On News Night now, foreign office telling Brits to let family know over there to stay out of public places...
Gunfire on the bridges now....not looking good for the man in the street. They are saying it may be a revolt against Erdogan's power grab and his anti-secularism,plus human rights abuses
"EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS UPDATE,(Facebook) We are receiving reports from 'sources' that erdogan has requested political asylum in Germany, his plane has been refused permission to land in Istanbul. KTI HQ"
Looks like people being shot on the bridges,also looking at Turkish airspace there are no flights at all, they have shut the airspace down, I think,but hope not, that this will get bloody tomorrow?
Frankly, the Turkish military has probably done the world a favour. Erdogan is an old world autocratic Islamist of the Stalinist school who sought to re-establish the Ottoman empire. There is a lamp post somewhere with his name on it.
The military didn't think this through very well. Should have gone for him first,"cut off the head of the snake". Now he's mobilised his supporters and some have unfortunately been killed/injured,they've lost any support they might have received from the population.
Unfortunately this looks like a well trodden path: A "strong" leader becomes increasingly autocratic and repressive, clamping down on democratic freedoms and muzzling the press. Popular protests are ruthlessly put down and international censure ignored. Then a rag-tag bunch of revolutionaries try to depose him and fail. The "strong" leader on the pretext of protecting his people and restoring law and order becomes an outright dictator prepared to hold on to power by any means. You know the rest. I hope I'm wrong but I bet I'm not.
I wonder, will Western media play along, in support of the West's Great Friend in Turkey? What am I saying? Of course they will.
