The Day After

The morning after the coup of July 15th in Turkey: empty streets in the center of Istanbul, closed shops, military tanks replaced by antiterror vehicles of the police, lots of police.

Last night the president connected to a tv channel via facetime asking people to the streets for democracy, continuous calls for hours from the mosques in the middle of night, appealing people to go out to support the president.

Supersonic aircraft’s came in at low altitude flying direct at me, breaking the sound barrier with a sonic boom sending shockwaves across the city, causing widespread fear; me like Cary Grant in North by Northwest on the ground, being hit by a wall of air. Broken windows from the shockwaves in the neighborhoods.

The coup appears to be mostly over by now.

There is very little possibility that the Turkish military, who throws coups regularly, could have screwed this up this badly.

The way you launch a coup is pretty straightforward. First you grab the leader, then the media outlets, then you exhibit the humiliated leader in the media. Instead, these people decided to throw the coup while Erdogan was on vacation and apparently didn’t even attempt to secure him. By the time the coup began, he was already taken to a secret location. Then the whole thing went straight to hell very quickly. The coup told people to go home, while Erdogan told his people to go to the streets. So the coup supporters were at home, while the Erdogan supporters were out on the streets.

In short, the whole thing could not have been better arranged for Erdogan himself, who now looks like a hero of the people.

It seems to many people the most likely possibility is that Erdogan worked with some of his own people in the military to arrange a coup hoax.

As long as more questions than convincing answers remain, an abundance of such conspiracy theories should not be surprising.