Basically, few police chiefs dismissed for Gulen affiliation were caught inside the tanks involved in the coup and there are videos of it.
If you were a Gulenist you would have claimed that this video is not what it isand try to be likeable so people who don't speak Turkish would choose to believe you.
A proper Gulenist would say that this video just shows a guy in a military uniform. What you should do is to google the name of the guy and find old articles with photos about him being dismissed from his job as a police chief.
There are reports about him committing suicide.
I admit to confusion. However considering who was behind the coup there are two leading hypotheses - Gulen or Erdogan, both widely suspected of being responsible by the Turks.
A main instigator was "General Mehmet Dişli, the brother of a long-serving MP with the ruling AK party, allegedly gave the order that set the coup in motion, sending army special forces officers to arrest the military’s senior command." (Guardian).
He's "a two-star general who happens to be the brother of Saban Dişli, a former vice president of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Saban is a close confidant of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan."
So that's a fairly direct connection for Erdogan being linked. Is there anything like that for Gulen? Like a coup leader being a brother of one of Gulen's mates? Also Gulen has preached peace throughout whereas Erdogan seemed quite happy to go kill Kurds when he felt it would help him politically.
That aside, I do not think being the brother of a former vice president means anything when there are overwhelming more evidence supporting Gulen hypothesis. Read press in Turkey (critical to Erdogan) for what I mean. I am still trying not to suggest Gulen movement is violent, but they did screw up on this one. He will also be responsible for the ramifications of this.
Your statement "happy to kill Kurds" is also absurd. I am not at all supporting nationalist tune of the government but come on, PKK started the fire by filling the streets of poor Kurdish towns with tons of explosives and detonating them without hesitation, putting Ak-47's to the hands of teenagers and forcing and threatening civilians to stay, destroying their houses and using them as human shield. I have zero sympathy to PKK for what they did to their own people.
>Ahead of new elections set for Nov. 1, Mr. Erdogan last month reignited a war with Kurdish separatists, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or P.K.K., in an apparent effort to rally support for the government and thus salvage his ambitions for continued authoritarian rule and greatly expanded powers.
Regards reading the Turkish press the recent "16 TV channels, 23 radio stations, 45 papers, 15 magazines and 29 publishers will be shut" and various reporters arrested stuff makes me wonder if there may be some bias there.
I would suggest reading articles by foreigners living in Turkey.
Try Claire Berlinsky, a British national and the biographer of Margaret Thatchet. She is living in Turkey since a decade and closely following the political science.
This coup attempt was unusual to Turks in that for twelve hours we didn't know who was behind the coup. Contrast that with the coup in 1980 where the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff appeared on state TV, and informed the public of their action.
Edit: Search & translate hurriyet.com or sozcu.com.tr's archives for details. The Hurriyet newspaper is more mainstream, trustworthy, and has been critical of Erdogan. Sozcu is vocally critical of Erdogan (and usually for good reason).
"Half an hour after the shooting started the British intelligence service GCHQ intercepted phone calls, e-mails and SMS from within the Turkish government apparatus saying that the purges would start next day and that Gülen should be presented as the mastermind of the coup"
Still too early to confirm since it's the only publication that claims this.
Given that all of the previous military coups in Turkey were carried out by the secularist military establishment, you need to present evidence beyond accusations that the Gulenist movement, an Islamist movement, is behind this one. Show us the quacking and walking.
For walking, multiple sources confirms that for years, they stole questions for army and police college entrance exams.
Of course also the statements of coup officials.
The quotation you point to has nothing to do with the coup at all, it's from the 90s and describes a totally different hypothetical situation, one in which his supporters have seized control of all state institutions. That is clearly not the case. It's Erdogan's AKP that has gradually seized control of all institutions in Turkey.
One or two weeks before the coup, some army officials in Izmir were detained linked with a previous army spy case and they were linked to Gulen. The supreme military council was about to be happening with the agenda of sacking multiple army officials related with him.
IMO, coup was not solely planned by Gulen, but they were involved significantly.
Lastly, again, check multiple coup officials' statements.
The 2013-2014 protests consisted of just about everyone who opposed Erdogan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Tur...
For people who followed the last 10 years of the Turkish politics, the Gulenist affiliation is obvious but I think it is still very hard to explain it to people who are exposed for the first time. Before Erdogan, the Turkish military was actively cracking down on the Gulenist infiltration and it is 40 years old subject with hard to believe but proved multiple times conspiracies.
Gulenists always abuse the benefit of doubt and as a secretive cult usually the evidences against them have some kind of explanation and all these strange coincidences are tagget as normal. After all, there is nothing stopping the Lottery from winning on the 1 2 3 4 5 6 numbers every time, its just improbable so it is not 100.000000% guarantied to be fraud.
Will you still support "democracy" then or will you be in favor of a coup?
Coup of 1980 destroyed Turkish left and opened the door to rightwing extremists. In 14-15 years after the coup, fundamentalists and nationalists pretty much seized the bureaucracy, which led to the raise of Erdogan and deterioration of secularism.
Now you're probably facing a Third Reich like Turkey :(
But not via a bloody coup. That night, half of the military elite turned against their own people, ordered opening fire to crowds and National Assembly. Some people died on the street in pajamas, think how impulsive people's response was against the coup.
Mentally, Turkey is a very separated country. There's almost no way to unite Erdogan followers with left wing secularists and Kurds. But we are all united against the coup and there are almost no doubt that Gulenists are behind this bloody adventure. For the last 17-18 years, various layers of Turkey came against Gulen and realized how brutal he is against any idea criticizing him. The last layer left was Erdogan's followers and they also saw the truth in the last 3 years in two different occasions.
Erdogan is still Erdogan, he was on his way to dictatorship and shows signs of using the situation in that way. His past actions makes us believe that. But we still can hope to overthrow him with an election, as we nearly did in June 2015. But there's no way to get rid of any general in power because of a bloody coup. Turkey got 3 successful coups in history and we can see clearly how those times held us back in the world scene. We don't want any more of that.