If this is a coup, then all I can say is that I am only surprised it took this long. Turkey’s military has long seen itself as the guardian of a strictly secular society that moved swiftly to depose any government whose ministers showed more religiosity than showing up for weddings, funerals and the odd mosque prayers for the top Islamic holy days. Military coups used to be quite common.
The trouble with Erdogan is he might not just be a Muslim for show, but a true believer and a jihadist at heart.
Erdogan...and Obama... have been very clever about disguising their intentions. First, they were mild, but at the same time went about replacing and retiring top military officers with those they thought personally loyal to them. Then they grew bolder.
With Erdogan, this boldness took the form of executive power-grabs and explicit Islamist support. With Obama, it's been a bit more subtle. The executive power grab is there, but the Islamist cloak is more opaque. If you look at Obama's appointments, they became increasingly Islamic or black militant with the passage of time.
The question of the day is whether or not there's enough of the Turkish Army command intact to straighten things out and toss Erdogan. You're right, it should have happened years ago.
Erdogan purged the senior officers a few years ago and put in generals he thought would be loyal to his islamic government.
“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers...”
- Recep Tayyip Erdogan
“Islam - that theology of an immoral illiterate Arab bedouin is a decaying corpse that is poisoning all of our life”
- Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha / Ataturk
I am really surprised that it really happened at all.