A Hybrid Coup-Color Revolution in Turkey?

At first glance, there seem to be seismic shifts in the Middle East. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have signed normalization deals, and prominent Saudis have indicated that a peace deal between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel is imminent. Granted, these normalization deals are merely formalizations of informal relations that have existed for decades between Israel and the Gulf states.

There have been several prominent holdouts in this “normalization” drive: Turkey, Qatar, and (of course) Iran. Ironically, Turkey recognized Israel before any Arab country did, but their relationship has declined significantly over the last decade. Turkey is one of the most important NATO allies, and Turkey is a very important ally of the United States in the Middle East. Of course, Israel is the closest ally of the United States in the Middle East, so Turkey’s failure to improve its relations with Israel is a serious stain on Israel’s diplomatic momentum.

Over the last few months, I have noticed a sizeable amount of chatter from the Arab Gulf states and neoconservative organizations involving Turkey, specifically President Erdogan. They have made their dissatisfaction with Erdogan clear, and many have openly stated a desire to see him removed. Erdogan’s political position has grown incredibly precarious. Turkey’s economy is in bad shape, and the Turkish military has intervened in costly adventures in Libya, Syria, and soon could be deployed into the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Of course, Turkey has a long history of coups, and the most recent attempt was in July of 2016. Three months before the coup attempt, I worked on a Wikistrat wargame about the Syrian Civil War. The war game involved a (at the time) hypothetical invasion of Northern Syria by the Turkish military. Roleplaying as a member of the Syrian government, I discussed a hypothetical scenario where the Syrian government negotiated a deal with the United States and disaffected members of the Turkish military to launch a coup to remove Erdogan. The US Department of Defense (DOD) has always maintained close contacts with the Turkish military, and the DOD was strategically sharing information with the Syrian government to avoid creating another power vacuum if Al-Assad were to fall, like Iraq. Operation Timber Sycamore was a CIA operation after all. In exchange for removing a common enemy, the United States would end support for the Syrian rebels, and the Syrian government would focus its efforts on fighting the increasing threat of ISIS. The Turkish military would end their operations in Northern Syrian in exchange for Al-Assad assisting with securing the border. It was a bargain that would be a win-win for the US, the Turkish military, and Al-Assad.

I participated in this war game before I knew about Joel Zamel’s, Wikistrat’s co-founder and former CEO, connections to the Trump campaign and social media/information warfare firm PSY Group. The Turkish government has accused the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which Zamel had ties to, of participating in the coup. To this day, I have no idea if the scenario that I wrote for this war game could have somehow assisted in the planning of the actual coup. Obviously, I hope that it didn’t, and this was just one of several disturbing experiences that I had during my work with Wikistrat.

In my hypothetical scenario for the wargame, I argued that the Turkish military would need to be extremely subtle, so they would covertly assassinate Erdogan, most likely through poisoning. The Turkish military would also strike a backroom deal with the political opposition. Once Erdogan was dead, the political opposition would be able to take power after the next elections while Erdogan’s party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), was left fractured after his death. The political opposition would then take power with the silent backing of the military.

During the actual coup attempt, the Turkish military sent a helicopter gunship to kill Erdogan. Subtlety was clearly not a priority for the coup leaders. These officers looked more like amateur cadets and not the seasoned officers of a military who had so successfully overthrown Turkish democracy in the past. It was amateur hour. Due to the military’s brazen attempts to kill Erdogan and overthrow the government, the political opposition had no choice but to oppose the military’s coup attempt, and a series of mass protests led to the coup’s failure.

Turkey has a long history of successful military coups, and the Turkish military was probably better at launching coups than any other military on Earth. After Erdogan came to power, he made a sustained effort to break the Turkish military’s power over domestic politics, and the military’s failure to overthrow the government demonstrated the success of these efforts. For all of his faults, Erdogan deserves a lot of credit for this.

I doubt that the leaders of the next coup will be so foolish. They will have learned from the lessons of 2016, and they will be more subtle in their attempts to oust Erdogan and his government. The next attempt to replace Erdogan will not only involve the army, but three other groups will also be involved: the Turkish political opposition parties, Zionist neoconservatives, and militant proxies.

Coups often come during or shortly after major military deployments. A military is most powerful shortly before it is deployed (when it is best supplied and mobilized) or when it returns from a successful campaign (when it has the most popular support). Erdogan has sent the Turkish military on interventions in Libya, Syria, and is about to deploy them to the Caucasus. In all fairness, Erdogan is probably gambling that it is better to keep the soldiers deployed abroad than risk having them at home where they could be a potential threat, especially as the economy declines. Ironically, it is probably in Erdogan’s best interest for the Turkish military to fail abroad in order to discredit it at home, but military failure could also be risky for Erdogan as well. Either way, Erdogan has to be very careful as he weighs the risks associated with further military interventions. Either way, the military has a clear motivation to oust Erdogan, and the military could use their deployments abroad as an advantage in a future coup attempt.

The opposition parties are desperate to regain power, but they know that they cannot be seen supporting military intervention in Turkey’s domestic politics. Erdogan has been in power as the nation’s leader since 2002. Erdogan’s party, the AKP, has been in power for most of Erdogan’s tenure, but they lost their majority in the 2015 elections and had to form a coalition with two other parties. In the 2018 elections, Erdogan’s political coalition, consisting of the AKP and allied Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), won a slim majority in parliament, but resistance to Erdogan has been growing.

While the AKP is vulnerable, the political opposition could form a secret alliance with the Turkish military. At the most opportune moment, the political opposition would launch a series of mass protests, and the Turkish military would agree to stand down and not interfere. Without military support, Erdogan would be left extremely vulnerable, and he would only be able to count on the support of the most faithful AKP members to protect him. If enough military units remained loyal to Erdogan, he would be tempted to launch a brutal crackdown on the protests, but this would only play into the political opposition’s hands.

This leads to the third group of players: the Zionist neoconservatives in Jerusalem, Washington, and throughout Europe. If Erdogan did repress protesters, the Turkish political opposition would appeal to their neoconservative and Zionist allies. The neoconservatives would push the Trump administration (or future Biden administration) and the EU to sanction Turkey, putting even more financial pressure on the government. They could also pressure their government to diplomatically isolate Turkey. The Israelis have extremely powerful information warfare capabilities through their tech companies Wikistrat, Black Cube, White Knight, (formerly PSY Group), Cybereason, and NSO Group. These companies have the capability to spread misinformation, circumvent communications jamming, and manipulate social media to fuel mass protests. If successful, Erdogan’s removal will also coerce other MENA leaders to “normalize” relations with Israel or face a similar hybrid coup-color revolutions.

The final group of players are the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) and other Kurdish militant groups like the People’s Protection Units (YPG). Kurdish groups have been showing signs of interest in this normalization wave sweeping through the Middle East. They see an opportunity to gain support from the Israelis and other Gulf states. After all, the Israelis and Saudis know that any future Kurdish state would come from their rivals’ territories, so why not support Kurdish nationalism.

The Turkish military would likely use their contacts with the Israelis and Saudis to coordinate a series of false-flags attack with the PKK and YPG as part of a strategy of tension to destabilize Erdogan’s government. The Turkish military would use these attacks as justification to increase their presence and their political power, but they would not use these attacks as an excuse to seize power outright, as they attempted to do in 2016.

Unfortunately for the Kurds, any successor government in Turkey, or Iran for that matter, is almost certain to oppose a Kurdish state, and neither the Israelis nor Saudis will be willing to give the Kurds any serious military support for an independent Kurdistan. If the Kurds recognized Israel while it is gobbling up the last bit of territory from their fellow Muslims in Palestine, the Turkish government will have all the popular justification necessary for an extremely brutal crackdown on the PKK and YPG. The Turkish military, Israelis, and Saudis will use the Kurds for their own respective goals only to discard them once they have served their purpose.

Unlike the events of 2016, Erdogan will not be contending with either an outright coup or color revolution, but he will be fighting a hybrid of the two: a color revolution led by the political opposition covertly backed by the Turkish military, militant proxies, and foreign Zionist and neoconservative allies. I predict that we will see an attempt by these forces to seize power in Turkey within a year. If Trump loses the election, we could see an attempt much sooner since the neocons and Zionists would not trust Biden to support Erdogan’s removal. They remember Obama’s lack of support for Mubarak in 2011, and they would not want to take that chance again with Biden. Saudi leader Mohammed Bin Salman, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Director of the Mossad Joseph Cohen held a secret meeting this past weekend. It is possible that one of the topics under discussion was removing Erdogan.  

I am not a supporter of Erdogan for a number of reasons, but I believe in democracy. As the people of Egypt can attest, coups never improve a country’s political culture, and the military officers who often lead coups to restore the nation are often just as bad if not worse than the people they overthrow. Democratic change has to come from grassroots political activity that genuinely reflects the desire of the people to improve their government. It should not come from corrupt political deals, power-hungry military officers, foreign interests, militant terrorist groups, or social media manipulation.