You Will Anyway: Military Coup in Turkey

Friday, July 15, 2016

Military Coup in Turkey

I'm not seeing confirmation of that yet. And there are reports that Erdoğan "is on holiday outside the country" (which could be what you say when he's been arrested and you don't want anyone to know) and that he "is going to make a statement."

The Turkish military released a statement that it had taken over in the name of democratic order, adding that all existing foreign relations will continue and human rights will remain.

Haaretz

A military takeover in the name of democratic order. Words don't mean anything any more, do they? I'm a bit confused right now as to what's happening. Reports say a faction within the military is attempting a coup.

"Some people illegally undertook an illegal action outside of the chain of command," Yildirim, the prime minister, said in comments broadcast by private channel NTV.

Okay, so maybe it's the translation that's the problem. Illegally undertook an illegal action. I have to wonder how you might do that legally.

Would that be a yellow light?

Since on Wednesday, the prime minister announced Turkey would aim "to develop good relations with Syria and Iraq," I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the US has instigated/given support to the coup. And furthermore, there would be a public announcement of condemnation for it otherwise.

I just searched for Feyzi İşbaşaran - the person who tweeted the arrest of Erdoğan and found this from January of this year:

An Istanbul court has sentenced former Turkish MP Feyzi Isbasaran to nearly three years in jail for posting tweets deemed insulting to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The man is an ex-member of Erdogan’s own AK party.

RT

Very strange indeed.

UPDATE July 17:

I further checked the Twitter account of Feyzi İşbaşaran, and that Tweet does not exist. Whether it ever did or not, I cannot say. If I had thought there was a problem, I could have checked the account when the Tweet first appeared as a Retweet in Adam Johnson's account. (I also checked the translation. I think it's correct.)

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.