıkulu and Aytun Çıray, was revealed at a news conference in Parliament on Monday.
“The treacherous coup attempt on July 15 was a controlled coup that was foreseen, not prevented, and whose consequences were abused,” said Çıray as he spoke at the briefing.
CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has been claiming for some time that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan knew about the coup plan but they did not take the necessary measures to prevent it.
“The treacherous and bloody coup attempt was an unexpected, shocking and appalling development for the innocent citizens of the country. However, there were some who knew that this treacherous coup attempt would take place and those who waited for it,” says the report.
The report recalled that Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Undersecretary Hakan Fidan met alone for 6.5 hours on July 14.
The CHP’s report on the July 15 coup attempt also refers to columns penned by pro-government journalist Fuat Uğur from the Türkiye daily, who wrote about coup plans in columns published on March 24, April 2 and April 21, 2016.
“These articles written by Fuat Uğur and similar columnists months before the coup attempt were an obvious source of intelligence for MİT. It is unthinkable for MİT not to have any idea about what Fuat Uğur knew,” says the report.
The CHP criticized a recent report prepared by the AKP government on the July 15 putsch on the grounds that it did not reveal the political phase of the coup attempt and aimed at covering up the coup rather than shedding light on it.
The military coup attempt on July 15 killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the AKP government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, 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.
According to a report by the state-run Anadolu news agency on May 28, 154,694 individuals have been detained and 50,136 have been jailed due to alleged Gülen links since the failed coup attempt.