July 20, 2016

Turkish Coup Plot Had Saudi-UAE Support, Was Stopped Due To Early Discovery By Sultan's Loyalists

The collapsing monarchy of Saudi Arabia is afraid of the political threat represented by a popular and democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood regime in Turkey.

Angry Arab - Saudi-UAE role in the Turkish coup:
It seems that my early hunch was correct: today Mujtahid of Saudi Arabia confirms that the Saudi regime and the UAE regime were directly involved in the Turkish coup and that UAE supplied millions to Gulen movement, and that UAE and Saudi media (including Al-Arabiyya) were part of the propaganda tools of the coup according to the plot.
An excerpt from, "What went wrong with Turkey's WhatsApp coup" By Metin Gurcan, Al-Monitor, July 19, 2016:
The basic reason the coup failed was its premature birth. How? First, the coup was planned for a later date but was moved up. Then the rescheduled coup, which was to have started at 3 a.m. July 16, was moved up yet again by five hours, to around 10 p.m. July 15, after the coup attempt was discovered.

Well-placed sources in Ankara who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said coup forces were an assortment of members of the so-called Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization (FETO) — secularists who oppose the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; pragmatists who joined the plotters for career advancement and personal interests; soldiers who had to join under pressure or blackmail; and lower-ranking soldiers who couldn’t defy orders because of the TSK's absolute-obedience culture. The plan failed because they took action before the planned time. Why did they act so hastily?
The primary reason was because they knew the forthcoming Supreme Military Council, which decides on promotions and appointments of TSK generals and admirals, was set to convene the first week of August. Last year, in an Aug. 3 article for Al-Monitor titled "Shakeup expected for Turkish military leadership," I had written that one of the most important missions of newly appointed Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar would be to combat the Gulenists in the TSK, and that there were several lists circulating with names of such officers. The AKP government was favoring a purge of these officers, while the military command was advocating a phased, deliberate process based on solid evidence.
FETO partisans in the TSK had gotten away relatively unscathed from the 2015 council meeting, but there were sure signs that this year would be different.
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Why the night of July 15? Former four-star air force Commander Gen. Akin Ozturk, now accused of leading the coup, knew that the current head of the air force, Gen. Abidin Unal, and other key air force generals would all be at a wedding, which would give the air force freedom to act against the government.

Reports said the coup leaders had informed all participating units that they would launch operations at 5 a.m., and that as of 6 a.m. there would be a nationwide curfew.

Al-Monitor’s sources said coup leaders had planned to move at 3 a.m. to take over by 5 a.m., when people would be asleep and streets would be empty. But this didn’t work. Around 4 p.m. July 15, 11 hours before the coup was to start, the national intelligence service MIT learned from radio and telephone intercepts of TSK personnel known to be Gulenists that some units were gearing up. MIT informed the chief of general staff at 5 p.m. At a meeting at the chief of general staff headquarters, officials decided to close Turkish air space to all flights as of 6 p.m. and bar military units from leaving their barracks. While that order was being written, Land Forces Commander Gen. Salih Zeki Colak was called to the general staff headquarters.