On July 15, 2016, an otherwise ordinary Friday night for citizens of Turkey was disrupted by images, sounds, and situations that have, unfortunately, become less extraordinary in recent decades: a coup d’état. Modern Turkey’s history has been marred by a series of coups, from the bloody to the “postmodern,” in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997. Military tanks rolled into the cities, fighter jets and helicopters fired ammunition. Soldiers blocked key nodes in transportation networks and attacked central state, intelligence, and police locations and media outlets. The leaders of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) immediately named those behind the coup, Fethullah Gülen and his followers, and called on ordinary people to come out in defense of democracy. In response, thousands ignored the curfew declared by the coup leaders and poured out to the streets, confronting armed soldiers and tanks, working with the police to catch and sometimes extrajudicially execute suspected...
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March 1, 2017
