Turkish President Erdogan Reassures Country as Attempted Coup by Military Factions Falters

July 15, 2016 Updated: July 16, 2016

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly reassured citizens early Saturday in Istanbul after a chaotic night in which factions of Turkey’s military said they had taken control of the country. Erdogan had apparently been on a plane that was held in the air while the attempted coup was underway, before landing in Istanbul. He had called for citizens to take to the streets in support of his democratically elected government, before emerging at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport say the situation was under control.

“This has started today and this will end today,” he said in televised remarks. “I can assure you, this will end well.”

He referred to the attempted coup as an “uprising, a betrayal movement,” that originated from a small group within the military.

Within a few hours of the coup attempt, the country’s national intelligence spokesperson said it had been “repelled,” as Turkish residents heeded Erdogan’s call and filled public spaces as a statement of support.

According to the Turkish prosecutor’s office, 42 people have been killed in the capital Ankara during the coup attempt, reports the Associated Press.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said more than 120 people have been arrested, saying “things are getting better every minute,” according to AP. He added that he has ordered planes flown by coup plotters to be shot down.

But the chaos continued, as there was a report that a bomb had hit the Turkish parliament in the capital of Ankara, injuring people there. There were additional reports of explosions and gunfire in Istanbul’s main Taksim Square.

Earlier in the evening, tanks rolled on the streets in Ankara and Istanbul, and the latter city’s airport was reportedly taken over by the military. “Turkish Armed Forces have completely taken over the administration of the country to reinstate constitutional order, human rights and freedoms, the rule of law and the general security that was damaged,” said a military statement sent to journalists. “All international agreements are still valid. We hope that all of our good relationships with all countries will continue.”

Erdogan, speaking via a FaceTime conversation broadcast live on television, said he would join citizens in the street, but appeared to offer no indication of his current whereabouts. His office said he is currently in a secure location, according to a statement from his office reported by the Associated Press.

“It is carried out without my knowledge and it is completely illegal,” Erdogan said. “I am inviting everyone to go outside and resist against this illegal structure.”

Earlier in the night Prime Minister Yildirim had said that a group within the military had attempted to take power. “Some people illegally undertook an illegal action outside of the chain of command,” he said in comments broadcast by private television channel NTV, according to Reuters. “The government elected by the people remains in charge. This government will only go when the people say so.”

“This uprising is a terror action,” Yildirim later added on NTV, saying it was no different “than the terrorist attacks going on in [the] southeast of Turkey.”

“Every attack attempt will be answered both from the air and the land,” he later said on NTV.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry urged calm. Kerry said he had spoken to Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and pledged “absolute support for Turkey’s democratically-elected, civilian government and democratic institutions.

Obama called on people in Turkey to “support the democratically-elected government… show restraint, and avoid any violence or bloodshed.”

But there were reports of just that, with the state-run Anadolu agency reporting a bomb at the Turkish parliament, and also that 17 police officers had been killed in a military helicopter attack on a police special forces HQ just outside Ankara.

Inside Ankara, a loud explosion was reported where a heavy security presence had gathered. Security forces blocked two bridges over the Bosphorus strait that runs through Istanbul, and at least one major road in the city, according to Turkish television footage. On Istanbul’s Istiklal street, a major pedestrian thoroughfare, this reporter saw few people on what would have been a busy time on Friday night.

Turkey’s military has forced changes of government four times since 1960, and another military coup has long been considered a possibility under the current government led by Erdogan, who has been in power since 2003. But Erdogan’s government had taken steps that were believed to politically defang the military. In 2010, hundreds of current and former military officials were arrested after being accused of a plot to overthrow Erdogan.

Over the last year Erdogan’s government approved a crackdown on Kurdish militants in the southeast of the country, who had long fought for more autonomy from the central government. The breakdown in negotiations with Kurdish militants resulted in a series of deadly bombings throughout the country. Turkey has also been engaged in an increasingly bloody battle with ISIS, which repeatedly struck civilian targets in the country—most recently a suicide attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk airport on June 28 that killed over 40 people. All flights from the airport have been blocked, and the military has reportedly taken it over.

Erdogan, who has been criticized for his increasingly authoritarian policies, had reportedly been on vacation in the seaside Turkish city of Bodrum. It is not clear what his whereabouts are, though Turkey’s state news agency reported that the military’s chief of staff had been taken captive. The military has long viewed itself as the guardian of Turkey’s secular government.

It remains unclear how much of the military is participating in the coup attempt, according to Burak Kadercan, an expert on Turkish politics at the U.S. Naval War college in Rhode Island. “This is a mid-level coup attempt so far,” he says. “It’s not a top-down coup.”

TIME

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