it’s the 4th day of the purge.  the turkish purge of 2016, in its fourth day, finally surpassed the installments of the purge series, and, is far, far more bloodier and terrifying: as of today, the body count hit 49,321.  let’s round it up to 50,000.  50,000 people lost their jobs, were forced to resign, etc, and are about to get persecuted.  i am not saying all were innocent– i am sure there were some bad apples in the basket, but 50,000?  imagine the US government purging 50,000 government employees overnight?  the number is mind boggling.

the 50,000 allegedly has links to the gulen movement– a movement designated as a terrorist group by the turkish government.  now, purging 50,000 potential “terrorists” is a good soundbyte and makes sense in first blush.  but, when you look at who was purged, it is not only the suspected gulen followers, but, anyone and everyone who doesn’t support the erdogan government.  from religious minorities (not talking about the jews– they were purged long ago), but, different sects of islam, ethnic minorities, anyone with dissenting voices or anyone affiliated with them.

let’s look at the ramifications of this humongous purge:  at least 15,200 of the purged were in education, including 1,500 university deans.  15,200 teachers (including private school teachers who had their teaching licenses yanked), deans, professors, administrators, and everyone in between.  as with all the other purges in the AKP and erdogan regime, those 15,200 will be replaced with their “people”.  then the 2,000 judges and prosecutors that were purged over the weekend.  the list goes on and on.  after this last purge wave, the entire turkish government and education, will be one huge and happy erdogan cadre.

moreover, until the vacancies are filled, and the new appointments gain sufficient experience (presuming that they have the minimum qualifications– after all, how can you fill up a 50,000 vacancy overnight with qualified candidates?), the infrastructure may crumble, the economy could tank, and, the country’s security is susceptible at best.

but, mr. erdogan and AKP are confident.  they know what they want and they are getting it.  as mr. erdogan said immediately after the coup attempt, the revolt “was a great gift from allah” to him and his followers”.

and the purge is nothing but another solid step towards a totalitarian islamic state (slight oxymoron here) after the first official flirtations with mr. erdogan’s new and emerging revolutionary guard.

democracies work with checks and balances– with checks and balances, dictatorships, capricious administrations, corruption, favoritism, discrimination, persecutions of minorities may be prohibited or at least minimized.

the most traditional way of checks and balances stem from the separation of powers– judiciary, legislative and executive bodies should work independently and check each other’s actions.

if one person or persons take control of all three powers, ie. judiciary, legislation and the executive branch, then, there can be no democracy, no due process of the law, no equality, no liberty, no pursuit of happiness or no justice for all, except a select few.

and, this is precisely the threat of these purges.  as well as their perceived raison d’etre.

the question begs itself:  how did 50,000 gulen followers (actually probably the double or triple of that, given the past and future purges) were placed in the turkish government, under the micromanaging nose of mr. erdogan and his executives?

first of all, we should discount this number a little– with the presumed gulen followers, all the other undesirables, ie. those who refused to drink mr. erdogan’s kool-aid, those with “undesirable” ethnicities, religions, etc., those who had the courage to express opinions against the erdogan administration, those who were photographed with other undesirables and had those photos posted on facebook, etc. were also purged.   as if someone had a wish-list of “undesirables” and they were folded in with the rest…

discounting the “undesirable” that still leaves a huge chunk of “how on hell did they get into the government in such big numbers under erdogan’s nose?”.

the answer is obvious and not pleasant:  mr. erdogan placed them there.  or, at the very least, he was complacent and conspiring in their placement.

you see, mr. erdogan and mr. gulen used to be allies.  until they fell apart in 2013.  up to that point, their interests were aligned, and, the gulen movement was mr. erdogan’s lifeline.   the largest turkish civic and military purges of recent history, before the purge of 2016, ergenekon and the sledgehammer (balyoz) operations were the illegitimate love children of mr. gulen and mr. erdogan, with the premise of purging “dissidents” and placing them with gulen and erdogan followers.  mostly the gulen followers benefited.

but, don’t take my word for it– according to the 600 page criminal complaint filed by mr. erdogan’s prosecutors in turkey, “Harp okullarından en çok öğrenci 2007-2013 yılı aralığında atılmıştır. Bu tarih aralığı FETÖ’nün TSK’nin içerisine en fazla öğrenci yerleştirdiği dönem olmuştur” which translates to: “2007-2013 marks the years when highest number of students were expelled from military academies.  during that period FETÖ (the gulen movement) placed the highest numbers of replacement cadets”.

2007 to 2013 also happens to be the strongest AKP administration in history (their votes and parliamentary power decreased consistently since 2013).   hence, the fact that AKP and mr. erdogan were complacent, if not outright responsible, for placing the gulen followers in the military, according to the AKP prosecutors themselves.  and, they would have stayed there happily after if not for the nasty divorce between mr. gulen and mr. erdogan.

but, like all love relationships between two alpha males, they fell apart- the details are still murky as to how, and even murkier as to the why.

but, forget the why and the how, the split was internecine.  both sides suffered immensely.  the scandal of december 17 for erdogan, and the ensuing purges and the persecution of the gulen movement were vicious.

after the divorce, mr. erdogan played the part of the betrayed partner, the strong and democratic world leader, who will clean up his country no matter what (without mentioning cleaning it up from the “monster” he helped create), and, mr. gulen assumed the part of the misunderstood peace loving borderline hippy religious leader, with peace and freedom awards to show for it.   but, behind the scenes, their infighting grew more vicious and internecine.

now, 4 days after the coup attempt, allegedly by a handful of military officers under the control of mr. gulen, mr. erdogan is inches away from convincing his followers that this 50,000 gulenists infiltrated the ranks of the government, military, judiciary, and education without his knowledge, and, he, the hero is swiftly dealing with them.  kudos to mr. erdogan for selling such myth and fiction.  and i am serious in my congratulations– never thought someone would sell such a hoax.  and i am equally awed by mr. erdogan’s followers– never thought the turkish people would be this gullible.  but, nevertheless,  to give credit to my people, given that it is a time of crises and desperation, perhaps blind faith may be excused and understood.  as they say, the bigger the lie…

in the meantime, both the US, EU, and NATO are warning mr. erdogan for his undemocratic measures, purges, and his calls for executions (and, the prerequisite calls for the resurrection of the death penalty in turkey), and implying, very explicitly that turkey may lose its NATO membership and any and all hopes of joining the EU if he proceeds in this trajectory.

and, finally, reporting from the trenches of the turkish social media, his emerging “revolutionary guard” is on a rampage under the hashtag #turkiyemeydanlarda, meaning, turkey (or turkish people) in the plazas, with all forms of calls of violence and mayhem:  twitter and facebook are full of “good riddances”, “we’ll kill ’em alls”, “we will burn thems”, etc. from his emerging revolutionary guard to the rest of the turkish people, who beg to differ with mr. erdogan, and are living in fear.

to be continued (unfortunately) in this vein..

so, what happened in the last 24 hours?  well, only the violent, predictable, and depressing inevitable.

for some context, please read the first part of this series.  

the inevitable purge began.  almost immediately.  thousands of military personnel, allegedly belonging to the faction of the military that launched the coup attempt were arrested.  well, that may be understandable.  but, 2,745 judges and prosecutors were also arrested in a matter of hours for their involvement with the coup attempt.  2, 475.  wait, i should repeat it again: 2,475.  two immediate questions come to mind:

1. who will they replace the 2,475 judges and prosecutors with?  does the turkish government have a secret stash of 2,475 qualified judges and prosecutors in a cold storage somewhere?
2. how did they find 2,475 judges and prosecutors linked to the coup attempt in a matter of hours, while they couldn’t even name who was leading the coup and what was happening within the first 12 hours of the revolt?  the fighting allegedly ended in the morning, and, within a few hours comes the arrest of the 2,475.  military personnel– perhaps i can understand– the coup attempt was the work of a faction of the military they say, for what it is worth, so it may be a little bit easier to find who belong to the faction.  but judges and prosecutors?  how can you diligently investigate, review, and decide which 2,475 to arrest in a matter of hours whilst in a state of crises?  feels like the wish list of 2,475 was made long before the coup attempt.

mr. erdogan, almost immediately, re-requested, actually demanded, the extradition of fethullah gulen.  which was also inevitable as i wrote yesterday.  as a matter of fact, many denizens of the turkish social media think that one of the major reasons behind the attempted coup, which they call “theatrics”, was the extradition of mr. gulen.  mr. gulen, of course, denied any involvement with the coup attempt whatsoever.  now, i am no fan of mr. gulen andthe jury is still out on that one.

mr. erdogan’s revolutionary guard finally emerged en masse.  as i wrote yesterday, in the first public statement he made during the coup attempt, mr. erdogan called his “followers” to the streets, despite a curfew imposed by the government— it was a call for battle.  and the followers heeded.  turkish media (and social media) is full of videos and photos of these fine gentlemen armed to the teeth, with their jihadist beards and battle cries, executing soldiers on bridges, beating up people, raiding stores, screaming jihadist mantras, and firing their guns indiscriminately.  there were reports of them raiding cafes where alcohol is served, bothering people at parks, and other assorted tehran behavior.

mr. erdogan’s revolutionary guards’ demeanors, outfits, facial hair, and speech, if you can photoshop out the istanbul background and turkish license plates (for that matter anything turkish) from the photos and the videos, are straight out ISIS jihadists photos.  which should not be all that surprising given turkey’s notorious history with ISIS militant recruitment.

one really fears this will be the revolutionary guard of the caliphate of turkey; albeit with a very ironic use of the word “revolutionary”– someone tried to start a revolution (that’s what successful coups are generally called), and, the jihadist who stopped it could perceivably become the revolutionary guard.

there are already calls from the government controlled media (as if there was any other form of major media in turkey) for pardoning all the “crimes” of these patriotic heroes during the coup attempt.  which, basically, translates to legitimizing this jihadist militia.

the death toll is still up in the air.  the numbers are very, very minimized according to anecdotal reports.  but, that’s the way it always is in turkey.

the FAA  put a ban on flights between turkey and the united states almost around the same time the turkish airlines, whose slogan, ironically, is “widen your world”, put out the strangest press release i have ever read from an airline, boldly stating that “with the unflinching will of the people, turkey has waken to a new day with a much stronger sense of democracy and freedom”, while citizens were summarily executing fellow citizens in the streets.  then, the press release claimed, “upon the call of our president his excellency recep tayyip erdoğan our operations at istanbul atatürk airport is now back to normal and flights have begun”, while all the flights to their top international market, the US, were grounded.

mr. erdogan quickly started expanding his powers as permitted (and perhaps even as not permitted) by the turkish constitution.  which was also inevitable as i wrote yesterday.  as a matter of fact, many denizens of the turkish social media think that another one of the major reasons behind the attempted coup, which they call “theatrics”, was the expansion of mr. erdogan’s powers, resulting in the executive presidency he pines for.

and a good majority of turkey is still at shock– this was unlike any coup d’etat in turkish history.  as a matter of fact the world history.  coup’s are never faceless– immediately at their inception, someone, a face, a human being (or human beings) take responsibility.  didn’t happen here.  the names of the conspirators were released at least 12-hours after the fact.  how was the government this prepared (with a detailed list) for the purge after the coup?  and, who really was behind this coup attempt?

conspiracy theories aside, this coup is immensely benefiting erdogan: he is expanding his powers, purging anyone who may stand in his way (and, this is not his first purge– it feels like now they’re purging the leftovers), legitimizing his revolutionary guard, gaining more confidence among his supporters while instilling more fear and terror on his opponents, has a good shot at getting gulen back for vengeance, and a decent shot at the executive presidency, ie. absolute power.

to the credit of the conspiracy theories, at last night’s speech at the istanbul ataturk airport, mr. erdogan seemed to aware of his windfall– he exclaimed to his followers, in a moment of excitement, “Eninde sonunda şu anda bu hareket, Allah’ın bize büyük bir lütfudur”, which translates to “after all, this coup attempt is a great gift from allah to us”.

i fear, if he really feels that way, the worst is still yet to come.