Ten Years Ago, President Erdogan Was Permanently Scarred. That Scar Has Become More Visible and More Defining Over Time. President Trump Believes He Too Is A Coup Survivor.

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Ten Years Ago, President Erdogan Was Permanently Scarred From Within Turkiye And Outside Of Turkiye

A Scar That Becomes More Visible Over Time

A Scar That Defines

How Will That Scar Transfer To New Generations?  Should It Transfer?

Both President Erdogan and President Trump Share Political Scars And Were Politically Singed

On 15 July 2016, members of the armed forces of the Republic of Turkiye attempted to replace Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of the Republic of Turkiye (2014-2028).

He was not injured by bullets.  He was injured by what he saw, what he read, what he heard, and by the decisions of individuals he and his team knew and worked with and trusted.  He was scarred.

• Baltimore, Maryland-based Johns Hopkins Medical (excerpt): “A scar is the body’s natural way of healing and replacing lost or damaged skin.  Scars may be formed for many different reasons.  Scars may appear anywhere on the body, and the composition of a scar may vary.  It may be painful.  The final look of a scar depends on many factors, including the skin type and location on the body, the direction of the wound, the type of injury, age of the person with the scar.”

He had been mayor of the city of Istanbul (1994-1998), prime minister of the Republic of Turkey (2003-2014), and then president of the Republic of Turkey (Turkiye).

When the coup attempt commenced, he appreciated the micro and the macro- the when and where and the national.  He knew the name of the bridge the tank was crossing and knew the flight patterns of the jets and knew the location of the TRT World television studio.

His first videos using FaceTime reflected simultaneously fear and strength, fortitude and resoluteness, calm, and confusion.  All unsurprising.

Participation by the armed forces in governance of the Republic of Turkiye was not a new phenomenon.

Different this time was a coup attempt with aircraft, soldiers, and tanks had to prevail on two fronts where one front had been demonstrably transformed by technology.

First, replacing or upending the government.  Second, prevailing over the electronic highway- cellular device applications that transmitted text and images and critically to the determent of those participating in and supporting the coup attempt, email, live streaming, text messaging, and video.

The practitioners of the coup attempt had bullets, missiles, and rockets.  The opponents of the coup attempt had communications.

The opponents of the coup attempt also had numbers- there were more of them, and they did not want a colonel or general as president of the Republic of Turkiye.  They may not have been universally enamored with the Erdogan Administration- but at least he was not wearing a military uniform.

For President Erdogan, whose FaceTime video messages defined “viral” in terms of distribution and impact, although rattled, as any head of state would be in that moment, reinforced for the citizens of Turkiye that he was alive, he was in command, and he was not going anywhere- except from Marmaris to Ataturk Airport in Istanbul.  Precisely what a head of state should be doing during those moments.

However, there was a cost for the citizens of the Republic of Turkiye and for President Erdogan.

For the citizens of the Republic of Turkiye, there would be swift arrests, incarceration, and retribution against those who participated in the coup attempt and against those whose support for the government was uncertain- as defined by the government.

For President Erdogan, he was angered, politically disfigured, and politically scarred.  Who could he trust within the internationally-recognized territory of Turkiye?  Who did he want to trust within the internationally-recognized territory of Turkiye?

Within the Republic of Turkiye was not the only issue for him.  It was how other heads of state and heads of government reacted to the coup attempt and responded to the coup attempt.

From the perspective of President Erdogan and his team, how those responses arrived- how quickly and how slowly, the tone of the responses, was instructive and painful.  A foundation of mistrust was created during those days which would shape into a decade of distrust and onward.

On 15 July 2016, Barack Obama, President of the United States (2009-2017), was in The White House.  Donald Trump, President of the United States (2017-2021 and 2025-2029), elected on 5 November 2016, would not occupy the Oval Office until 20 January 2017.  Joseph Biden, Vice President of the United States (2009-2017) would himself not sit behind the Resolute Desk until 20 January 2021.

The government of Turkiye was a founding member of the now thirty-two-country Brussels, Belgium-based North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and provided then and provides today the second-largest military component in the alliance.  Yet, there remains distrust among NATO members- questioning whether the muscularity of the government of Turkiye is comforting or unsettling.  The relationship between the government of Turkiye and the government of the Kingdom of Spain remains antagonistic.  Yet, Turkiye remains the only NATO member to have ordered the destruction of an aircraft operated by the armed forces of the Russian Federation.  That was in November 2015- nine months prior to the coup attempt on 15 July 2016.

• NATO: United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Albania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Romania, Germany, Slovakia, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary, Spain, Turkiye, Latvia, and North Macedonia, Sweden.

The government of the Republic of Turkiye is not a member of the twenty-seven-country Brussels, Belgium-based European Union (EU).  The Republic of Turkiye has remained a candidate for membership since 1999.  The prospect of membership remains unlikely due to the role of Islam in Turkiye and existing government priorities, although a more efficient and welcoming commercial, economic, financial, military, political, and societal cooperation, engagement, and integration will continue to evolve.

• EU: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.

For President Erdogan and the government of the Republic of Turkiye, the response by President Obama, Vice President Biden, EU leadership and members, and NATO leadership and members to the coup attempt- support for civilian control of government, maintaining democratic institutions, guaranteeing open elections, and non-political interference in the administration of law, was neither as robust nor as timely as had been expected.  When statements did address those important criteria, the messages from some capitals were interpreted by President Erdogan and the government of the Republic of Turkiye as thinly-veiled admonitions rather than relief.

The resulting mistrust and political scarring have remained thus far as a permanent haze enveloping the Republic of Turkiye’s relationships with other countries.

Ten years from the coup attempt, the government of the Republic of Turkiye is more muscular, prepared, and willing to flex that muscularity, both within the internationally-recognized territory of the Republic of Turkiye and outside of its borders.

In 2026, few heads of state and heads of government who were in office in 2016 remain in political leadership.  That lack of institutional experience negatively impacts how those in office today interact with President Erdogan and the whole of the Republic of Turkiye.

Absent witnessing a coup attempt or military conflict within a country border, challenging to appreciate the scar tissue from that moment or moments.  Survivors are bolder, less tolerant, often more belligerent, and less accommodating to even the nuance of disagreement.  Space for debate narrows and becomes both challenging and dangerous.  There are fewer, if any, percentage deviations permitted between opposition and support.

There are individuals and organizations who use the possibility of another coup attempt as the rationale to be overtly proactive with the control of messaging and necessity for a whole-of-person compliance.

Ten years onward, residents of Ankara and Istanbul and other cities, towns, and villages throughout the Republic of Turkiye who were five years of age, are now fifteen-year-old teenagers.  Those who were ten years of age are now twenty years old.  How they communicate today, from where they obtain their information, and from whom they believe what information is provided to them has changed dramatically.

For President Erdogan, he was sixty-two-years old in 2016.  He is seventy-two years old in 2026.  In the remaining two years of his final term as head of state.  He will be bequeathing to a curious, dynamic, needy, new, and young generation.  An essential change will be far more women serving in the upper reaches of government and corporations.

President Erdogan is a member of a club to which no one aspires membership.  A democratically elected head of state where members of the military seek to overturn the result of an election.

President Erdogan was the victim of an attempted coup in 2016 where the perpetrators wore civilian attire and uniforms while using bullets as weapons.

President Trump believes he prevailed in the 2016 presidential election despite what he believes was widespread voter fraud and suppression of the vote count.  He believes he prevailed in 2020, but was victim of a coup using not bullets, but electronic ballots and paper ballots.  He prevailed again in 2024, but again even in victory claimed to be the victim of a coup attempt using electronic ballots and paper ballots.

From his perspective, the “military” seeking his demise used ballots as weapons and included the bureaucratic Deep State, Democrats (many of whom were guilty of voter fraud), individuals with Trump Derangement Syndrome, and Trump Haters.

While President Trump wants to believe he is a member of the coup survivor club, President Erdogan does not have to believe it… he survived it.