Trying to Find a Turkey I Recognize After the Failed Coup

My mother remembers leaving home for school one morning and seeing a tank and a group of soldiers blocking the street as soon as she turned the corner. One of the officers politely informed her that there had been a coup and asked that she return to her house. When she went back home, my grandmother wouldn't believe her until she turned on the radio and heard it with her own ears, despite having lived through two other coups before—in 1960 and 1971, respectively.

My coup announcement came in the form of tens of texts and phone calls, millions of tweets and Facebook status updates, thousands of Instagram posts and Periscope broadcasts. I had arrived in Istanbul a mere 36 hours beforehand, and was busy re-familiarizing myself with the city I had grown up in and loved.

Over the five years I lived in New York, the ruling AK Party's ambitions had turned Istanbul into a concrete mega metropolis that echoed with religious rhetoric and newly-minted mythologies. In my absence, former Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had become Turkey's first directly elected president, ushered into power with the help of a mostly religious, conservative base. His supporters' increased influence was directly observable in small ways: suddenly, society had become less tolerant to individual freedoms. Less immediately apparent was Erdogan's ongoing censorship of journalists, his escalating authoritarianism, and the state-supported increase in police violence over the past few years.

But none of this was on my mind on July 15, in the late hours of my first day back in Istanbul. When my phone started getting inundated with messages around 11 PM, I was sitting by the Bosphorus with my friend Ali, enchanted, trying to remember why I ever left. Over a plethora of hasty text messages and phone calls, I was told that tanks and soldiers had blocked both bridges connecting Europe to Asia. The most frantic call, naturally, came from my mother, herself already in the line at a gas station in the town she now lives.

Ali and I stared at each other in disbelief. When we looked around, we noticed people rushing around us. Years later, when I remember that night, I'll remember everyone's faces glowing with concern in the cold, pale light of their phone screens as they walked as fast as their legs would allow. We rushed to Ali's motorcycle, on the way overhearing phone conversations, whispers, and live-recitation of tweets and Facebook comments from other passersby.

We drove up the Bosphorus Strait, up the craggy slopes of Arnavutkoy, past the few beautiful wooden Ottoman mansions from the 18th century, past barricades manned by un-uniformed policemen wearing steel jackets and carrying machine guns. The Second Bridge was lit in red, white, and blue, offering solidarity for the terrorist attack in Nice from the night before.

At that point, the streets were empty except for the crowded bakkals—the neighborhood convenience stores already going out of essentials like bread, water, pasta, and sugar. It felt like the world was ending. I wouldn't think to check my Twitter for another four hours, until that initial shock finally left its place to something much worse: a feeling of hopelessness regarding the future of my home country.

Later, I would learn that the same text was read over and over in the last three coups, only tweaked here and there to fit the circumstances. I went to the kitchen and made a gin and soda for myself with shaking hands.

It was a little after midnight, and it had gone dead silent on the streets. President Erdogan connected to the Turkish branch of CNN via FaceTime, looking ashy in front of an obscure white curtain, rejecting the coup, calling people to go out on the streets to defend democracy.

"This feels like an episode of Black Mirror," Ali observed. I shook my head in agreement. There we were, with fighter jets flying low over the house; government buildings and TV channels being taken over by rebels without a face on live TV; and the president making a FaceTime call from an undisclosed location, speaking from between the fingers of an anchorwoman. It felt somehow wrong to watch helplessly, but I couldn't bring myself to look away.

My friends in Nisantasi, Istanbul's most westward-facing neighborhood, texted saying they were hearing gunshots: Heeding Erdogan's call to action, men had gone out on the streets, attacking the tanks and foot soldiers. The country I was watching on live TV didn't feel mine; I felt as unsafe as I had during Gezi, when civilians were beaten, tear gassed, detained by the police, women like me dragged on the sidewalks from their hair. Although I was against the coup, I knew wouldn't be welcome next to this mob of men on the streets.

In the unwavering dark, the fire, the gunshots, the bombs, the anonymity formed into a single giant nucleus of fear. By the time Erdogan landed in Istanbul Ataturk—the airport ISIS had attacked only two weeks previously—and said the coup plotters were to "pay a heavy price for their treason to Turkey" the next morning at 7 AM, that fear was everywhere. It still is.

What alarmed me the most following the coup attempt was how silent and cautious people like myself grew. Anticipating the witch hunt to come, one by one, my friends made their social media accounts private, for no other reason than having disagreed with Erdogan at some point of their lives. Speaking up as someone who did not approve the coup, but who also didn't support Erdogan either, has become increasingly difficult. Doing so comes with the risk of accusations of treasonously supporting the coup—both by pro-AKP youth and the party's now uncontrollably large group of famous trolls.

In the weeks since, Erdogan has accused a Gulenist faction in the army of orchestrating the coup. Now the government insists that democracy has prevailed: July 15, the day of the attempted coup, was declared a "Democracy Holiday," and it's still being celebrated with rallies. Flags bearing Erdogan's face now hang right next to Turkey's founding father Ataturk's in public squares, many of which have been rebranded with new names containing the phrases "democracy," "martyrs," and "victory."

Less than a week after the "triumph of democracy," however, Erdogan declared a state of emergency, empowering the government to impose curfews, ban meetings, and search people without any authorization. The government also now has the authority to ban newspapers, magazines, and any other media overnight. That state of emergency is still in place today, weeks later.

In the past month, more than 60,000 government workers have been suspended, detained, and put under investigation. According to Amnesty International, there is evidence that detainees were tortured and raped, and the investigations are still not being independently monitored. A lot of people don't know the whereabouts of their family members or the conditions they are held under. At the time of writing, dozens of media outlets have been shut down in Turkey, and many journalists of different affiliations remain imprisoned. Last week, the famous novelist, columnist, and human rights activist Asli Erdogan became the most recent name to be added to that long list.

All in all, it seems that the thwarting of the coup I witnessed in mid-July was only the beginning of a new chapter in Erdogan's Turkey—one his government could only dream of previously. My next chapter will start with searching for a country that is remotely familiar to the one I grew up in.