Turkey, one year after

FEUTURE Voices nº 2 (2017)

One year ago, on the night of July 15, Turkey came face to face with a coup attempt, the fifth in its history and the first one to fail. With 249 people killed and official buildings -including the parliament – bombed, it was a traumatic episode in the country’s history. The resistance of the institutions and the people against the coup attempt could have acted as a lever to consolidate Turkish democracy and unite the country. But this is not happening.
It is time to take stock of not only the night of July 15 but, above all, of where Turkey stands now, a year onwards. One initial conclusion is that many questions remain unresolved. The Turkish government accuses the cleric Fethullah Gülen, a former ally of President Erdoğan and since 1999 self-exiled in the United States, of being the architect of the coup, and his followers to having acted as the executing arm. Those accused, of course, deny it. Conspiracy theories are multiplying. The absence of a commonly held narrative is not helping heal the wounds.