Exiled Turkish journalist Yavuz Baydar argues that Ankara’s official account of Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt remains filled with unanswered questions, saying the failed putsch appears to have involved a broader coalition of military factions rather than a single group acting alone.
Baydar says the question is not a matter of political sympathy but of journalism. He argues that independent reporters have a responsibility to examine the unresolved background of the coup attempt because Turkey’s judiciary has long been politicized and has repeatedly failed to deliver credible justice in politically sensitive cases.
“Yes, I know, the ‘Erdoğan-brand Justice and Development Party story’ that dominates Turkey has exhausted us all, bringing us almost to the point of mental exhaustion,” Baydar writes. “However, we have a responsibility to our people, who have always been deprived of access to the truth.”
By “we,” he says, he means “honest journalists whose eyes are not blinded by political missionary work, activism, the ambition to spread lies, prejudice and a desire for revenge.”
Baydar links that responsibility to Turkey’s judicial history. He says courts have for decades been exploited by those in power, failing to solve past political murders or produce confidence in major trials such as the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) cases and the controversial Ergenekon and Sledgehammer proceedings, which involved alleged deep-state and military coup plots.
“The judiciary has failed to resolve its internal decay and has not been allowed to become independent,” he writes. “Therefore, we, at least a handful of journalists, must try to reach the truth with our own means as much as possible.”
For Baydar, the coup attempt is a key to understanding Turkey’s present political crisis. He says he has been writing about it since July 17, 2016, in independent outlets and personal platforms because the issue remains clouded by fear, political pressure and what he calls a collective “lynching” atmosphere.
“Unfortunately, due to the mass hypnosis and the collective ‘lynching’ frenzy surrounding Turkey, the 2016 coup attempt remains a mystery,” he writes. “There is no concrete shared evidence.”
Baydar notes that the Turkish Parliament’s coup investigation commission was dissolved without hearing several key witnesses. He says meaningful scrutiny has emerged only when foreign institutions and news organizations have examined the events.
One example, he says, was the report by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK House of Commons. Baydar says he and journalist Koray Düzgören discussed the report at Artı Gerçek, an independent Turkish news outlet, from the day it appeared, while mainstream Turkish media largely ignored it because of what he describes as a culture of self-censorship and fear.
Even a partial and flawed translation of the report, Baydar writes, appeared in Turkey only four or five days later. Yet he says the report could not be ignored, and some pro-government commentators reacted sharply while also implicitly accepting some of its findings.
Baydar says what prompted his article was a column by Sedat Ergin, a prominent journalist and former editor-in-chief of Hürriyet, which Baydar describes as based on a “flawed and biased reading” of the UK report.
Ergin’s column was titled “Are the Gülenists Completely Faultless?” Baydar says he wants to address several of Ergin’s conclusions that he considers debatable or in need of correction.
The UK report and Turkey’s factional military history
Ergin wrote that the House of Commons report was weak in its treatment of the Gülen movement’s identity, past actions and alleged penetration of state institutions such as the police, judiciary and military.
“The House of Commons report draws attention as a seriously weak text under headings such as the identity of the community, its past actions and the depth to which it was able to penetrate institutions like the police, the judiciary and the army. It cannot be said that those who prepared the report fully grasped the moves the movement made through cases like Sledgehammer and Ergenekon in the process leading up to the 2016 coup attempt,” Ergin wrote.
Baydar calls this an incomplete assessment. He argues that any serious discussion of influence inside the Turkish Armed Forces must consider the many identity and interest networks that have operated within the military since the 1950s, including Freemasons and other factions.
He says Turkey has never had the transparency needed to understand the full extent of factionalism inside the armed forces. Even in the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases, Baydar argues, the central question was not simply whether the cases had a factual core but how Turkey’s judiciary was open to external pressure from both Gülen-linked and anti-Gülen groups depending on the political climate.
The dramatic shifts in verdicts, from life sentences to acquittals, left a permanent public perception that the cases contained both excesses and omissions, he says.
“It is now clear,” Baydar writes. “If the perception of justice in Turkey is problematic, the reason is the judiciary’s rotten structure that is open to exploitation.”
Was the coup attempt the work of one group?
Ergin also wrote that the UK report sought to refute the thesis that the 2016 coup attempt was directly an act of the Gülen movement.
“Relying on the witnesses it heard, the report claims that there were four groups within the army behind the 2016 coup attempt: 1) Fethullah Gülen and his supporters, 2) elements acting in the name of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s ideology, 3) elements who did not want to lose their privileges and positions within the army and 4) soldiers who were pushed into joining the coup by being deceived or coerced by their superiors,” Ergin wrote.
“These determinations lead to the assumption that the Gülenists, the Kemalist secularists and those who did not want to lose their privileges in the army came together, deceived the lower ranks and planned and executed the 2016 uprising together. It is not possible to claim that this thesis aligns with the facts of the 2016 coup attempt revealed so far.”
Baydar describes this as an assessment based on an “optical illusion.” He says the UK report does not attempt to refute anything but instead contributes to the search for truth by examining a dark period within the limits of a parliamentary inquiry.
The report, he writes, was produced by members of parliament from different political backgrounds and appears intended at most to warn the UK government, not to impose a definitive conclusion.
Baydar says Ergin’s dismissal of the four-group framework does not fit the emerging record. Former Chief of General Staff İlker Başbuğ, he notes, said in a CNN Türk interview that three groups were behind the coup attempt. A BBC investigation also reported that some members of the Turkish Armed Forces shared similar observations.
Evidence, confessions and the limits of the official account
Ergin further argued that the UK report ignored what he called the decisive role of Gülen-affiliated officers in planning and carrying out the uprising and approached the available evidence with excessive skepticism.
“The report, in this state, ignores the decisive role played by the Gülenists in the planning and execution of the uprising. Interestingly, the report also approaches the body of evidence that has emerged so far regarding the 2016 coup attempt with skepticism,” Ergin wrote.
“It states in a critical tone that the evidence regarding the guilt of the Gülenists relies ‘largely on narratives and confessions, and is secondary evidence.’ It also argues that the validity of some confessions has become controversial due to claims that they were ‘taken under duress.’”
Ergin added that the report appeared internally confused because it also acknowledged uncertainty over the movement’s structure and intentions and noted that some activities by people affiliated with the movement were not transparent.
Baydar rejects the suggestion that this amounts to confusion. He says the report is not a court judgment but a document listing findings, observations and inferences drawn from written and oral testimony.
He argues that the lack of concrete data from the Turkish Embassy in London, which the report referenced, was one reason the document left several questions open. The report, Baydar writes, presents evidence and observations while leaving final conclusions to the reader.
Baydar also says then-UK Minister of State for Europe and the Americas Sir Alan Duncan’s reference to a “state within a state” was included as a personal and important observation, but not as the report’s definitive conclusion.
Pro-government voices also described a mixed coup structure
Baydar says the most serious omission in Ergin’s analysis is that several pro-government commentators close to ruling Justice and Development Party circles made similar observations about the coup attempt’s mixed composition.
Cem Küçük, a strongly pro-government commentator, said on television that the UK report should be taken seriously and pointed to the mixed structure of the coup attempt, Baydar writes.
Another pro-government commentator, Rasim Ozan Kütahyalı, addressed the issue directly in columns for the pro-government Sabah newspaper. Baydar quotes Kütahyalı at length, saying his claims had not been denied.
“It is also a concrete piece of information that, alongside the followers of the movement [referred to by the government as FETÖ], there was a large participation from generals outside the movement in the 2016 treason. Anyone who denies this reality puts themselves in a comical position. All units of the state confirm this information,” Kütahyalı wrote on March 14, 2017.
“As I stated yesterday, it is a 100 percent scientific fact that alongside the followers of the movement, there was a large participation from generals outside the movement in the 2016 treason. Yes, these putschists call themselves Atatürkists or Kemalists, but as I said, a putschist is a putschist.”
“The movement followers have eliminated anyone who stood in the way of their promotion strategy. Among these, there are quite a few nationalist-conservative officers as well. They did not touch the left-Kemalists who did not hinder their own promotion strategies. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the officers they did not touch, who call themselves Atatürkists, participated in the 2016 coup attempt,” Kütahyalı wrote on March 15, 2017.
Kütahyalı later argued that the UK report’s description of a coalition of Gülen-linked, Kemalist and careerist elements matched the real picture of the coup attempt.
“This report determines that the 2016 coup attempt was carried out by an alliance of Gülenists, Kemalists and careerists. I had written this earlier on February 27,” he wrote on March 28, 2017.
“Five or six days after the 2016 coup attempt, a conscious state policy was adopted, and in order to keep our nation united against the coup, only the movement aspect of this treason was specifically emphasized, and the other part was covered up.”
“This was essentially a very well-intentioned and prudent policy because if non-movement ideological elements were emphasized, society could have become polarized again. The entire society was in a state of disgust toward the movement after the 2016 coup attempt. The only issue we agreed upon as a nation was this movement issue. The state actually wanted to strengthen this picture of unity. But coming to today, for the sake of Turkey’s interests, we have to present the true picture of the 2016 coup attempt. Turkish state policy has to change in this sense.”
In another column, Kütahyalı said the coup attempt’s “backbone and planning” were carried out by Gülen-linked officers but that many participants, especially at senior levels, were not affiliated with the movement.
“The 2016 coup attempt is a coup whose backbone and planning were undoubtedly done by the Gülenists. But when a significant portion of the putschists, especially the majority of the upper echelon, are examined in terms of biographical intelligence, they are absolutely not Fethullahists. Let us not deceive ourselves as a country on this issue anymore.”
“Both the government and the opposition are failing to act realistically on this issue, playing into the hands of the movement in the Western world.”
“Unfortunately, 171 generals and admirals participated in the 2016 coup attempt. This is a terrifying figure. It is half of the generals and admirals in the army. A significant portion of these are not followers of the movement. The British report is unfortunately right in this sense. These putschists participated in this military coup under the influence of their hostility toward President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the putschist mentality that has persisted since the May 27, 1960 coup. Undoubtedly, like all putschists, they too are traitors to the country,” Kütahyalı wrote on March 29, 2017.
Baydar says these comments matter because they came from a writer who, since July 16, 2016, had been fed information from deep inside the state.
He says Kütahyalı’s remarks also overlap with the conclusions reached by researchers, academics and journalists including Ahmet Şık, Ümit Cizre, Mehmet Yılmaz, Ümit Kıvanç and Gareth Jenkins, rather than with Ergin’s reading.
Fault, responsibility and the unanswered question of command
Baydar says Ergin’s headline, “Are the Gülenists Completely Faultless?” frames the issue misleadingly.
“I have yet to come across a single sensible analysis suggesting that the Gülenists have no fault at all,” Baydar writes.
He says the available findings do not suggest that people affiliated with the movement were entirely innocent, noting that they are “clearly visible in the coup choreography.” But he also says the evidence does not show that they were the main actors who initiated and commanded the coup attempt.
That distinction, Baydar argues, is missing from Ergin’s analysis.
He points to the claim that 171 generals and admirals participated in the coup attempt, a figure close to one cited by former Republican People’s Party leader Deniz Baykal in a speech at the Turkish Parliament. If many of those senior officers were not affiliated with the movement, Baydar asks, why would they have followed Gülen-linked officers whom they strongly disliked?
“Is there a logical explanation for this?” he asks.
Baydar also returns to comments by British-based Turkey analyst Gareth Jenkins, quoted in the UK report and in one of Baydar’s previous articles for Artı Gerçek.
“How interesting it is that despite months of intense interrogations, no convincing evidence has yet been disclosed regarding how the coup was planned and coordinated,” Jenkins said. “And there is no doubt that if there were such evidence, the Turkish authorities would certainly have ensured it was shared in the public domain.”
Baydar says he heard a similar observation from a foreign diplomat.
“If the Turkish government had obtained concrete evidence that the Gülenists played a founding, leading and triggering role in the coup, it would have already loudly broadcast this to the entire world,” the diplomat said, according to Baydar.
Baydar ends with a simple question: “Isn’t that right?”
