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Seeing as this is already turning into a great week for European stability, apparently (parts of) the Turkish military is attempting a coup at the moment. Details are still a bit fuzzy, but as a quick summary of current reports: Istanbul is in lock-down, as are the major airports, tanks/helicopters and such have apparently entered Istanbul and Ankara; police and the army are clashing, and the state broadcaster has been taken over by the army. 

The Turkish PM, on the other hand, says that everything is under control, and the president is apparently safe.

Yeah I've been watching this. Going to take a day or two to see who comes out on top, they're not getting a lot of reliable news out of there right now. There was JUST a report issues that the coup was defeated but from the live footage it's a little hard to tell.

Tbh, Turkey was the last place I expected a coup.  Figured it was busy with immigrants, rebels, etc.

Apparently reddit thinks Erdogan's an ass.

Dude buys oil from ISIS and wants to murder all the Kurds he can, and lately has been moving the country in directions less friendly to NATO, but he's also the elected leader of a democratic country, and Turkey's about the only Muslim country that's not a complete shithole and had been willing to work with Western countries.

The Kurds btw are very cool people who support religious tolerance and women's rights, so yeah fuck Erdogan, but this coup doesn't look like its going to succeed, and it would mean anarchy if it did.

Some say coup's fake.  Crossing my fingers on that.

Fake how? Thousands of actors have been hired to take to the streets waving flags or drive a few tanks and jets and helicopters around? People have been convinced to call up CNN and pretend to be on lockdown in their hotels?

That'd require an awful lot of cooperation from literally everyone present with access to social media, too..

You don't need people to act like they're protesting or being put under martial law; just an army of loyal soldiers to secure a few key points (places where transportation and communication flow, as well as vital gov't buildings to make it look like the gov'ts being attacked) to get some radio silence.

That being said, it does seem now like it's an army-initiated coup.

Except they never managed to secure shit or cut off communications in any significant way and this whole thing has been being broadcast live almost since it started.

Also I guess I just don't understand why you'd be 'crossing your fingers' hoping it was a corrupt leader arranging an elaborate scheme to exchange his own people's lives for some political points instead of like, an actual attempt at overthrowing him. Even though the result is turning out to be the same. Carte blanche to gain further control and crush any opposition. 

Losses to secularism wouldn't seem as bad, at least :P

Might be winding down now, they just didn't plan this very well. Really there wasn't going to be any good outcome either way, and on general principle I am against violent overthrowings in democratic countries, but once the military pulled the trigger on this thing they really needed to see it through.

Erdogan was bad before and now they've given him every excuse to go full bore ahead on being worse. This may very well be the end of Turkey even putting on a show of being a secular nation and a lot of rights are going to be taken away. :/

Will the united nations take action? 

Only if it escalates.

LOL there's absolutely no way anyone would want to get involved in another clusterfuck in a Muslim country, or even could without a huge world wide backlash. Especially when we're talking about Turkey here, they have coups pretty regularly and it's not an issue anyone else has any business getting involved in. Whichever way this had gone, western countries releasing statements about supporting democratically elected leaders was all that was ever going to happen.

And the coup is basically over from what I was seeing earlier, any military guys that were a part of this are all going to get butchered and Erogan's going to make sure no one's in a position to oppose him ever again, he'll continue paying lip service to NATO while the country gradually gets more radicalized and winds up butt buddies with ISIS.   

Like I said, military coups are pretty much always a bad thing but the results of this one failing are going to be far far worse. And one thing I hadn't known about when this all first broke was that there's actually a thing in their constitution about not letting religious extremists have too much control, so technically they had every right to try and oust him.

Erogan's been butting heads with the more secular and Western friendly military for awhile now and defanging them whenever possible, so maybe this was inevitable, but they just shot their wad too soon. This seems like it was a really poorly thought out and badly planned attempt that didn't even have full support from the rest of the military, which wasn't too bright considering they'll be paying for it with their lives.

Also, not to bust out my tinfoil hat or anything, but just as a bit of trivia it's been pointed out that there was a helicopter crash over there that killed seven military personnel a little over a week ago. The explanation was that it was caused by weather but I've read posts speculating it was connected to this somehow. 

Oh, and the funniest thing about all of this is it's being blamed on a dude in Pennsylvania.

edit: hahahaha, so apparently we store some of our nukes in Turkey. Why.

You can thank the Baby Bloomers for the Cold War.

Turkey's military is friendly with the West; guess nobody anticipated someone like Erdogan to come up by democracy.

Cool Erdogan, smart move firing those couple thousand judges, can't have anybody not in your pocket around kicking up a fuss about human rights when you start the purge.

To be fair, he's already removed almost anyone in high-placed positions who could complain about his human rights abuses. It's not like it has been a secret these past years. Of course, Erdogan now has the possibility to scrap even more human rights in Turkey, in order to deal with the people that attempted the coup.

I mean, it's not like any of the neighbouring countries will complain about it. The Middle East is busy imploding, and the EU needs a friendly country to dump their unwanted refugees in. 

No matter if Erdogan really had a hand in staging a coup, he will most definitely benefit from it. 

I normally avoid talking politics, world events and such since I try to keep my time here pretty lowkey and relaxed. Mostly reading and writing. A break from the world.

That being said, a good long-time friend and pen pal of mine has lived in Turkey his whole life, so it's been pretty intense reading everything that's been happening there. He was in Istanbul as it all happened.

He sent some pictures of destroyed cars, buildings, and such. He was in an area where there were tanks and bombs being dropped from jets. So I'm really thankful he's safe, since there were people killed in the area. He's going to leave the country for a little while until things cool down.

Hope your friend is ok. By the way, just how did this attack start?

Read the news, for God's sake.

Nevermind.

Parts of the Turkish military blockaded certain areas in major cities, shot at/bombed other areas and such while proclaiming to defend the (secular) constitution of Turkey. It actually might, or may not have been staged by the president of Turkey.