Who was behind the July 2016 Turkish coup attempt?

On the evening of July 15, 2016, the world was surprised by news of a military coup in process in Turkey. Top politicians, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself, and heads of the military and police were attacked or detained, media outlets were taken over, and armed soldiers took over the streets. After President Erdogan issued a call to action using his mobile phone, Turkish civilians streamed onto the streets and confronted the Turkish military, ultimately thwarting the coup. In the aftermath of the coup attempt, the Turkish government blamed Fethullah Gulen and urged the US government to extradite him, while arresting, suspending or firing hundreds of thousands of Turkish citizens. Gulen for his part condemned the coup and denied any connection to it. Half a year later, the Turkish government was still prosecuting Gulen in absentia, sparring with Germany and Greece about the extradition of Turks allegedly involved in the coup attempt, and warning countries in Africa and Asia about any involvement with the Gulen movement.

Turkey has a history of coups, typically being led by the military, with the stated goal of upholding Kemalist values, including secularism, and restoring order. Historically Turkish politics has been dominated by Kemalism, but over the last fifteen years, religious parties have gradually become the most influential actors in Turkish politics, including the Sufi and modernist-leaning movement of Fethullah Gulen, and Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (the AKP). The AKP calls its ideology "conservative democratic," focused on increasing religious freedom in the public sphere and economic liberalism; its critics allege censorship of free press and illiberal authoritarianism.

Rootclaim’s analysis finds that it is highly likely that Kemalists in the Turkish military were behind the Turkish coup attempt.

As always, this conclusion is based on a mathematical integration of many pieces of evidence and inputs, including:

1. As a starting point, the likelihood of Kemalists being behind the coup attempt is around 75%, since every confirmed coup attempt in Turkish history until 2016 had involved Kemalists.

2. The fact that the group referred to itself both publicly and privately using Kemalist quotes and ideas (but not religious or Gulenist values) raises the likelihood that it was in fact a Kemalist group.

3. The scale of the attack, including tanks and planes, and leading to hundreds of Turkish citizens injured or killed, lowers the likelihood that this was a false-flag attack.

4. The combination of certain details, such as prior arrests and targeting of Gulenists by the Turkish government and the multiple references to Kemalism by the alleged coup organizers, makes it more difficult to establish a plausible explanation for the false-flag hypothesis (neither an explanation that the government planned in advance to target Gulenists nor one in which the government planned to blame Kemalists and then changed its strategy fully satisfies all of the evidence).

5. Several aspects of the coup point towards it being a well-orchestrated false-flag operation, such as multiple near-successful attempts on President Erdogan’s life, air force engagement without any plane shot down, and the coup’s failure. However, these are offset by the rest of the evidence.