July 15, 2026, will mark the tenth anniversary of Turkey’s “Reichstag Fire” coup. Calling the supposed coup “a gift from God,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan used the supposed attempt to oust him as an excuse to crack down on political opponents, civil society, and religious tolerance. Erdoǧan’s forces detained more than 300,000 people, imprisoned more than 100,000, and fired more than 150,000 from their jobs, blacklisting them and, in many cases, nullifying their pensions.
Erdoǧan was once a top ally of exiled Turkish theologian Fethullah Gülen, even if they subscribed to different interpretations of Islam, with Erdoǧan favoring the Muslim Brotherhood outlook and Gülen promoting a more traditional Anatolian Sufism. The two conspired to unravel the Kemalist grip on power and institutions until around 2013, when years of repression and supposed reform had largely marginalized Turkey’s traditional secularists.
Erdoǧan was once a top ally of exiled Turkish theologian Fethullah Gülen, even if they subscribed to different interpretations of Islam.
At that point, Erdoǧan turned on Gülen, seeking to suppress his movement, both because it challenged Erdoǧan’s religious outlook and because Erdoǧan grew jealous of the multibillion-dollar financial and commercial footprint that Gülen’s supporters enjoyed. By blaming the 2016 coup attempt on Gülen, Erdoǧan could end his rivals’ influence almost immediately. Blaming Gülen was less justice and more brazen bank robbery.
With a stroke of a pen, Erdoǧan also labeled any association with Gülen as synonymous with membership in a terror organization, never mind that by that standard, Erdoǧan himself was a member of the so-called FETO, the Fetullah Terrorist Organization. Whereas Turkish courts might once uphold the law and deny Erdoǧan or his cronies the right to develop protected land or parks, the simple accusation of being a FETO member could remove opponents and opposition.
While Erdoǧan, Turkish diplomats, Turkish press, and those think tankers in Washington, D.C., who are willing to sacrifice academic integrity for access will embrace the Gülen narrative uncritically, the problem is that the notion that Gülen was behind the supposed coup never made sense.
Turkish theologian Fethullah Gülen.
Image: https://fgulen.com/, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
First, many of the supposed coup leaders had connections to Erdoǧan’s own Justice and Development Party (AKP) rather than Gülen. That the AKP spun off dissidents should not surprise: Many saw the party as legitimate, and grew disillusioned with Erdoǧan’s arrogance, his wife Emine’s profligate spending, and his children’s embezzlement and corruption. What Erdoǧan once billed as a new, clean, democratic party became instead a corrupt mechanism for personal enrichment. Indeed, Erdoǧan has never been able to explain how a poor child from Rize managed to become a billionaire several times over. Erdoǧan’s explanation that his unexplained cash came as wedding presents is not credible. At any rate, one supposed coup leader was Mehmet Dişli, a two-star general and brother of Saban Dişli, a former AKP vice president. Perhaps the rank-and-file members of the AKP itself deserve prison more than those whose crime was to attend a Gülenist school?
Second, the supposed coup appeared to be designed to fail. As witnesses of previous coups noted, coup leaders announced their actions directly, be it Colonel Alparslan Türkeş in 1960 or General Kenan Evren in 1980. On the evening of July 15, 2016, a low-ranking soldier supposedly handed an anchorwoman a piece of paper and asked her to read it. Almost all TV cable or satellite transmissions in Turkey pass through a TURKSAT facility. Rather than take out that node, the soldiers left it alone and did not even try to interrupt other programing. A similar nonsensical action was blocking one Istanbul bridge but not the other. Likewise, in every previous putsch, the leader to be overthrown was the first target, not an afterthought hours later. The bombing of the parliament made no sense, given that it was nighttime.
Third, the post-coup purge was planned in advance. Why else would immediate post-coup arrest lists include those who were killed in car accidents or Turkey’s Afghanistan deployment months before? Like coup leaders of the past, Erdoǧan simply had an enemies’ list.
Ten years after the self-coup that Erdoǧan seems to have masterminded to consolidate power, Erdoǧan has become Turkey’s most successful authoritarian.
While the Turkish press is not free to report now, history will be clear: Erdoǧan is Turkey’s most successful coup leader. Türkeş tried to remain in power after ousting Turkish leader Adnan Menderes, but his fellow coup leaders rejected his ambition. Their goal was to prevent Menderes’ undemocratic consolidation of power and then return Turkey to civilian rule, not to hold power themselves. He later returned from exile and helped found what became the National Movement Party (MHP). Evren, meanwhile, handed power back to civilians but successfully ran for president, at the time a more ceremonial position. He retired peacefully, painting in a small town on the Aegean coast, until Erdoǧan ordered him arrested at age 95; he died in prison.
The irony is that while Erdoǧan says he opposes a coup, he has become Turkey’s most consequential coup leader. Unlike Türkeş, his colleagues did not rein in his ambition and, unlike Evren, he refuses to retire.
Ten years after the self-coup that Erdoǧan seems to have masterminded to consolidate power, Erdoǧan has become Turkey’s most successful authoritarian. While he shows no inclination to leave office gracefully, Turks would be within their rights to make him the new Evren in his old age. Sometimes, the best antidote to a coup would be a counter-coup to restore Turkey’s democracy and to stop the looting of Turkey’s treasury and future by what has essentially become an organized crime family with Erdoǧan as its boss.
