It was 3.30am and the Turkish leadership was insisting that everything was under control. It didn’t feel like it. I was backed into the corner of a hotel room in Istanbul, trying to keep away from the windows as the building shook from sonic booms made by fighter jets tearing over the city’s rooftops. Three hundred miles away in the capital city, Ankara, plotters seeking to overthrow the government had seized tanks and jets and were bombing parliament. Civilians were being mown down in the streets. The presenter on CNN Türk was narrating with admirable calm the takeover of her own station’s building.
Each new update seemed to bounce off my brain before rebounding and coming back to hit with full force. Had President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he of such deliberate machismo, really just addressed the nation by FaceTime, on an iPhone held aloft by a TV anchor? Was my mind playing tricks when I saw helicopters strafe terrified civilians on a three-lane highway in Ankara? The significance of those dark 12 hours is still sinking in.
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