The 2016 Turkish Coup Attempt

The 2016 Turkish coup attempt was an effort by a faction of the Turkish armed forces on the night of 15 July 2016 to take power from the government led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The group behind the attempt called itself the "Peace at Home Council" (Yurtta Sulh Konseyi). That night bridges in Istanbul were closed, the parliament building in Ankara was bombed, and media offices were seized. The attempt was halted between midnight and dawn on 16 July, after many officers and soldiers refused orders and civilians came out into the streets.

The death toll is most often given as 251 people, not counting those who took part in the attempt, along with more than 2,000 injured. The Turkish government held responsible the movement led by the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, who lived in the United States and whom Ankara refers to as FETÖ; Gülen denied any involvement. The United States did not grant Turkey's extradition request.

Course of the night

The attempt began in the late afternoon of 15 July, with tanks and fighter aircraft taking up positions at strategic sites in Ankara and Istanbul. A coup declaration was read out on the state broadcaster TRT. Erdoğan, who was away on holiday at the time, appeared on a private television channel via a mobile video link and called on people to take to the streets. Akıncı Air Base north of Ankara served as the command centre from which the group directed operations, and it later became central to the trials.

State of emergency and emergency decrees

On 20 July 2016 the government declared a nationwide state of emergency. On 21 July it notified the Council of Europe that it might derogate from some of its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, as permitted by Article 15. The state of emergency was renewed several times and was lifted in July 2018, after nearly two years.

The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, an advisory body on constitutional law, issued an opinion in December 2016 on emergency decrees 667–676. It noted that for more than two months the government had legislated by decree without parliamentary scrutiny, and that the measures taken were in practice irreversible. The commission accepted that the coup attempt had posed a genuine threat, but questioned the proportionality between that threat and the scale of the measures.

Dismissals and investigations

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a report in March 2018 on the effects of the state of emergency. It cited nearly 160,000 people detained over the 18-month period and 152,000 public employees dismissed, among them teachers, judges and lawyers. A further 22,474 people lost their jobs when private entities such as associations, trade unions and institutes were closed. The Turkish government set up a Commission of Inquiry to handle appeals against dismissals.

The US State Department's human rights report for 2018 estimated that more than 130,000 public employees had been dismissed or suspended, more than 80,000 citizens arrested or imprisoned, and more than 1,500 civil society organisations closed since the coup attempt. The differences between figures arise from the different periods counted and from differing definitions of "dismissal" and "suspension".

The trials

A large number of trials connected to the attempt were opened. In June 2019 a court in Ankara sentenced 17 former senior officers to aggravated life imprisonment, each 141 times over — a figure reflecting the number of deaths included in the case. Among those convicted was the former air force commander Akın Öztürk, accused of leading the "Peace at Home Council". Other cases, including the one concerning Akıncı base, produced many similar sentences.

Political consequences

After the attempt, 15 July was made a national commemoration day in Turkey. In 2017 a constitutional referendum was held that changed Turkey's system of government to a presidential one, transferring additional executive powers to the president. Analysts and international bodies disagreed over the link between the coup attempt and the constitutional change, with the government arguing the measures strengthened stability and critics arguing that the state of emergency was used to expand executive power.