Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan celebrates Thursday, July 15 the fifth anniversary of a bloody coup attempt that allowed him to consolidate his power at the cost of endless repression and tensions with Western countries.
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On the night of July 15-16, 2016, factional elements of the army deployed tanks in the streets as planes flew over Istanbul and Ankara, bombing several important sites such as the Parliament. The intervention of loyalist elements and tens of thousands of Erdogan supporters who took to the streets at the president's call had helped to defeat the uprising. Results: 251 people killed, excluding putschists. A sign of the historical importance that Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives to the defeat of the putsch, he is due to make a speech on Thursday in front of thousands of supporters in Ankara and inaugurate a
"democracy museum"
retracing the main events of that night which has, according to him,
"changed the fate"
of Turkey.
For many analysts, the failed coup has above all hastened the authoritarian drift of the president, who considerably strengthened his powers in 2017 by replacing the parliamentary system with a strong presidential regime. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has led Turkey since 2003, saw the failed coup as
"an opportunity to accelerate the concentration of power in his hands,"
said a Western diplomat. Accusing a former ally, the preacher Fethullah Gülen, of plotting the putsch, Erdogan also launched a relentless crackdown on his suspected supporters, which has spread to the Prokurdic opposition and the critical media. The failed coup allowed Recep Tayyip Erdogan to
"justify the repression aimed at a broad opposition"
by arguing that
"Hostile groups are constantly seeking to harm"
Turkey, explains Soner Cagaptay, an expert at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy.
The repression is in full swing
Five years after the failed putsch and despite criticism, the repression is in full swing: suspected supporters of Fethullah Gülen continue to be arrested every week and the main pro-Kurdish party HDP, of which several deputies have been imprisoned, is the target of 'a prohibition procedure. The figures speak for themselves: since 2016, more than 300,000 people have been arrested in the fight against Fethullah Gülen's movement and nearly 3,000 sentenced to life imprisonment, according to the authorities. In addition, more than 100,000 people have been dismissed from public institutions, including some 23,000 soldiers and 4,000 magistrates, in purges of unprecedented scale.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that the fight against Fethullah Gülen's movement would continue
"until his last member is put out of harm's way
.
"
The hunt is also continuing abroad: the Turkish secret services have indeed carried out several operations in countries of Central Asia, Africa and the Balkans to forcibly bring back suspected supporters of Fethullah Gülen.
Ankara thus announced in early July that it had
"repatriated"
a Turkish teacher living in Kyrgyzstan, Orhan Inandi, who had vanished a few weeks earlier and whom the Turkish authorities present as part of the Gulenist movement.
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But Fethullah Gülen, who resides in the United States and denies any involvement in the attempted coup, remains elusive for the time being. Ankara has repeatedly requested his extradition, without success. This issue gave rise to tensions between Turkey and the United States, two countries whose relations have deteriorated since 2016. At the same time, Turkey has moved closer to Vladimir Putin's Russia and has pursued a more foreign policy. assertive, intervening militarily in several conflicts at the cost of growing tensions with its NATO partners. Erdogan has also systematically rejected criticism from the European Union regarding the degradation of the rule of law since the failed coup, denouncing a
"lack of empathy"
.
The celebrations on Thursday will also allow the Turkish president to beat the recall of his troops, as his popularity is eroding due to economic difficulties. Because having accumulated so much power after the failed putsch also has a
"flip side"
for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, underlines the Western diplomat.
“When things go wrong, it's harder to shift the blame onto others.”
