We were hosting madrichim from Israel and USA for Shabbat dinner. They were in Turkey to help the Jewish community in Istanbul, specifically Büyükada (Prinkipo). Most of the local Jews spend the summer out of the city on the islands of Marmara.
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My phone rang a couple of times before I decided to answer it. Two of my close friends were calling me. One asked me if I was OK and told me that the Bosphorus Bridge had been closed and it was impossible to travel from the European side to Asian side. She told me there was a chance this might be a coup.
I told everyone at the table what she had told me. My parents, who experienced the 1980 coup, and my grandparents who experienced both 1960 and 1980 coups, didn't believe it. A couple of minutes later another friend reached out. Her voice was frightened and anxious. She told me that they keep hearing planes flying very low, and were hiding under their beds.
We decided to check Twitter, which in those days was banned when a public event took place. But Twitter was operative, and scary images were on display. Soldiers, police and even the general public were fighting with each other. People were killing each other, parliament was being bombed and planes were shooting innocent citizens. We were glad that we were away from all this chaos.
After dinner we decided to go out to the island port. People who had been through the 1980 coup were very afraid. They wanted to go to the market and stock up on food, then draw money out of an ATM. When we got there, there was an enormous line. The island only had a few, and by the time we got there, there was no cash left.
We decided to meet friends at a new café at a historic hotel named Splendid. A few minutes after we arrived,, we received news claiming that the coup had been arranged in that very hotel where we were watching the news. It took us a couple of minutes to decide whether to keep staying in the cafe or leave.
It was the first time we heard this particular prayer from the mosques, called "Sela," and it wasn't the right time for Muslim prayers, either. It was running continuously on the island, fire engines raced around, their engines blaring. I didn't know what was really going on at that point. I didn't know if it was a real coup, if it was successful or if it was staged.
The next week, we started to realize what was going on. A state of emergency was declared. People were afraid curfews were going to be applied. But with fresh power in its hands, the government enacted countless laws, declared war against Fetullahçı Terör Örgütü (FETÖ) – the organization accused of orchestrating the attempted coup, and fired everyone related to this organization from universities, and public office. This was just the beginning. Later, they were detained and their assets seized.
The Erdoğan government emerged from the attempted coup more powerful than ever. It cleared its ranks of local opposition, found a "just" reason to get severe, and created a new fund to concentrate assets in its hands.
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