Unfolding Turkey’s Failed Coup
It was hard for us, using our journalistic sense, to believe that Erdogan would make such a move. We felt it was ‘fake news,’ and it was later established as such. President Erdogan appeared on one of the government opposition’s news outlets. He called on the people to take to the street and stand up to the coup plotters. A few minutes later, the scene across the entire country changed. The headline was ‘Turkish people on the street facing tanks with their bare chests’. Within minutes, all the roads and squares were packed with unarmed civilians resisting the coup attempt. Before first light, Erdogan’s plane landed in Istanbul Airport, where he was greeted by thousands at the facility, which hours earlier had been a military barracks for the perpetrators of the coup. The coup attempt had failed. It was an exceptional story by all measures; Al Jazeera’s extended coverage ran for days, with correspondents deployed across Turkey’s major cities. Once the dust had settled, we began gauging the reactions within Turkey and beyond. The failed coup attempt was covered by the global media, but Al Jazeera stood out for being miles ahead, thanks to its accurate and balanced coverage of the story from all perspectives.
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