The closed phone of the naval forces commander on the night of the coup
It is hard to write an article in this period, it is also hard to write about the July 15, 2016 coup, but the hardest part is listening to AKP chairman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the same time while writing. The night of the coup is already complicated, and when Erdoğan says at that moment, “They come to us and say they didn’t do it on purpose, no you did it on purpose,” we understand again that Erdoğan is the only person who unknowingly supported Gülen. I have started to firmly believe that Erdoğan will eventually come out and say, “I supported this coup without knowing, and then I saw it was against me, that’s when I showed them how a coup is made. These are traitors.”
Anyway, let’s come to the logbook of the ships that left the ports on the night of the coup that prevented the coup attempt and what happened at the same time. There is a Naval High School graduation ceremony on the island in the morning, and 4 ships are routinely assigned there. (Fatih, Yavuz, Tufan, İmbat) At every graduation ceremony, these ships anchor off the coast of the high school and wait, and after the ceremony is over, they return to Gölcük Port. Apart from these 4 ships, there are 8 more ships in Gölcük Port, don’t mind me calling them ships, there are a few different types of military ships and their speeds are all different.
The ships begin to return from the graduation ceremony. Neither I, nor Erdoğan, nor the ones on the ship know about the coup. Moreover, the air and naval forces commanders have no idea at all, if they had, they wouldn’t go running to a wedding… 4 ships set off from off the island around 19:45. No one knows about the coup yet except MİT Undersecretary Hakan Fidan and Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar. Although according to 1 of his 5 statements, Erdoğan also doesn’t know, but if you look at the others, he does in 1 of them.
As soon as Yavuz, the last of the 4 ships, enters the port, Ayhan Bay immediately sends an order and commands all ships to leave the port, saying there is a sabotage warning. Upon this, 12 ships begin to leave the port. 5 of these ships are under the command of Levent Kerim Uça, 3 of Ayhan Bay, and 4 of Önder Öngör. Meanwhile, something interesting happens and at 22:00, 2 people swimming in the port are found. One of the swimmers is a civilian working in the military, both of them felt like swimming at that hour. It is not yet known whether these 2 people are saboteurs or whether they planted something or not.
Just as the ships begin to leave the port, naval forces commander Recep Bülent Bostanoğlu also learns about the coup attempt, and at the same time we learn that it is not Bostanoğlu or the order he gave that took the ships out of the port. This part is very interesting to me, because Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar also does not give an order to the entire military about the vehicles (all military vehicles) not leaving their current locations. Because whichever commander I talked to, they first told me the same thing, “It would take the chief of general staff 10 minutes to give this order, he could have even had it written over the phone, and if he did, this many people wouldn’t have died”
My interpretation is that Erdoğan might have prevented this order from being given. Because if he gave this order, the event would end immediately and Erdoğan would not be able to dismiss so many people using the coup attempt as an excuse. Because we all see together that the arrests and dismissals exceed those who attempted the coup.
Yes, Bostanoğlu learns about the coup along with the departure of the ships, but he has no intervention. Do not misunderstand my saying with the departure of the ships, because when 2-3 ships came exactly to the port exit, that is, at 23:00, naval forces commander Bostanoğlu turns off his cell phone. 15 minutes pass, and Binali Yıldırım, who could not reach the MİT undersecretary until that hour, makes a statement about the coup.
Everything is as if tied to a 15-minute program, 15 minutes after Binali Yıldırım, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan starts to make statements on televisions. The interesting thing is, naval forces commander Bostanoğlu’s phone is still turned off.
And the hour everyone has been waiting for, or the hour the sailors have been waiting for arrives, the last ship leaves the port at 01:00, and with its departure, naval forces commander Bostanoğlu turns on his phone at 01:17.
I said this will be something like an article series, my article on Saturday will be longer, I don’t want it to be like a soap opera that much but there are many events to be written and to be surprised at as we learn.
In these situations, that is, in sabotage situations, it is very normal for ships to leave the port. Then they are called back for an unknown reason, but orders go to some of them saying, “Do not enter, but do not tell the ones you do not trust either.” There is a serious distinction during the coup, that is, some of the commanders who give the same orders are arrested while some are promoted. I mentioned it in my previous article too, this case is very complicated.
