Turkish government repels coup attempt, 60 killed in clashes

 

Dozens of people were killed in clashes in the Turkish capital as groups inside the army attempted to bring down the government, local media reported, citing the prosecutor's office.

 

Forty-two people, 17 of them police and others civilians, were killed in Ankara, NTV reported, citing the chief prosecutor's office in the capital's Golbasi district. Across the country, some sixty people have been killed and over three hundred have been arrested. 

 

Turkish officials today said the government had appeared to have repelled an attempted military coup following a night of explosions, air battles and gunfire across the capital that left at least 17 dead, according to state-run media.

 

 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an interview over FaceTime with the CNN Turk station, dismissed the military action as "an attempt at an uprising by a minority within our armed forces." His office declined to disclose his whereabouts, saying only that he was in a secure location.

 

Turks took to the streets of cities across the country waving national flags throughout the attempted coup to show their support for the government.

 

By Saturday morning, a top Turkish official said the coup attempt appeared to have been repelled. The senior official told The Associated Press that all government officials were in charge of their offices. The official requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

 

Earlier, Nuh Yilmaz, a spokesman for Turkish National Intelligence told CNN Turk the coup attempt had been quashed.

 

Yilmaz added that Gen. Hulusi Akar, the military chief of staff, was back in control and "everything is returning to normal."

 

The chaos included a reported bomb explosion at the parliament, capped a period of political turmoil in Turkey blamed on Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian rule, which has included a government shake-up and a crackdown on dissidents and opposition media.

 

Critics also have blamed Erdogan for taking a hard line on Turkey's Kurdish rebels after the collapse of peace efforts, leading to deadly clashes that have increased military casualties. His government has also come under scrutiny for allegedly tolerating the flow of fighters and weapons to rebel groups fighting the government in Syria in the early years of the civil war there, fueling the growth of the Islamic State group. 

 

That policy, according to analysts, backfired when Turkey took on a more active role in the U.S.-led coalition against the extremists, who have since been blamed for a series of deadly bombings on Turkish soil.