The coup attempt in Turkey

Started as a regular day

It was Friday 15th of July 2016 , a a little over a month ago actually when i wake up to an extremely hot day , temperature over 40 degrees , but this already became a thing here as a matter of fact since June i have not seen a single drop of rain in Elazig. This thing literally drives me beyond crazy , how hot really means hot ? well come to Elazig and you will find out !

My day started normal , woke up around 8:30 am , got dressed in a second and 9 am i was already in my office where i am doing the most for my Erasmus internship , of course doing the most meaning like chilling or something but the fact that matter actually, as they say right ?! Before this day we had an incident about 2 weeks ago with the Ataturk airport explosion and gun shots which was still keeping the headlines all over the country , i never taught in a million of years another bad thing may actually happen in such short time . I did not knew many things about what actually a coup means because in Romania we never experiences anything like this , i mean the only thing we experienced was in 1989 which was a major revolution in which people went outside on the streets protesting , this led to falling off the communism and the execution of our dictator Ceauseasu and his wife Elena . But i am not sure if that revolution is actually like a coup attempt .

What i learn after was that best words to describe a coup is when a major force such as military in this case is trying to take over the country and go after the president . So i guess i lived to tell another story about another incident that happened while being on Erasmus here in Elazig , Turkey .

So as i was saying my day felt normal , it was a regular boring Friday at the office , usually on day 5 i am so exhausted already that i cannot even dress properly for office so i just put on some yoga pants and an over sized shirt and drag myself to work and then waiting all day for 5pm when i can go home and relax . Day ended and i headed home as usual , i washed my dishes , cooked something and spend a few hours with Muhammet until he had to go to work on a night shift . The afternoon passed super fast as always and Muhammet was ready to go to work . I guess was around 11pm when he left and after half an hour he text me ...

All hell got loose

I was chilling in my bed watching my serials as always when i got a Facebook message from Muhammet saying ''read the news'' . I opened my BBC news app and first top news was that a bunch of tanks and soldiers blocked the entrance of one of the bridges across the Bosphorus but no more information so i didn't knew for sure what was this about . After a few minutes Muhammet he was keep on texting me with more info's saying that the military took over and they went after the president in something which seemed like a coup attempt . As i was not familiar with the term i quite didn't understood but my first taught was that , this is going to be 89' Romanian revolution all over again . People going on the street protesting against the regime of the country which is not something new .

I guess i knew that something like this may happen at a moment but why all this things happen during my internship. Way too many incidents in the past year .

I was keeping me updated with the BBC and all sort of news came like the soldiers are shooting at people and they have helicopters launching missiles and dropping bombs in Ankara , all sort of things . They took over the main TV channel broadcast and they held hostage the main general of army . So it was too many news to process in a short time . I went outside my window and spoke with the the other Erasmus boys, we live in the same block of apartments on the same floor , door to door , so we communicated from our windows and following the conversation and the news in real time . Muhamemt he was working a night shift and he couldn't come home so i was all alone in an apartment with no clue of what i am about to do . I cannot say that i panicked but i was a bit afraid , i was afraid about Muhammet and how he will return from work the next day . I was afraid of my position and if somebody will attack us here , yes sounds major but i had to consider all this things .

One of the boys was not home in that moment so we all got scared about him . The news said that martial law was implemented and a high state of emergency in all country . Borders closed and flights got canceled . Basically we were held hostage inside the country with no way out . After an hour or so the guy missing came back from the center and he had no idea about what's happening , he told us in a funny way that '' i went to Carrefour and people are sitting in line buying all the food , i guess they are going camping '' for a moment we had a laugh but after we realized that this is not good , everybody panicked and in this moment didn't knew what to do . We checked our fridges if we have plenty of food but in that moment i don't think you can even process what is happening really . 

They informed us not to leave our apartments by any means and in a short while a lot of noise was coming from outside , people shouting of the street , cars were making a lot of noise .Basically the president went on a facetime conversation and said to the people of Turkey to go on the streets and fight for their right , fight the soldiers , which in my opinion sounds crazy as hell , how can you tell to your people go on the street and fight with the price of your life . But people are apparently that stupid and in all cities went on the street and protest against the military coup . For a while the social media stopped working so this is when i panicked . I knew for sure that nobody at home in Romania knew what was happening because the time was already past midnight so it was not good if i told my family or something will be no point .

Another alarming thing which i realized was that the call to prayer started at an hour which is not normal and it went on and on for many minutes without stopping . At the end he was saying something in Turkish which i did not quite understand but for sure he was saying to the people to go out on the streets . It was so much noise on the street oh my God ! i literally taught they will come for us in our apartments i was that scared . But after a while around 3 am things started to calm down and the news were not updating anymore but not before i found out that the president in that moment was in Antalya for holiday and after he left that resort a couple of minutes they bombed it . So it was clearly they were going after him . It was a revolt !

At about 3 am i went to bed and i felt asleep in a second , i was extremely tired and my mind was to busy to process more news . In the morning Muhammet was home and on the news , every channel were speaking about the night of 15 July , they said it was a failed coup attempt and the death toll was about 270 with lots more injured . Plus a lot of damages around Istanbul and Ankara . 

Life after the coup

Day by day things calm down but borders were still closed and Turkish people abroad had to come back to Turkey or people on holiday had to return back back to their jobs.It seemed like they were making a bunch of arrests and questioning around the country . It was looking like ''a summer cleaning '' , mass arrests and mass layoffs. We didn't knew the situation , what's going to happen with us , the students here , if we had to return home or anything. Now after a month and half after the attempt sounds like all this things were forgotten already because Turkey is dealing once again with major attacks in multiple cities , including Elazig as well . So now we know what is the situation with us and all the Erasmus students across Turkey . We all need to return home because Turkey is not safe anymore for exchange programs , sadly in the future i don't think Turkey will be a popular destination anymore .

I had to share this experience from an Erasmus student point of view which happened to be in Turkey in the time of over 5 major attacks in the country . So in the hope that at least one person reads my posts and share the same feeling as me .

Stay safe !