THE FAILED PUTSCH IN TURKEY The winner takes it all

Tayyip Erdogan has received a coup as a present! From Allah himself! That's what Turkey's president claims, and we have no reason to doubt him, for now. The exceptional nature of the gift stems from the fact that it wasn't a coup that Erdogan was going to perpetrate, but rather one against him, meant to overthrow him! Finally, for the gift to be perfect, or else it wouldn't have been a divine one, the coup had to fail. And... it did! How and why it failed, seems to have more to do with the earthly than with the holy.

The "standard" model of coups organized by officers and failed is the Operation Valkyrie (Unternehmen Walkure), organized during WW2, to overthrow Hitler. The success or the failure of coups planned and executed by soldiers depends on successfully resolving three problems. The first is "concealment". Officers can't meet in secret in parks to plan a coup and they don't live for decades in foreign countries from where they are "dropped" in the country where they have to execute the coup! The solution always assumes the fact that the planning and staging activities of the coup are visible for the one whose removal from power is being sought, the supreme authority within the state, the supreme commander of the army, whether they are president or king. If the concealment of the coup doesn't work, then the military putsch will often fail in its embryo stage. In the case of Operation Valkyrie, the planning and organization was done under the pretense of a plan for exceptional situations, approved by Hitler himself, meant to prevent the loss of power under the pressure of a mass uprising of the population against the regime, due to the growing discontent and increasing sacrifices made in times of war, on the front as well as at home. It provided for the total transfer of the power in the hands of the reserve army, the legal dissolution and the dismantling of the other institutions of authority such as the SS or the Nazi party (NSDAP), the arrest of the leaders and the placing of the troops under the command of the commanders of military regions. The second condition is the quick removal of the head of state from the game, who legally holds authority over the army. Armies cannot function efficiently with divided loyalties. If the removal doesn't happen as soon as the coup starts, the odds of success fall proportionally, the longer the coup takes.

The 1943 version of the first public statement from the Valkyrie plan began with the words: "Fuhrer Adolf Hitler is dead" !!! In the real "movie" of the operation this item didn't work out, due to the failure of the attack of July 20th.

Finally, the third requirement is to quickly obtain the domestic support of a significant chunk of the population, is to quickly obtain domestic support from a significant part of the population, and of the hubs means for gaining control of the population: mass media, public order institutions, the network of first essential services and the securing of outside support. In the case of the coup organized in Turkey against Erdogan, it is more than certain that the President knew, and the cover was allowed to work, only to ensure that the "game" would set off the trap. The failure to remove Erdogan from the game, is therefore no surprise, his security forces have carried him around, under control, from one location to another, including with the help of aircraft, without the organizers of the putsch succeeding in preventing that. Finally, the population has been mobilized, but not by the organizers of the military coup, but by Erdogan and his supporters, which definitively buried any chance of success. As for the direct or indirect involvement of the various players "foreign" players, Erdogan has not made any it any secret, but has in fact started the most powerful diplomatic tension in the history of relations between Turkey and Russia, vehemently accusing the military involvement on the side of the putschists and requesting as compensation the head of Gulen Fehtullah (his extradition from the US). What Erdogan intends to do with the gift he received, is no longer a mystery. To purge the army! In reality, the operation took the form of a night of the long knives which had been sharpened far in advance, used not only against some military commanders, not even in priority against them, but against another "army", that of the supporters of Gulen Fehtullah, made up especially of people from the judicial and educational system in Turkey. It is known, the rupture between the two occurred the moment when far too daring prosecutors and judges started sticking their noses in the affairs of the Erdogan family threatening to turn a President into a common convict. Just like this time, the struggle for power was won by Erdogan!

Cui prodest? A divine gift, by definition, does not bring any benefits to the one who received it, but also expands to its community, and on a wider scale, to humanity. This political and psychological moment of Erdogan describes a parallel that is relevant with that of N. Ceauşescu, of 1968. What followed is well known! A personal dictatorship regime, with the obsession of constant and multipronged surveillance of the population, with the massive weakening of the army, up to the ruining of its ability to get organized and make war, the shut-in within the model of an overexalted nationalism, the gradual isolation from the exterior world in which both "friends", and "enemies" are feared alike. The only predictable result is the collapse of the regime and of the country alike!

All of the above, when put together, feed the doubt! But the gift received by Erdogan may not be a divine one. It kind of resembles a Trojan horse and the Ankaran leader may find himself he has been fooled sooner then he expects!