This is a follow-up to Military Coup in Turkey, Top Officials Held Hostage, Currency Plunges, Erdogan via Radio Calls for Resistance.
The Wall Street Journal reports NATO Officials Scramble for News of Turkey Coup.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization delegations scrambled for news on the attempted coup in Turkey and to sort out conflicting reports.
An official with Turkey’s delegation to NATO said there was no protocol to follow and he was waiting for instructions. The official said he was watching television news to try and make sense of what is going on, but had received no briefings from Ankara.
A spokeswoman for the alliance declined to comment.
Alliance officials privately expressed surprise, noting that while the Turkish military had once again grown more powerful and influential, the era when it held a powerful check on civilian leaders was thought to be in the past.
Asylum Rejected?
Here’s an interesting statement in The Hill: “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was denied landing rights in Istanbul, NBC reported, and attempted to seek asylum in Germany, where he was also rejected. He is reportedly en route to London. But calling into CNN, a senior adviser to Yildirim, Cemal Hasini, said that Erdogan was in Istanbul.”
WSJ Live Update
The Wall Street Journal provides another Live Update on Turkey.
In the early hours of Saturday, it was still unclear who controlled the levers of power in the nation of 79 million, which is a key ally in the fight against Islamic State, a host to the U.S. military and partner stemming the flood of refugees to Europe. Troops have imposed a nationwide curfew, shut down Istanbul’s international airport, closed two main bridges over the Bosphorus Strait and have taken over the state-run television station.
by Dion Nissenbaum
Calling Turkey a key ally in fighting Isis is well beyond wishful thinking to the point of pure Fantasyland material. Erdogan wants to build an Islamist state, took over the press, made himself a virtual dictator, and fought with the Kurds, our true ally against Isis.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
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How embarrassing – NATO countries aren’t supposed to have military coups.
I can’t believe Merkel is not letting in a Muslim – must have finally reached her “quota”?
No, 79 million more looking for somwhere to hang there berkas and swords.
Erdogan should if not allowed to land at Brussels should crash his plane into the EUrocrat building.
John Kerry: “We ate monitoring a very fluid sotuation”.
Tanslation: “We are way over our heads in the State Department, as usual”.
Someone bring Secretary Kerry a supply of hashtags! Stat!
A man without a country. Maybe Somalia will take him. That’d be a good match.
The news claims that Obama never saw it coming. ha. How stupid do they think we are?
We’re in Ankara right now. There has been many bombs and fighters going around all night. Some of the bombs have been window/curtain-rattlers. Amazing how low the fast-jets have being going in, only a few hundred metres, heading down-town. There’s been sporadic gunfire [both small/heavy cal] for hours. We’ve been filling containers with water. Not quite sure what we’re going to wake up to tomorrow. 3am now and things seem to be calming a bit, but who knows.
Thanks for that update
Mish
This isn’t over it seems, I hear fighter jets going in again. The mosque seems to have begun broadcasting impromptu prayers every hour or so. Quite a symphony together. On the plus side this is the final excuse we need to get out of here.
Again…this is top shelf planning. Landing in Istanbul is only to make a last stand as everyone there hates this guy. Looks like ISIS has a new Capital….
Putins revenge? They did shoot down one of his jets as I recall.
i have picked up the following tweet
“In 24 hours of news coverage of #Turkey, in all the military and the civilians who took to streets to restore democracy, not a single woman”
It looks and smells like an “inside-job”.
Erdogan was have been well prepared for all this
It is too dangerous to go out on foot even now IMO. I have only seen a handful of people out on foot today in our usually quite busy suburb of Ankara; and not a single one until about 5pm [Turkish time]. Last night it felt like a war-zone; perhaps I might replace ‘felt like’ with ‘was’. As Turkey is still a patriarchy I expect women didn’t want to go out, and any that did were not allowed to.
There are several theories going around today, but I rather doubt that the self-styled strongman Erdogan attempting to flee to Germany was a part of a script.