Even if it wasn't staged (which it probably was), the big story here is that Erdogan is consolidating power by purging his enemies and expropriating whatever he can.

I wonder if this will be the final straw to torpedo Turkey's EU bid, and to some extent, if Erdogan even cares.

What on earth are you talking about?

Erdogan is a vile dictator who is imprisoning anybody who suggests he's not great, and who single handedly ended any meaningful notion of democracy in Turkey.

That's not conspiracy, it's just how it is.

It's morally abhorrent to compare criticism of his actions to 9/11 truth bullshit.

Never mind, some quick research shows that you are a pro-fascist troll who clearly knows that you're lying all the time. However godless fascist losers like you are fine with lying. No point in pretending you're a worthwhile human being.

> single handedly

Not single handedly. He had help and popular support from the 60% who voted yes in the referendum to give the Turkish president (currently Erdogan) superpowers. Of course, when you silence your adversaries it's not that hard.

Any party with law or justice in its name is quite the opposite.

According to the forensic analysis of the Constitutional Referendum https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.09839 this is not true. No had the majority.

>Any party with law or justice in its name is quite the opposite.

The same goes for "democracy", i.e the Democratic party in the US.

don't know why you're being downvoted for speaking the truth.

Cognitive dissonance hits especially hard in the land of the free.

so funny that these are all being downvoted. I guess people automatically think "trump supporter"(which I'm not) if you're critical of the democratic party.

Lets go through your points one by one:

>Erdogan is a vile dictator who is imprisoning anybody who suggests he's not great, and who single handedly ended any meaningful notion of democracy in Turkey.

Erdogan has a stronger democratic mandate than any other leader in Turkey's Republic era history. He won an overall majority of parliamentary seats in 2002 despite being imprisoned in 1999. I bring that up to show that in 2002 he had no power to rig elections or anything. He won, and continues to win because he is genuinely popular.

>It's morally abhorrent to compare criticism of his actions to 9/11 truth bullshit.

You are correct. I would not compare criticism of Erdogan or any politician to 9/11. I compared the unsubstantiated insinuation of the July 15th coup attempt being an inside job to 9/11 truth bullshit. I believe that is a very fair and obvious comparison.

>Never mind, some quick research shows that you are a pro-fascist troll who clearly knows that you're lying all the time. However godless fascist losers like you are fine with lying. No point in pretending you're a worthwhile human being.

What a trolly line of thought. Why is someone you disagree with automatically a fascist? Why are they automatically not 'worthwhile human beings?

General consensus of the west on the internet? Yeah , probably (https://www.reddit.com/search?q=turkey+coup)- because thats what they want to believe.

Remember when the general consensus among the same group was that Turkey was secretly funding ISIL and it was all about getting their hands on the measly dozen or so barrels that was being smuggled across the border? It was certainly the narrative the Russians were pushing and the Internet happily swallowed it.. Then suddenly Turkey became the only actual foreign country apart from Iran and Russia with boots on the ground actually fighting ISIL (although how much an effort Iranians and Russians actually put to fighting ISIL is arguable).. And the internet including you promptly forgot their conensus and moved.

Then the coup happened and we got to hear the tired rationalisations - "the military coup is to uphold democracy not to usurp it" (what absurd logic), "Democracy is not really that important, secularism is what matters", "Turkey is a special exception wrt to coups" and so on. Then the coup failed And now the west has latched on to a new conspiracy theory, with all the facts gone out the window.

There were likely elements within Turkey that either funded ISIS directly or provided indirect assistance to them as they've seen ISIS as a useful tool in the fight against the Kurds.

ISIS basically tied the hands of Syrian and Iraqi Kurds and prevented them from being able to exert any political or military pressure on Turkey and other contested territories.

For Tureky it's a win win, either ISIS crushes the Kurds or creates enough mess for Turkey to get involved and hen it can bomb the Kurds just as much as they bomb ISIS if not more.

People don't have visibility into that conflict as much as they do in others since Turkey seems to be able to keep a much better lid on the media and there seem to be far fewer Kurdish lobbies in the west than for some other groups.

The same and possibly much more could be said about Syria and Russia. Remember in the early days of the civil war when ISIL had just entered the Syrian theatre and was capturing territory? Back then ISIL seemed to target anti-Assad areas more than Assad.. Rebels would complain that the Syrian air force would soften rebel targets prior to ISIL assaults. In fact, look at who has benefited the most from the rise of ISIL, i would argue it is Assad. The west and Turkey have almost completely abandoned their mission of deposing him because of ISIL. Also Russia has hardly done much against ISIL (much less than Turkey it could be argued). But nobody talks about Syria (and by extension Russia) supporting ISIL.

I see where you're coming from and i admit there seems to have been murky dealings on some level between the two, but I think whatever connection may have existed between Turkey and ISIL is overstated. Undoubtedly Turkey's past open border policy had been used by ISIL, buts it had also been used by the other rebels and even the Kurds and western govts like the Americans. Also Turkey has other better client groups to do their bidding; in fact groups like Nusra front and Ahrar al sham have long been giving the Kurds a hard time. And unlike ISIL, none of these other groups have ever attacked Turkey.

I have never heard that but they definitely had lists of people to arrest ready. It may be a situation like 9/11. I don't think it was staged but Bush and Cheney had the Iraq plans ready to go.

The US has invasion plans for every country on the planet. Iraq was invaded on March 20th 2003 not the following Tuesday.

If not staged but it's likely the government knew about it in advance, e.g had an insider and let it happen in order to use it in its advantage.

I don't think "the west" (if there's even such a thing anymore..) is blaming Erdogan for being Islamist. It's that he's a de facto dictator and using religion to expand his power and rally up supporters. People in power using religion to get more power.. such a novel idea!

He's not a dictator yet, since he was elected but all evidence shows that he's not going to be leaving once his term is done, that's when he'll become a dictator.

I laughed a little while reading this comment. Of course the opposition party blames Gulen, they must be relieved that Erdogan blamed it on Gulen and not on secularists like CHP.

1. Don't get purged out of the establishment

2. Let the Islamist factions fight each other!

Well, he also purged secularist factions out of the administration, police, army etc. Just blame it on Gulen. He did so arbitrarily without any evidence whatsoever. And let's not forget about the HDP MPs removed from parliament and other HDP members harrassed.