An excerpt:
WASHINGTON -- With all the crises in the Middle East, the Obama administration took solace in the fact that there was one reliable, democratically elected strongman — a stalwart member of NATO — that Washington could depend on: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
No matter how the coup attempt against Mr. Erdogan plays out over the next hours and days, that certainty is shattered.
From RFE/RL's Armenian Service:
Armenia Says Stability In Neighboring Turkey Important For Region
Stability and law and order in Turkey “based on respect for democracy, human rights, and fundamental freedoms” are “important for the entire region,” Tigran Balayan, a spokesman for Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a Facebook post on July 16, reacting to a night of violence in the neighboring country that saw a failed coup attempt by the military against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.
Armenia and Turkey have no diplomatic relations but share a border stretching for 345 kilometers.
Armenia protects its state frontier with Turkey jointly with Russia, whose Federal Security Service (FSS) has announced a switch to an “enhanced regime” of border protection in the wake of last night’s events in Turkey.
Quoting the FSS press office, Armenia’s Armenpress state-run news agency reports that “Russian border guards along with their Armenian colleagues are jointly carrying out the protection of Armenia’s borders with Turkey and Iran as well as perform the service at Armenia’s [international] Zvartnots airport.”
Meanwhile, responding to the events in Turkey, aviation authorities in Armenia delayed a Yerevan-Istanbul flight that was due to take off on July 16. Many international airlines have also delayed or canceled flights to Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, one of Europe’s largest air terminals and which is used extensively for connection flights.
The airport was closed by Turkish authorities in connection with last night’s events.
Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports that according to preliminary data no citizens of Armenia or ethnic Armenians were affected by the events in Turkey in which scores of people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured.
Erdogan Supporters Rally In Antalya
In the southern Turkish resort city of Antalya, hundreds of government supporters took to the streets in the early morning hours of July 16 to show their support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid an attempted coup. Erdogan had called for citizens to take to the streets in solidarity. (RFE/RL's Radio Farda)
Analysis from RFE/RL's Abbas Djavadi:
Five Reasons This Turkey Coup Bid Failed
Turkey’s military has managed to seize power directly three times since 1960 (and forced another government from power in 1997). So why did this latest coup attempt fail
Here's my take:
1. Lack Of Public Support
Three previous coups were fairly well received by a public yearning for “peace and order” to be restored after periods of social strife or violence. No such public support existed this time for the coup plotters, and few people came out to cheer them on.
In fact, far larger crowds answered President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s dramatic call -- made to a television news channel via a mobile-phone video link -- to come out onto the streets to show their rejection of the coup.
Read more here.