All inclusive, even coup
The fact that actually happened in Turkey with 15 on July 16, will argue for a long time. And these disputes began even before the events there ended (at least their active phase). Taking into account the fact that this is an attempt of a coup d’état, or a dangerous one, on the verge of a foul, but a successful provocation designed to finish off the opposition to Erdogan took place in Turkey, it is important for Russia to understand what happened there.
Fortunately, the immediate consequences will be the transformation of this NATO member country into a de facto Islamic republic, the establishment of a personal dictatorship regime for its unpredictable and ambitious president, the subordination of all branches of power to it and its receipt of all the neo-Ottoman revanchist plans that it still then prevented the implementation of the front of the army, judiciary and parliament, including in Syria, Iraq and the post-Soviet space.
In modern Russia, there are enough lobbying interests of Turkey, Erdogan or his Justice and Development Party. Just like the Islamists from the vast family of the Muslim Brotherhood, which in addition to the Turkish AKP includes the Palestinian Hamas, the Syrian "Brothers" opposing Bashar Assad, and the Egyptian "Brothers" leading the war against General Al-Sisi’s regime.
It is not by chance that the voluntary (or paid) lawyers of Turkey and Erdogan immediately after the reports about the “putsch of the military” began a campaign in the domestic media that the Russian plane, the destruction of which caused an acute crisis in relations between Moscow and Ankara, was not shot down by direct order of the President (which was the only one in Turkey that could decide on this), but as a result of the unauthorized actions of the military.
Understanding exactly what internal political processes are currently underway in Turkey, including based on eyewitness accounts. Tens of thousands of Russian citizens in this country live on a permanent basis. Millions visited her annually before the rupture of relations in the tourism sector due to the aircraft crisis. No matter how Turkey changes, its relations with Russia in the economy are significant enough for both countries to come to naught. Although in today's conditions, megaprojects like the Turkish Stream or Akkuyu nuclear power plants would be extremely risky and hardly justified from the point of view of the prospects for which they were designed. Fortunately, current events give every reason to abandon them, referring to the circumstances of force majeure (another question is whether domestic departments will be ready to abandon the planned multi-billion investments from the state budget of the Russian Federation).
The flow of information from Turkey fills the information space. At the same time, it is almost impossible to extract information from it about the real processes taking place in the military and political elite of this country. Meanwhile, much of what is happening there determines not only Turkey’s present and future, but also its relations with its neighbors, including Russia. It is on these processes that the continuation of Ankara’s course towards European integration or its termination, the level of support for political Islamism in the international arena and, ultimately, relations with the countries of the Islamic world, the European Union and the United States depend. The materials prepared for the Institute of the Middle East by its experts Yu. B. Shcheglovin and I. I. Starodubtsev allow to fill in some of the most significant gaps mentioned above.
Few people outside of Turkey (and a little more in this country itself) know that there is a purge of the ranks of the main secret service of MIT. Meanwhile, the plans of the Turkish president are a radical change in the leadership of this service. Her perennial leader Hakan Fidan, one of the people closest to Erdogan and the executor of his most delicate tasks, is tipped as Ambassador to Japan. So far this appointment has been delayed both due to the internal political situation and because he wants to leave as ambassador to the United States. His deputy, Ismail Hakki Moussa, who, in the period of Fidan’s desire to resign and build his own political career on the eve of parliamentary elections in 2015, was acting head of the MIT, has already been appointed ambassador to Paris.
Substitutions in the Kurdish field
Despite the fact that France is a landmark country for Turkey, by bureaucratic measures such a move means a drop in the career ladder, more precisely, an honorary exile before retirement. At the same time, Musa came to the post of deputy Fidan after he worked as the Turkish ambassador in Brussels from 2011 to 2012 a year. In this position, he oversaw the MIT operations to eliminate emissaries and cell management of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Western European countries. Having succeeded in this field, he was transferred to the center. As Deputy Fidan, he first helped him establish a truce with the PKK, and after his breakdown he oversaw the physical neutralization of the PKK leaders in Turkey. There is every reason to believe that it was he who was the organizer of the resonant terrorist attack in Suruç when the pro-Kurdish rally was blown up.
Musa was recruiting jihadi agents, then sending them to Syria and using provocative resonant terrorist acts in Turkey to organize them. In addition, Ismail Hakki Musa oversaw an attempt to create an analogue of the Kurdish Taliban in northern Syria about two years ago, the backbone of which was the former PKK fighters who had embarked on the path of jihad. This attempt was suppressed by supporters of the Syrian Kurdish Party of the Democratic Union (PDS). Thus, it is clear that Erdogan completely gets rid of the leadership of MIT, which was previously actively involved in solving the Kurdish problem and maintaining contacts with jihadist groups in Syria.
Note that the former Prime Minister A. Davotoglu and the same Fidan at one time appealed to the Turkish President with a demand to change the policy regarding the Kurds and to reach a truce with them. It cost Davotoglu post. The resignation is very likely to overtake Fidana. Does this mean, as well as the disgrace of Musa, that Ankara will begin to transform the policy regarding the Kurdish problem? Probably. But only after the referendum on amending the constitution. Otherwise, there is a high probability that the nationalists will refuse to support President Erdogan. Any flirting with the Kurds means discontent of this part of the population, which now provides its electoral base. The immediate conclusion of peace with the Kurds, which was proposed by Davotoglu and Fidan, was rejected by Erdogan not because of the inferiority of the idea itself, but solely because of its untimelyness for him personally.
What the Turkish president is doing to improve relations with Israel and Russia is nothing but preparing the ground for a fateful referendum and turning Turkey from a parliamentary republic into a presidential one. For this transformation of his views, Moscow can thank the European Union, which also through voting in the Bundestag on the issue of Germany’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide articulated a refusal to provide Ankara with a visa-free regime, and especially from Turkey’s early accession to the EU. This was Erdogan's main trump card in the processing of his electorate on the eve of the referendum. In the case of obtaining a visa-free regime, the Turks would have voted en masse for the proposed changes to the constitution. This did not happen, and the UK referendum on leaving the EU reinforced the feeling of the failure of Turkish policy in the European direction. Erdogan had to look for new trumps. They were the restoration of relations with Russia and Israel. In each case, its own, but purely economic reasons.
The Kurdish issue, or rather, the easing or complete cessation of the Kurdish terror, which has become increasingly reminiscent of the classical guerrilla war, is another backup trump card for the Turkish president to ease domestic tension in the country and reduce investment risks. However, the Kurds no longer trust either Fidana or Musa, whom they accuse of killing their functionaries in Europe and Turkey. New faces are needed who can start negotiations from scratch and will not annoy the other side. And in order for them to appear and receive the appropriate powers, the old team responsible for the Kurdish direction must be removed from the field.
Fidan’s plan “where the whip, where the carrot” is to pacify the Kurds did not work. And it will not work due to the fact that Turkish Kurds received, in addition to Iraqi Kurdistan, a rear base in the north of Syria. This made the guerrilla war in the conditions of continuing the logistical support of the PKK cells in Turkey eternal. Ankara is not in a position to eliminate the rear base in Syria for many reasons, one of which is the open support of the PDS from the United States. Washington believes the Kurds are the main pillar in Syria "on the ground" in opposition to the IG banned in Russia. This is evidenced by the direction to the north-east of Syria at the location of the Kurdish detachments of American troops to carry out the operation to seize Raqqa.
You can stop this process or at least influence it only politically, which forces Erdogan to alter his position. It is painful for him, but even more destructive for him is the loss of personal power and the withdrawal into political non-existence. Perhaps this is the leitmotif of all his maneuvers both within Turkey and abroad. And this can explain all the oddities of the failed military coup, provided that we consider it from the point of view of the achievement by the President of Turkey with his help of personal goals of basic importance to him. It should not be forgotten that his career took place as a politician representing Islamist Turkey. The Turkish army throughout the newest stories This country was the main and consistent enemy of the Islamists.
The generals just shocked
At the time of writing this article, the centers of confrontation between loyalists and supporters of regime change in Turkey remained, but it was clear that a military coup did not take place. Despite the abundance of information thrown out in the media, and mass arrests, neither the number nor the composition of the leaders and the goals of the failed coup is unknown. According to some reports, this is a military prosecutor and a group of senior officers of the 1 th field army in Istanbul and the 4 th army corps in Ankara.
The degree of participation in the events of the Chief of the General Staff of the armed forces, H. Akar, is unclear. He was then taken hostage, then released and took up his duties. Then it was reported that U. Dundar became the acting chief of the General Staff. This indicated that Acar was either injured or himself participated in the attempted putsch. And in this connection, the secret journey of two emissaries of Akar to Damascus at the end of May appears in a different light. On behalf of Assad, the former head of military intelligence I. Peking and the nationalist D. Perenchek met as suspects in the Ergenekon coup d'état case. Experts talked about Erdogan’s attempt to establish a dialogue with Damascus, but now there are doubts that he knew about this visit.
However, this particular. Essentially another. When in recent months domestic political analysts had the theme of a military coup in Turkey, almost everyone agreed that this was unlikely: the army was weakened by serious purges (it was cleaned with equal zeal from both supporters of Ataturk’s line and those of like-minded F. Gulen) demoralized and forever lost ambition to return to the role of the main guarantor of the constitution, as in the good old days.
At the same time, the variant of the attempted coup was quite probable on the part of both Gulen, whose number of followers in state and law enforcement agencies is enough to do this, as well as representatives of the old school military who did not accept Erdogan’s attempts to minimize the role of the army, monopolize power in his hands and secure it by changing the constitution.
These conclusions were pushed by Erdogan’s cautious steps on the question of organizing an intervention in Syria to take control of the “Kurdish buffer” in the north of this country. He was several times close to the realization of such a scenario, but he was stopped by the fronde of the army command on this issue. The Turkish President was clearly not sure about the position of the military, who clearly gave signals that they would not fight in Syria. When the army gives such signals, it is clear that not everything is calm in the country. As far as only the future will tell, it is possible - the nearest. Since Erdogan’s victory may well turn out to be Pyrrhic, it is precisely because he is clearly set on ruthless reprisals against the opposition, true or imaginary, and requires blood. More precisely, the introduction of the death penalty. Which, if he receives the consent of the parliament, will more than likely be applied to the opponents of the Turkish president, regardless of the degree of their real guilt.
Judging by what was and is observed in Turkey, it is obvious that at the first stage almost all of the military command of this country supported the opposition against the president in one way or another. Who is the action. Who is silent. It was important for everyone to know exactly the most important and fundamental thing: whether Erdogan was killed or not. It was only after it became clear that he was alive that military leaders of the highest ranks began to distance themselves from the rebels. And this indicates that the policy of Erdogan and his attempts to transform the constitution have a serious opposition among the Turkish military, and if taken broader - among the old elite of the country. This fronde has strong roots, and in this case we would not dare to assert that the purges of the army after the incident would radically change this situation.
The power swayed, the sultan resisted
The attempt of the coup right now is not connected with the time of Erdogan’s rest at sea. It cannot be ruled out that something else has pushed the rebels to speak. The impetus for the coup attempt was a drastic change in the country's foreign policy course undertaken by Erdogan last month. And not because the military (and the representatives of the old elite behind them) oppose the normalization of Turkey’s bilateral relations with Russia and Israel. This transformation of the foreign policy course revealed the prospects for improving the Turkish economy and its exit from the stage of permanent quarrel with all of its geographical neighbors.
Opponents of Erdogan inside the country relied on his further political isolation, economic stagnation of Turkey, a long and hopeless war with the Kurds, failure of promises to liberalize the visa regime with the EU and other events from the category “the worse the better.” All of this was to ensure the failure of the idea of transforming the constitution in a referendum, and then the defeat in the parliamentary elections of the ruling party and, as a result, Erdogan’s resignation. The gap with Russia, in addition to other failures in the foreign and domestic policy of the Turkish president, gave impetus to the growth of a critical mass of the discontented. Against the background of Turkey’s complex relations with Iran, Egypt and Israel, not to mention the country's participation in the Syrian civil war, this could have become a straw breaking the camel’s back.
If one adheres to the version that the coup attempt was not the result of the work of the special services in the opposition environment, the conclusion is: when it became clear that Erdogan could step on the throat of his own song for the sake of personal power, it became obvious to the organizers of the conspiracy: to stop the Turkish president’s winning move on the economic recovery in the framework of the normalization of relations with Russia and Israel after the failure of his flirting with the EU, can only rebellion. They tried to implement it within their professionalism.
Does this mean that we are witnessing the end of the era of power ambitions of the Turkish military? Hardly. Remains on the agenda (repressions only reinforce it) their discontent. There is a desire to prevent Erdogan from becoming a usurper. Together with the situation in Syria, the serious differences in the leadership of the Justice and Development Party, the Kurdish issue, this means an institutional crisis of the architecture of power in Turkey, which is far from being overcome. In this case, the coup, of course, will play into Erdogan’s hand in an attempt to get electoral support and hold a referendum on constitutional change as soon as possible.
The fruits of a victorious disaster
What trends can be assumed for the near future in Russian-Turkish relations? On the one hand, the repressions in the army will weaken it and undermine the loyalty of the elite to Erdogan. With a negative impact on Turkish influence in Syria, it will weaken support for Aleppo and the Azaz-Jarablus border corridor, which the Islamists had until recently, and simplify the tasks of the Syrian army and Kurdish militias to take these areas under control. Cooling Ankara’s relations with Washington, accused by Erdogan (rightly or not, not so important) in supporting the coup attempt, which requires the United States to extradite his former ally, who has lived there for one and a half decades, and now one of his main critics, Gulen, will contribute to this.
The prospects for issuing a well-known Muslim spiritual authority, who once sharply condemned the 9 / 11 act of terrorism, are unrealistic for the authoritarian leader of Turkey. However, this demand itself significantly weakens the position of the Turkish president in the American elite. Indicative in this regard is the demarche with regard to the Incirlik base of the Turkish leadership and the ban on the US Air Force to use it to attack IG. This clarifies a lot about how NATO works and how much America can rely on Turkey as its regional ally. However, for the VKS of the Russian Federation in Syria, this is no problem at all ...
Fortunately, the immediate consequences will be the transformation of this NATO member country into a de facto Islamic republic, the establishment of a personal dictatorship regime for its unpredictable and ambitious president, the subordination of all branches of power to it and its receipt of all the neo-Ottoman revanchist plans that it still then prevented the implementation of the front of the army, judiciary and parliament, including in Syria, Iraq and the post-Soviet space.
In modern Russia, there are enough lobbying interests of Turkey, Erdogan or his Justice and Development Party. Just like the Islamists from the vast family of the Muslim Brotherhood, which in addition to the Turkish AKP includes the Palestinian Hamas, the Syrian "Brothers" opposing Bashar Assad, and the Egyptian "Brothers" leading the war against General Al-Sisi’s regime.
It is not by chance that the voluntary (or paid) lawyers of Turkey and Erdogan immediately after the reports about the “putsch of the military” began a campaign in the domestic media that the Russian plane, the destruction of which caused an acute crisis in relations between Moscow and Ankara, was not shot down by direct order of the President (which was the only one in Turkey that could decide on this), but as a result of the unauthorized actions of the military.
Understanding exactly what internal political processes are currently underway in Turkey, including based on eyewitness accounts. Tens of thousands of Russian citizens in this country live on a permanent basis. Millions visited her annually before the rupture of relations in the tourism sector due to the aircraft crisis. No matter how Turkey changes, its relations with Russia in the economy are significant enough for both countries to come to naught. Although in today's conditions, megaprojects like the Turkish Stream or Akkuyu nuclear power plants would be extremely risky and hardly justified from the point of view of the prospects for which they were designed. Fortunately, current events give every reason to abandon them, referring to the circumstances of force majeure (another question is whether domestic departments will be ready to abandon the planned multi-billion investments from the state budget of the Russian Federation).
The flow of information from Turkey fills the information space. At the same time, it is almost impossible to extract information from it about the real processes taking place in the military and political elite of this country. Meanwhile, much of what is happening there determines not only Turkey’s present and future, but also its relations with its neighbors, including Russia. It is on these processes that the continuation of Ankara’s course towards European integration or its termination, the level of support for political Islamism in the international arena and, ultimately, relations with the countries of the Islamic world, the European Union and the United States depend. The materials prepared for the Institute of the Middle East by its experts Yu. B. Shcheglovin and I. I. Starodubtsev allow to fill in some of the most significant gaps mentioned above.
Few people outside of Turkey (and a little more in this country itself) know that there is a purge of the ranks of the main secret service of MIT. Meanwhile, the plans of the Turkish president are a radical change in the leadership of this service. Her perennial leader Hakan Fidan, one of the people closest to Erdogan and the executor of his most delicate tasks, is tipped as Ambassador to Japan. So far this appointment has been delayed both due to the internal political situation and because he wants to leave as ambassador to the United States. His deputy, Ismail Hakki Moussa, who, in the period of Fidan’s desire to resign and build his own political career on the eve of parliamentary elections in 2015, was acting head of the MIT, has already been appointed ambassador to Paris.
Substitutions in the Kurdish field
Despite the fact that France is a landmark country for Turkey, by bureaucratic measures such a move means a drop in the career ladder, more precisely, an honorary exile before retirement. At the same time, Musa came to the post of deputy Fidan after he worked as the Turkish ambassador in Brussels from 2011 to 2012 a year. In this position, he oversaw the MIT operations to eliminate emissaries and cell management of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Western European countries. Having succeeded in this field, he was transferred to the center. As Deputy Fidan, he first helped him establish a truce with the PKK, and after his breakdown he oversaw the physical neutralization of the PKK leaders in Turkey. There is every reason to believe that it was he who was the organizer of the resonant terrorist attack in Suruç when the pro-Kurdish rally was blown up.
Musa was recruiting jihadi agents, then sending them to Syria and using provocative resonant terrorist acts in Turkey to organize them. In addition, Ismail Hakki Musa oversaw an attempt to create an analogue of the Kurdish Taliban in northern Syria about two years ago, the backbone of which was the former PKK fighters who had embarked on the path of jihad. This attempt was suppressed by supporters of the Syrian Kurdish Party of the Democratic Union (PDS). Thus, it is clear that Erdogan completely gets rid of the leadership of MIT, which was previously actively involved in solving the Kurdish problem and maintaining contacts with jihadist groups in Syria.
Note that the former Prime Minister A. Davotoglu and the same Fidan at one time appealed to the Turkish President with a demand to change the policy regarding the Kurds and to reach a truce with them. It cost Davotoglu post. The resignation is very likely to overtake Fidana. Does this mean, as well as the disgrace of Musa, that Ankara will begin to transform the policy regarding the Kurdish problem? Probably. But only after the referendum on amending the constitution. Otherwise, there is a high probability that the nationalists will refuse to support President Erdogan. Any flirting with the Kurds means discontent of this part of the population, which now provides its electoral base. The immediate conclusion of peace with the Kurds, which was proposed by Davotoglu and Fidan, was rejected by Erdogan not because of the inferiority of the idea itself, but solely because of its untimelyness for him personally.
What the Turkish president is doing to improve relations with Israel and Russia is nothing but preparing the ground for a fateful referendum and turning Turkey from a parliamentary republic into a presidential one. For this transformation of his views, Moscow can thank the European Union, which also through voting in the Bundestag on the issue of Germany’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide articulated a refusal to provide Ankara with a visa-free regime, and especially from Turkey’s early accession to the EU. This was Erdogan's main trump card in the processing of his electorate on the eve of the referendum. In the case of obtaining a visa-free regime, the Turks would have voted en masse for the proposed changes to the constitution. This did not happen, and the UK referendum on leaving the EU reinforced the feeling of the failure of Turkish policy in the European direction. Erdogan had to look for new trumps. They were the restoration of relations with Russia and Israel. In each case, its own, but purely economic reasons.
The Kurdish issue, or rather, the easing or complete cessation of the Kurdish terror, which has become increasingly reminiscent of the classical guerrilla war, is another backup trump card for the Turkish president to ease domestic tension in the country and reduce investment risks. However, the Kurds no longer trust either Fidana or Musa, whom they accuse of killing their functionaries in Europe and Turkey. New faces are needed who can start negotiations from scratch and will not annoy the other side. And in order for them to appear and receive the appropriate powers, the old team responsible for the Kurdish direction must be removed from the field.
Fidan’s plan “where the whip, where the carrot” is to pacify the Kurds did not work. And it will not work due to the fact that Turkish Kurds received, in addition to Iraqi Kurdistan, a rear base in the north of Syria. This made the guerrilla war in the conditions of continuing the logistical support of the PKK cells in Turkey eternal. Ankara is not in a position to eliminate the rear base in Syria for many reasons, one of which is the open support of the PDS from the United States. Washington believes the Kurds are the main pillar in Syria "on the ground" in opposition to the IG banned in Russia. This is evidenced by the direction to the north-east of Syria at the location of the Kurdish detachments of American troops to carry out the operation to seize Raqqa.
You can stop this process or at least influence it only politically, which forces Erdogan to alter his position. It is painful for him, but even more destructive for him is the loss of personal power and the withdrawal into political non-existence. Perhaps this is the leitmotif of all his maneuvers both within Turkey and abroad. And this can explain all the oddities of the failed military coup, provided that we consider it from the point of view of the achievement by the President of Turkey with his help of personal goals of basic importance to him. It should not be forgotten that his career took place as a politician representing Islamist Turkey. The Turkish army throughout the newest stories This country was the main and consistent enemy of the Islamists.
The generals just shocked
At the time of writing this article, the centers of confrontation between loyalists and supporters of regime change in Turkey remained, but it was clear that a military coup did not take place. Despite the abundance of information thrown out in the media, and mass arrests, neither the number nor the composition of the leaders and the goals of the failed coup is unknown. According to some reports, this is a military prosecutor and a group of senior officers of the 1 th field army in Istanbul and the 4 th army corps in Ankara.The degree of participation in the events of the Chief of the General Staff of the armed forces, H. Akar, is unclear. He was then taken hostage, then released and took up his duties. Then it was reported that U. Dundar became the acting chief of the General Staff. This indicated that Acar was either injured or himself participated in the attempted putsch. And in this connection, the secret journey of two emissaries of Akar to Damascus at the end of May appears in a different light. On behalf of Assad, the former head of military intelligence I. Peking and the nationalist D. Perenchek met as suspects in the Ergenekon coup d'état case. Experts talked about Erdogan’s attempt to establish a dialogue with Damascus, but now there are doubts that he knew about this visit.
However, this particular. Essentially another. When in recent months domestic political analysts had the theme of a military coup in Turkey, almost everyone agreed that this was unlikely: the army was weakened by serious purges (it was cleaned with equal zeal from both supporters of Ataturk’s line and those of like-minded F. Gulen) demoralized and forever lost ambition to return to the role of the main guarantor of the constitution, as in the good old days.
At the same time, the variant of the attempted coup was quite probable on the part of both Gulen, whose number of followers in state and law enforcement agencies is enough to do this, as well as representatives of the old school military who did not accept Erdogan’s attempts to minimize the role of the army, monopolize power in his hands and secure it by changing the constitution.
These conclusions were pushed by Erdogan’s cautious steps on the question of organizing an intervention in Syria to take control of the “Kurdish buffer” in the north of this country. He was several times close to the realization of such a scenario, but he was stopped by the fronde of the army command on this issue. The Turkish President was clearly not sure about the position of the military, who clearly gave signals that they would not fight in Syria. When the army gives such signals, it is clear that not everything is calm in the country. As far as only the future will tell, it is possible - the nearest. Since Erdogan’s victory may well turn out to be Pyrrhic, it is precisely because he is clearly set on ruthless reprisals against the opposition, true or imaginary, and requires blood. More precisely, the introduction of the death penalty. Which, if he receives the consent of the parliament, will more than likely be applied to the opponents of the Turkish president, regardless of the degree of their real guilt.
Judging by what was and is observed in Turkey, it is obvious that at the first stage almost all of the military command of this country supported the opposition against the president in one way or another. Who is the action. Who is silent. It was important for everyone to know exactly the most important and fundamental thing: whether Erdogan was killed or not. It was only after it became clear that he was alive that military leaders of the highest ranks began to distance themselves from the rebels. And this indicates that the policy of Erdogan and his attempts to transform the constitution have a serious opposition among the Turkish military, and if taken broader - among the old elite of the country. This fronde has strong roots, and in this case we would not dare to assert that the purges of the army after the incident would radically change this situation.
The power swayed, the sultan resisted
The attempt of the coup right now is not connected with the time of Erdogan’s rest at sea. It cannot be ruled out that something else has pushed the rebels to speak. The impetus for the coup attempt was a drastic change in the country's foreign policy course undertaken by Erdogan last month. And not because the military (and the representatives of the old elite behind them) oppose the normalization of Turkey’s bilateral relations with Russia and Israel. This transformation of the foreign policy course revealed the prospects for improving the Turkish economy and its exit from the stage of permanent quarrel with all of its geographical neighbors.
Opponents of Erdogan inside the country relied on his further political isolation, economic stagnation of Turkey, a long and hopeless war with the Kurds, failure of promises to liberalize the visa regime with the EU and other events from the category “the worse the better.” All of this was to ensure the failure of the idea of transforming the constitution in a referendum, and then the defeat in the parliamentary elections of the ruling party and, as a result, Erdogan’s resignation. The gap with Russia, in addition to other failures in the foreign and domestic policy of the Turkish president, gave impetus to the growth of a critical mass of the discontented. Against the background of Turkey’s complex relations with Iran, Egypt and Israel, not to mention the country's participation in the Syrian civil war, this could have become a straw breaking the camel’s back.
If one adheres to the version that the coup attempt was not the result of the work of the special services in the opposition environment, the conclusion is: when it became clear that Erdogan could step on the throat of his own song for the sake of personal power, it became obvious to the organizers of the conspiracy: to stop the Turkish president’s winning move on the economic recovery in the framework of the normalization of relations with Russia and Israel after the failure of his flirting with the EU, can only rebellion. They tried to implement it within their professionalism.
Does this mean that we are witnessing the end of the era of power ambitions of the Turkish military? Hardly. Remains on the agenda (repressions only reinforce it) their discontent. There is a desire to prevent Erdogan from becoming a usurper. Together with the situation in Syria, the serious differences in the leadership of the Justice and Development Party, the Kurdish issue, this means an institutional crisis of the architecture of power in Turkey, which is far from being overcome. In this case, the coup, of course, will play into Erdogan’s hand in an attempt to get electoral support and hold a referendum on constitutional change as soon as possible.
The fruits of a victorious disaster
What trends can be assumed for the near future in Russian-Turkish relations? On the one hand, the repressions in the army will weaken it and undermine the loyalty of the elite to Erdogan. With a negative impact on Turkish influence in Syria, it will weaken support for Aleppo and the Azaz-Jarablus border corridor, which the Islamists had until recently, and simplify the tasks of the Syrian army and Kurdish militias to take these areas under control. Cooling Ankara’s relations with Washington, accused by Erdogan (rightly or not, not so important) in supporting the coup attempt, which requires the United States to extradite his former ally, who has lived there for one and a half decades, and now one of his main critics, Gulen, will contribute to this.
The prospects for issuing a well-known Muslim spiritual authority, who once sharply condemned the 9 / 11 act of terrorism, are unrealistic for the authoritarian leader of Turkey. However, this demand itself significantly weakens the position of the Turkish president in the American elite. Indicative in this regard is the demarche with regard to the Incirlik base of the Turkish leadership and the ban on the US Air Force to use it to attack IG. This clarifies a lot about how NATO works and how much America can rely on Turkey as its regional ally. However, for the VKS of the Russian Federation in Syria, this is no problem at all ...
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