In several key locations across Türkiye—especially in the capital Ankara and the bustling metropolis of Istanbul—burnt-out cars encased in glass and deep craters on roads serve as haunting reminders of a night that shook the republic nine years ago.
These visible scars mark the failed but meticulously planned coup attempt carried out by a faction of the Turkish military on July 15, 2016, against the civilian government. That night’s violence left 350 people dead and nearly 2,000 injured. A memorial near the presidential palace in Ankara, along with the Democracy Museum, now bears their names.
This date now holds immense significance in Türkiye’s modern history and is commemorated annually with great ceremony as the "Day of Democracy and National Unity."
Veteran Turkish journalist Mehmet Öz Türk remembers that night vividly. On July 15, 2016, he returned home to the outskirts of Ankara after a full day’s work. At the time, he was serving as chief editor of Anadolu Agency’s foreign language service.
After dinner, he turned on the television and saw tanks rolling across the Bosphorus Bridge, which links the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara in Istanbul. Alarm bells rang in his mind.
Without hesitation, he called for a car and rushed back to the office.
Ankara was still calm, unlike always-sleepless Istanbul, the capital tends to go quiet early. The coup attempt was not yet public knowledge. Upon reaching the newsroom and seeing other senior editors gathered in the corridor, he realised the coup had begun.
His thoughts flashed back to 36 years earlier when, as a student, he was forced into hiding after a similar military takeover. In those days, Turkish universities were battlegrounds between the hardline secularist Kemalist left and Islamist or liberal democratic groups.
Öz Türk, then a student at Ankara University, suffered persecution after the 1980 coup and spent nearly a decade in exile, drifting across countries, separated from family and friends. His anxiety that night was deeply personal.
Within minutes, the sound of fighter jets and explosions filled the air. Word spread that bombs were falling on the intelligence agency headquarters, the presidential palace, parliament, and the city centre.
Istanbul’s Bosphorus and Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges were sealed off. Several high-ranking officials, including Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar, were taken hostage at military headquarters.
Around 9.00 PM, putschists summoned General Salih Zeki Çolak, head of the Land Forces, to headquarters and arrested him. Air Force Chief Abidin Ünal was abducted from a wedding in Istanbul.
Akar was urged by his captors to back the coup and assume power like General Kenan Evren had done in 1980. They even offered to connect him by phone with Fethullah Gülen, the exiled cleric leading the Hizmet (Service) movement from the US.
But Akar refused, choosing instead to uphold constitutional authority. He was nearly strangled with a belt and eventually moved to Akıncı Air Base, where other senior officers were also being held.
Great Erdogan Escape
According to Ozturk, President Erdoğan at that time was vacationing with his family in the coastal resort town of Marmaris. Late that night, three military helicopters approached the hotel and began bombing.
Paratrooper commandos also started descending nearby.
But as documents show, they were too late—just 20 minutes earlier, Erdoğan had departed by helicopter for Dalaman Airport. He instructed the pilot to switch off the lights and fly low to avoid radar detection.
Skirmishes broke out between loyal special forces and rebel troops near the hotel.
Öztürk recalls that before fleeing, Erdoğan spoke briefly to a group of journalists in the hotel courtyard, condemning the coup and urging citizens to resist by taking to the streets. For unknown reasons, this statement was not broadcast.
However, after covering nearly 100 kilometres, Erdoğan reached Dalaman Airport and boarded a private jet. At 12.23 AM, he appeared live on CNN Türk via FaceTime, issuing a powerful appeal that triggered a flood of citizens onto the streets.
The Speaker of Parliament convened an emergency session, ordering all MPs to rush to the chamber. Tanks opened fire near the parliament building, which was also bombed from the air.
Meanwhile, Ankara’s Mayor, Melih Gökçek, ordered all municipal trucks—including heavy garbage vehicles—to block access to military bases, successfully slowing the rebels’ advance.
Around 1.00 AM, Erdoğan gave another phone interview to CNN Türk, urging citizens to ignore curfews and gather at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport. He announced that he, too, was en route to the city.
His plane had taken off from Dalaman at 11.47 PM and landed in Istanbul at 2.50 AM. Reports later emerged that the aircraft was targeted en route, but the pilot identified it as a Turkish Air Force flight, averting a shoot down. A US website had published its flight path, raising first suspicions of American complicity in the coup.
From 11.00 PM to midnight, helicopter strikes targeted police special forces and air force command centres in Ankara’s Gölbaşı district. The headquarters of Türksat, Türkiye’s main satellite operator, was also attacked.
At 11.50 PM, troops seized Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square. By 1.00 AM, tanks were still stationed inside the airport, and gunfire echoed through the terminal. The goal was to prevent Erdoğan’s arrival or to arrest him immediately. However, due to his televised address and the surging crowds, the military began retreating.
But in Ankara, by 3.00 AM, parliament remained under siege. A helicopter continued firing on the building. At 3.12 AM, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım declared that the government had regained control. Ankara was declared a no-fly zone, and any unauthorised aircraft would be shot down.
Upon landing in Istanbul, Erdoğan addressed the nation from inside the airport, where millions had gathered. At 6.30 AM, he emerged to declare, “In Türkiye, governments now change only through the ballot box. The military cannot run the state.”
He blamed the coup on Fethullah Gülen and his Hizmet movement, allegedly backed by foreign powers.
Rebel soldiers at Taksim Square and the Bosphorus Bridge surrendered to the police—perhaps the only time in history when the military yielded to civilians and police forces. By 5.18 AM, the government had regained full control of Atatürk Airport.
However, clashes at military headquarters in Ankara continued until 8.00 AM. Some 700 armed soldiers surrendered, while 150 were cornered by police. The coup had clearly collapsed.
Türkiye has witnessed four military interventions against civilian governments in its democratic era.
History of Military Coups
The first such intervention came in 1960, when the army ousted Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, tried him in court, and hanged him a year later. Subsequent coups followed in 1971, 1980, and 1997.
As staunch Kemalists, the military long saw itself as the guardian of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s reforms, particularly radical secularism, which opposes religious symbols and alignment with the West.
Most Turkish analysts argue that the credit—or blame—for implementing an aggressive French-style secularism lies more with İsmet İnönü, the country’s first prime minister and president from 1938 to 1950.
İnönü frequently invoked Atatürk’s name to legitimise his ideological impositions. Yet before leaving office, he approved the transition to multi-party elections—arguably his parting gift to Turkish democracy. Unlike the secularism practised in India, Turkish secularism has been a copy of French secularism, opposing religious symbols with an iron fist.
One of the key reasons for the 2016 coup’s failure was disarray among the rebels and overwhelming public support for Erdoğan. Moreover, Türkiye’s intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan—now the foreign minister—had received advance warning.
Some sources claim the plot was hatched in the US and detected by Russian intelligence, who tipped off Ankara.
According to veteran journalist Furkan Hamid, Fidan had rushed to military headquarters to meet Akar and Land Forces commander General Salih Zeki Çolak in the afternoon. His unexpected arrival spooked the plotters, prompting them to move the operation forward from 3.00 AM to 10.00 PM—a critical mistake.
One of the coup’s masterminds, General Semih Terzi, was shot and killed early on by Staff Sergeant Ömer Halisdemir. His death dealt a massive blow to the rebels’ morale and command structure.
These early disruptions left the coup fragmented and incoherent. Many soldiers involved were unaware of the operation’s true purpose and lost motivation when ordered to fire on civilians. Many surrendered instead.
Political scientist Naunihal Singh, in his book Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, argues that a key reason for the coup’s failure was the rebels’ inability to control the media or impose their own narrative.
Successful coups typically seize media outlets early to project an image of inevitability, persuading the public and even loyal soldiers to accept the new regime. But the putschists failed to seize Türksat or cut off television and mobile networks. This allowed Erdoğan to address the nation via FaceTime and appear live on TV.
Öz Türk recalls that at the Anadolu Agency, they received a fax that arrived late at night claiming a new administration was taking over. But no one showed up. The agency continued its coverage and broadcast statements from Erdoğan and other officials.
American Connection
Evidence of US involvement began to emerge months later. In November 2017, Turkish authorities issued an arrest warrant for Henri J. Barkey, a former director at the Wilson Centre’s Middle East Program, alleging CIA ties and involvement in coup planning while in Istanbul.
Similarly, Istanbul prosecutors sought the arrest of Graham E. Fuller, a former CIA officer and analyst on Islamic extremism, who had served as deputy chair of the US National Intelligence Council.
Authorities claimed he had helped plan the coup and tracked his presence in Türkiye before and after the failed putsch.
Though Western countries often promote democracy and civil liberties around the world—spending generously to back democratic movements in various regions—they are quick to abandon these principles when democracy no longer serves their strategic interests.
Adnan Menderes, Türkiye’s first democratically elected prime minister, led the country from 1950 to 1960 after winning a majority in the first multi-party elections. But on May 21, 1960, nearly 1,000 people—mostly military academy cadets and officers—held a silent march in Ankara against his government. Days later, Menderes was ousted in a military coup. On September 17, 1961, at the age of 62, he was executed by hanging on İmralı Island, which has since been renamed “Democracy Island.”
Menderes's perceived crime was restoring personal freedoms: he reopened mosques and passed legislation allowing the call to prayer (adhan) to be recited in Arabic once again.
Within weeks of taking office, he announced a general amnesty for all political prisoners. The lifting of media restrictions led to the emergence of a free press that, in the words of Time magazine, was “as free as the breeze from the Taurus Mountains.”
These sweeping reforms were seen as an existential threat by the hardline secularist establishment.
A similar episode occurred in neighbouring Iran in 1953, when the popular prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by Britain’s MI6 and the CIA.
Mossadegh was later tried for treason, sentenced to three years in prison, and kept under house arrest until his death. He was buried in the confines of his own home.
In Türkiye, the failure of the 2016 coup attempt triggered an unprecedented wave of arrests.
At least 40,000 people were detained, including more than 10,000 military personnel and 2,745 judges. Another 15,000 civil servants in the education sector were suspended. The teaching licenses of 21,000 private school teachers were revoked, as the government claimed they were loyal to the Gülen movement.
In total, more than 160,000 individuals were dismissed from their jobs over alleged links to Fethullah Gülen.
The coup's aftermath saw a gradual rollback of the military's longstanding role in Turkish political life. One significant reform included eliminating the military seat on the Constitutional Court.
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