> If this thing goes south -- and I fear it will -- the backlash will be severe. Not a good thing for the future of Turkey.
Especially considering he has been a tempered authoritarian before the coup. Now they will respond by expanding authority. Leaders like that always do.
Hopefully that will further lead to support of the coup end goals which had some legitimacy. The only problem is that Erogdan has many hardline islamic fanatics who will take to the streets and help maintain his power.
But those military gained access to aircrafts, bombs and their activation systems, which they used to bomb the parliament and seemingly many other targets in Ankara and Istambul. Makes you wonder how safe is Europe.
> The only problem is Erdogan has many hardline islamic fanatics to help m...
Ahem, really, how safe is Europe if, for example, France decided that we have an Islamisation/integration problem, and started massively revoking visas from Mediterranean regions? How would Turkey / Turkey military dissidents with access to such weapons react?
So maybe yes, maybe it should be made clear that military people in Turkey should follow orders and only orders, or be subject to martial law.
The problem is that Turkey is not changing up civilian control. They've had Erdogen for what? 13 years? That's not a healthy system. That's a system where one bunch is running the tables. Such systems always lead to much worse than military coups. Anybody checked out Venezuela lately?
There's probably been some support for IS coming from Turkey, although not from the military. Turkey is a NATO member and nuclear. They're in the middle of a really tense and unstable region.
All of this is bad. Really bad. And now we'll get 10x more of it.
I do not support military coups if a civilian government is functioning and changing up the dominent parties and leaders every so often. Everybody gets a turn. I don't see that in Turkey. I see a country headed either towards internal or external crisis. Perhaps both.
There's also another point: the vast majority of citizens in a country may want to have leaders and policies that destroy it. That's their right. If that's where Turkey is headed, NATO alliance members need to think about how to adapt accordingly.
As a side note, French presidents were elected for 7 years x2, which makes 14 years for Mitterand (1981-1995) and 12 for Chirac (1995-2007). But at least PMs change and they can't renew again.
Venezuela's coup that ousted Chavez, and had the people reinstate him, might be a fair comparison. The returning leader will have a carte blanche for future politics.
