In the early morning of July 16, 2016, Erdogan flew back to Istanbul from Marmaris, and in the darkness of the night, two F-16 fighters of the Turkish Air Force locked on the presidential plane, but somehow they missed the best opportunity to "behead" Erdogan.
No one expected that five years had passed and the impact of this coup d'état was still fermenting.
On October 23, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was very angry, and the consequences were very serious, he directly "blacklisted" the ambassadors of the United States, Germany, France and other 10 countries to Turkey, and said that Turkey did not welcome them, which caused shock to Western countries.
In the diplomatic realm, "unpopular" usually means that the next step is to be expelled. In Erdogan's blacklist, 7 ambassadors are from NATO. And Turkey itself is also a member of NATO, if you really drive them home, wouldn't it be a flood of water to wash away the Dragon King Temple, waiting to be seen as a joke.
Erdogan didn't care about this, as early as a few days ago, he angrily scolded the ambassadors of the ten countries, you people are old, why come to teach Turkey, our small place can not accommodate you these big Buddhas, where to go back and forth.
What he called "lessons" was a joint statement issued by the embassies of the ten Western countries in Turkey, asking Turkey to release Osman Kavala, a Turkish businessman in prison, on the grounds that the West has always advocated human rights, democracy and freedom.
The Kavala is no simple businessman, he was accused of involvement in the 2016 military coup, but he himself did not admit to the accusation, so the case has not ended so far. Supposedly, this is an internal matter within the Turkish state, and it has nothing to do with European and American countries, so why should they risk offending Erdogan and forcibly intervene in this matter.
To understand this problem, we must start with the attempted coup d'état that surged underneath.
On the night of July 15, 2016, the Turkish army staged a coup d'état, which, unlike previous ones, was no longer dominated by senior generals but by middle- and lower-level officers. At the beginning of the coup, rebel officers mobilized the army, controlled the radio, and issued speeches about the coup. One of the biggest bugs is that they failed to control the supreme leader.
After learning the news of the coup, Erdogan opened his most despised social software and began to broadcast live, calling on the Turkish people to take to the streets to resist the coup. An hour later, angry people took to the streets and killed more than a dozen rebels. This group of soldiers was also frightened not lightly, why not play cards according to the routine, the army has not yet moved, the people have come to take the lead first.
Subsequently, senior Turkish military generals spoke out against the coup, while other countries announced that they did not support the coup. International public opinion and public opinion have been established, and the rebellion can be put down with confidence, the government army quickly moved out and regained control of the territory occupied by the rebels, and Erdogan was able to return safely to Istanbul, and the rebel army was gone.
After the coup, Erdogan began a large-scale purge of the rebels. In addition to the military who participated in the coup, 2735 judges were dismissed and the gullum movement was completely purged of the power of the gulen movement in the judiciary.
Erdogan said in an interview that it was Gulen in the United States who remotely controlled the coup, and after his request for a U.S. handover was rejected, the diplomatic relations between the two countries cracked.
On the other hand, Turkey and Russia quickly mingled, with Erdogan saying that the coup officers who shot down the Russian plane last year were the work of coup officers, and Russia trumpeting Putin's recklessness and telling Erdogan about the coup intercepted by Russian intelligence, including the coup d'état soldiers who took a helicopter to Marmaris to assassinate Erdogan, who was on vacation. Sure enough, not long after Erdogan left, his holiday home was shelled.
Putin saved Erdogan's life, and the past grievances were written off. After that, Russia lifted sanctions against Turkey, and the two sides quickly resumed their previous friendly and cooperative relations in the diplomatic and trade fields.
Most importantly, the two countries reached an agreement on the situation in Syria, signed a memorandum of understanding, and Turkey agreed that Russia would assist the Kurdish forces to withdraw from the border area in northeast Syria, and then a joint force formed by the two countries would patrol the security zone. Allowing Turkey to release the Kurds shows how sincere Erdogan's cooperation is.
Although Gulen has said that he has nothing to do with the matter, there are various indications that the coup d'état has nothing to do with him. First of all, the demand and slogan of the coup soldiers was "peace", although it was the same as the claim of Mustafa Kemal, the father of the Turkish nation, but it was also a common slogan of the Gulen movement.
What's more, as early as a few years ago, when Erdogan and Gulen had not yet broken up, the two also joined forces to purge the top brass of the Turkish military, and since then, the senior military generals have basically been replaced by Erdogan's confidants, which is why this coup was initiated by a group of small soldiers, and the military top level did not support it.
The reason that ultimately led the political allies to part ways was not only the uneven division of the cake, but also the difference in their ideologies.
After the failure of the secularization of the military, the infiltration of the Gulen movement into state institutions became Erdogan's greatest threat. As a spiritual leader, Gulen pours some poisonous chicken soup to his fans from time to time, and you must learn to lie dormant and wait for the opportunity until it penetrates all the authorities in Turkey, and when the time comes, the whole of Turkey will be ours. It can be seen that Gu Lun is likely to have heard the story of Yue Wang's gouge.
Gulen seems to be more "pragmatic" than Erdogan, and he is very eager to join the European Union in order to gain Western recognition, especially to have good relations with the United States and rely on the trees to cool off. Since we have chosen the United States, we must keep a distance from Arab countries, especially Iran.
Ethiopia is different, his ambition to rebuild the Ottoman Empire is well known, the United States and Europe are what, when the Ottoman Empire unified Eurasia, the United States was not yet born. In order to realize Turkey's dream of great power, Erdogan aspires to become the leader of the Middle East and Arab countries. As for the United States, it is okay to use their power, but if they want to interfere in Turkey's internal affairs, it is absolutely impossible.
To sum up, the only one who has the motivation and ability to launch a rebellion is Gu Lun. Perhaps, Washington is also indispensable to this.
At that time, Erdogan vigorously developed manufacturing and construction, leading Turkey to achieve three times the per capita GDP growth, and had a strong public opinion base, which can be seen from the mobilization of the people to resist the rebels. The high-end play color revolution cannot be carried out, and the most unpopular military coup can only be chosen.
Loose monetary policy has allowed Turkey's economy to have a superficial boom for a while. However, the bubble will always burst one day, and in recent years, Turkey's housing prices have remained high, inflation has been rising year by year, and the rate of house price rise is far from keeping up with the rate of currency depreciation.
In 2020, the Turkish currency, the lira, depreciated by nearly 24% in a year, in stark contrast to the world's number one house price increase, as high as 30%. Since Turkey's GDP per capita peaked at $10,000, it has not been able to rush up, which economics calls the "middle-income trap."
Theoretically, after breaking through $10,000, if the economy continues to grow, it will enter the ranks of developed countries. If it has been stagnant, it will lead to economic turmoil and the outbreak of social contradictions. This is the dilemma that Erdogan is facing today, since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, Turkey's economic situation has become worse and worse, the public discontent has grown, and he has no basis for public opinion to be proud of.
How could Western countries miss such a good time for a color revolution, so Osman Kavala was pushed to the front of the stage. At the same time, the name of Russian opposition leader Navarine has also appeared frequently, and the meaning is self-evident. Putin is not easy to mess with, and he has long publicly stated that he does not want to carry out a color revolution in Russia.
For Erdogan, although he benefited from the military coup that year, Gülen could not rest assured for a day in the hands of the United States. Although he still has the two major insurances of refugee threat and geopolitical advantage in his hands, the situation is very different from five years ago.
Erdogan of course knew that Erdogan was aware of the Western countries' small ninety-nine in the Kavala incident, so he chose the most violent means as a counterattack. After all, Ethiopian is not a good-natured master either.