{"id":23072,"date":"2016-07-16T14:44:53","date_gmt":"2016-07-16T21:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=23072"},"modified":"2016-07-16T14:46:15","modified_gmt":"2016-07-16T21:46:15","slug":"coup-fails-in-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/16\/coup-fails-in-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Coup Fails in Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have never liked Turkey's President Erdogan.  He has always struck me as a leader who apes our Republican Party by forcing his dogma onto people who do not want it.  Therefore, I paused when I first heard last night that a coup was underway to consider what position I should take on it.  I quickly decided to oppose the attempted coup, and subsequently learned that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton opposed it too.  This morning I learned that it has failed.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"0716Turkey-Military-Coup\"<\/p>\n

Forces loyal to Turkey's government fought on Saturday to crush the last remnants of a military coup attempt which collapsed after crowds answered President Tayyip Erdogan's call to take to the streets and dozens of rebels abandoned their tanks.<\/p>\n

One hundred and sixty-one people were killed, including many civilians, after a faction of the armed forces tried to seize power using tanks and attack helicopters. Some strafed the headquarters of Turkish intelligence and parliament in the capital, Ankara, and others seized a major bridge in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

Erdogan accused the coup plotters of trying to kill him and launched a purge of the armed forces, which last used force to stage a successful coup more than 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

"They will pay a heavy price for this," said Erdogan, who also saw off mass public protests against his rule three years ago. "This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army."<\/p>\n

A Turkish broadcaster reported that a purge of the judiciary was also underway…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From <Reuters<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

I'm not happy with Erdogan's response, either.  But my feelings about him have nothing to do with my decision to oppose the coup.  As much as I'd like to see him out of power, military force is not the way to remove a democratically elected leader. I would also oppose a military coup against a Republican government here, unless that government prevented free elections.  I hope the people of Turkey remove him at the ballot box.  If they don't, it's their country.<\/font><\/p>\n

On the other hand, several Republicans have implied support for the coup, saying that Obama opposed the coup, only because Obama is a Muslim.  If Erdogan were a pseudo-Christian, instead of a Muslim, they'd oppose the coup in horror.  <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have never liked Turkey's President Erdogan.  He has always struck me as a leader who apes our Republican Party by forcing his dogma onto people who do not want it.  Therefore, I paused when I first heard last night that a coup was underway to consider what position I should take on it.  I […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}