Submitting Campus

Daytona Beach

Department

Security Studies & International Affairs

Document Type

Article

Publication/Presentation Date

Fall 9-30-2025

Abstract/Description

Academia, think tanks, and international media have largely adopted the Turkish government’s narrative that the events of July 15, 2016, constituted a failed coup attempt. This dominant framing has shaped policy responses and scholarly interpretations despite the authoritarian context in which it was crafted. Many Turkish and Western scholars accepted the Turkish government’s narrative that the July 15 events were a failed coup attempt. They often rely on surface-level indicators and official statements without critically engaging with available evidence. Also, they disregarded substantial evidence and defendants’ statements in judicial proceedings that directly contradict official statements. One notable exception to this widespread acceptance of the government’s narrative is Jonathan Powell’s analysis in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, which challenged the standard framing and raised concerns regarding the peculiarities. However, most scholars and commentators—including many Turkish academics—have largely accepted the official version. This prevailing consensus, despite isolated dissenting voices, underscores the need for a more critical reassessment. Such uncritical adoption of an official narrative raises a fundamental question: should we take the word of an increasingly authoritarian regime at its face value, especially in interpreting high-stakes national security incidents? Turkey in 2016 was already well on its way to dismantling rule-of-law institutions, and accepting its account of July 15 without rigorous empirical scrutiny has had dangerous consequences. It allowed for sweeping purges, mass arrests, and the rapid erosion of democratic oversight.

Publication Title

Small Wars Journal

Publisher

Arizona State University

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Required Publisher’s Statement

"Rethinking the Narrative of Turkey’s July 15 Events: An Intelligence Operation Disguised as a Coup Attempt" by Mustafa Kirisci, Ibrahim Kocaman, and Murat Balci is reprinted from Small Wars Journal per the Creative Commons license granted upon its original publication https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/09/30/rethinking-the-narrative-of-turkeys-july-15-events-an-intelligence-operation-disguised-as-a-coup-attempt/

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