They’re in the stadium
The failed coup has been a gift to Erdoğan. Patrick Coburn at the Independent says he’s using it to get rid of what’s left of secularism in Turkey.
The number of people detained so far is at 6,000 including soldiers, and around 3,000 judges and legal officials who are unlikely to have been connected to the attempted military takeover.
Reichstag fire.
The failed coup is serving as an excuse for a massive round-up of members of the judiciary and army officers, far greater than anything seen in Turkey for years, and is presumably a bid to secure Erdogan’s grip on the Turkish state. So numerous are those detained that a sports stadium is being used to hold some of them, a development that has ominous similarities with mass arrests in South American coups in the last century. Some 140 out of 387 judges in the Court of Appeal have been detained along with 48 out of 156 from the Council of State.
It may be that Erdogan is using the coup to eliminate the most powerful officials seen as loyal to Turkey as a secular state.
Just possibly.
Reichstag fire was my very first thought on hearing of the “coup attempt”. You’re a conspiracy theorist if you think the moon landings were faked, but I don’t think you are if the response to what looks like a coup by a small number of soldiers is to arrest an enormous amount of… judges.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1227820963903029/?type=3&theater
Damn.
“Just possibly”?
There are reports Erdogan had already drawn up a list of people to arrest days before the coup even happened.
He’s arrested close to three thousand judges…as though all three thousand had brandished machine guns during Erdogan’s coup
And what about the exiled Imam in Pennsylvania? The one Erdogan is trying to get extradited. Is he making anti secularist noises, or blaming another Islamist?
There are reports he’s firing TENS of THOUSANDS of teachers. Too secular? Little Hitler is having his purge.