SEOUL, July 13 (AJP) - Ten years ago this Wednesday, fighter jets bombed the Turkish parliament and tanks rolled onto the bridge spanning the Bosphorus. The coup attempt of July 15, 2016, was designed to break the Turkish state in a single night. Instead, it collapsed by morning, defeated by ordinary citizens who walked toward the tanks, and the decade that followed turned the country that survived it into one of the few states trusted to stand between the world's warring powers.
Türkiye marks the anniversary as Democracy and National Unity Day, with commemorations in all 81 provinces and at diplomatic missions abroad under the theme "The Will Is Ours, Victory Is Ours." In Istanbul, 253 boats will sail the Marmara Sea and a Quran recitation by 253 memorizers will be held at Hagia Sophia, one for each person the state counts among the dead. The main ceremony takes place in the Saraçhane district, where some of the heaviest civilian casualties occurred.
What happened that night was rare in the history of coups. Most are settled among elites, and the public learns the outcome on the morning news. In Türkiye, the outcome was decided in the streets. After President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called on citizens to resist, speaking by video link on a news anchor's phone, crowds surrounded military units in Istanbul and Ankara. Unarmed men and women climbed onto tanks. Some were shot doing so. At least 251 people were killed and more than 2,000 wounded in a single night, and the coup was finished before dawn.
Ankara attributes the attempt to the movement of Fethullah Gülen, a cleric who lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania from 1999 until his death in October 2024. Gülen was once an ally of Erdoğan, and his movement ran schools, media outlets, and businesses in dozens of countries while its followers rose through the Turkish judiciary, police, and military over decades. The two men broke publicly in 2013, and after the coup attempt, the government designated the network a terrorist organization, calling it the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization, or FETÖ. Gülen denied any role until his death. The years that followed brought one of the largest purges in the republic's history, with tens of thousands of soldiers, judges, prosecutors, teachers, and civil servants dismissed or detained, a crackdown whose scale drew criticism from Western governments.
But the deeper legacy of July 15 is not the purge. It is what the night proved about the country itself. A state that survives a coup through the will of its own people acquires something most nations never get to test, a certainty about where legitimacy lives. The crowds that filled the squares that night came from across Türkiye's political spectrum, secular and religious, left and right, government supporters and opponents, united on the single point that soldiers do not decide who governs. That unity became strategic capital, and Ankara has spent 10 years converting it into power.
The conversion is measurable. Türkiye concluded after 2016 that its security could not be outsourced and built a defense industry that has moved from near dependence on foreign suppliers to ranking among the world's significant arms exporters, with its drones fielded in conflicts from North Africa to Ukraine. It pursued an independent foreign policy that kept channels open to actors its allies refused to touch, absorbing American sanctions over its purchase of Russian air defense systems rather than backing down. The bet was that a nation confident in its own cohesion could afford to stand between blocs rather than inside one. In the disorder of the 2020s, that bet is paying off.
Consider the world of July 2026. The war in Ukraine grinds through its fifth year. A war between the United States, Israel, and Iran has shaken the Middle East and rattled energy markets. The transatlantic alliance is strained over burden-sharing as Washington draws down forces in Europe. In this landscape, Türkiye is the only NATO member that talks regularly to both Kyiv and Moscow. It brokered the Black Sea grain deal that moved more than 30 million tons of grain through the blockade, hosted the Istanbul talks that produced prisoner exchanges of 1,000 captives on each side, and has repeatedly offered to host leader-level negotiations. When the Iran war broke out, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan flew between Gulf capitals arguing that the region must own its security, and Ankara positioned itself as a channel between Washington and Tehran.
Geography underwrites the diplomacy. Türkiye sits on the strait that separates Europe from Asia and controls, under the Montreux Convention, the only maritime passage into the Black Sea, a power it has used to keep Russian warships from reinforcing their fleet. It anchors the Middle Corridor, the overland trade route linking China and Central Asia to Europe that has grown sharply in importance as the northern route through Russia became untenable. Goods, gas, grain, and refugees all pass through or past Turkish territory. In calm times this makes Türkiye a transit country. In chaotic times it makes Türkiye a gatekeeper, and the times are chaotic.
The symbolism of this month made the point plainly. NATO held its summit in Ankara on July 7 and 8, the first ever in the Turkish capital, one week before the coup anniversary. Ten years ago, jets flown by putschists bombed the parliament. This month, leaders of all 32 allied nations gathered a few kilometers away, and US President Donald Trump praised his host and pledged to lift the sanctions imposed over the Russian air defense purchase. The summit's defense industry forum was the largest in the alliance's history, held in a country that a decade earlier was purging its own officer corps.
Among the guests was South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, one of only two non-NATO heads of state invited alongside Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy. His presence was itself evidence of Türkiye's pull. South Korea, a trading nation at the far end of Asia whose prosperity depends on open sea lanes and functioning supply chains, has been investing steadily in the connector country. Lee made a state visit to Ankara last November, the first by a South Korean president in 13 years, marking the 75th anniversary of Türkiye's entry into the Korean War, in which some 21,000 Turkish troops fought and more than 900 died. The two presidents met for 103 minutes, upgraded the strategic partnership through a joint statement, and signed agreements covering nuclear power, veterans affairs, and infrastructure, giving South Korea a foothold in Türkiye's planned second nuclear plant at Sinop. For Seoul, whose defense firms are pushing into European markets, Türkiye is both a partner and a proof of concept, a country that built an arms industry from dependence to global reach within a generation.
None of this settles the arguments about Türkiye's internal politics, which remain contested at home and abroad. But the trajectory since July 15 is difficult to dispute. The night that was meant to break the Turkish state instead fused it, and the country that emerged has converted that cohesion into a position no rival can easily replicate, the indispensable middle, holding the door between Europe and Asia at the moment the world needs someone to hold it.
On Wednesday night in Saraçhane, where crowds faced gunfire a decade ago, the names of the dead will be read aloud, as they have been every July 15 since 2016. One week earlier and a few hundred kilometers away, the leaders of 32 nations stood on Turkish soil to plan the defense of two continents. The distance between those two gatherings is 10 years, and the same crowds made both possible.
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