Order for the coup came on night of July 14

Air Pilot Lieutenant Müslim Macit, who actively joined the July 15, 2016, coup attempt, owes everything to the Gülen brotherhood.

Upon guidance from these people - the Gülenists - he attended a military school and later joined the Air Force Academy, read books and joined conversations in brotherhood houses, listened to Fethullah Gülen’s sermons, has been under the observance of 13 “brothers” starting from high school until his lieutenancy, gave 15 percent of his salary to the brotherhood, won the staff officer’s exam thanks to the brotherhood’s help, later becoming an F-16 pilot again with their guidance.

And when that day came, the brotherhood called him on duty. That day is July 14, 2016. According to Macit’s prosecution testimony, Staff Squadron leader Mehmet Fatih Çavur, who was assigned at the Akıncı base, invited him to his house together with other pilots who were on the same ranks as him, Adem Kırcı and Mehmet Çetin Kaplan.

This is what Çavur said during their conversation about the next day, July 15, according to a recollection from Macit: “There will be a different operation on the base, the base will be crowded,” adding, “You were brought up until today for this, you will now pay for the work we did for you. You have to do this for the sake of the country.” 

 The words of Çavur: “I know your visits to the houses,” had attracted the attention of Macit.

 “I understood from Çavur’s talk that information about our visits to the brotherhood houses was given to him beforehand. Calling us in the middle of night to his house and making this talk with us made me come to the opinion that Çavur was also a member of the brotherhood because the conversations contained a connection of affiliation and trust. Nobody says that they are a brotherhood member in the brotherhood.

But in the army, we think of the possibility of affiliation to the brotherhood through certain attitudes like abstaining from alcohol or conversations of sexual content,” says Macit.

The testimony of Kırcı, who was in the same quadrilateral meeting, contains the same content, confirming Macit’s testimony.

What does Mehmet Çetin, who was the third lieutenant to be there, say about it?

Kaplan who flew on the night of July 15 with Ertan Koral on an F-16 fighter, bombing the Security Department, which cost the lives of seven people, used his right to remain silent.

Çavur, on the other hand, accepts that he met the three in his house but claims that “as they were appointed [to another base] they said they wanted to say goodbye; I said ‘I am not available at my workplace and have a flight at 23:30.’ They asked to come home and I said yes.” It is understood that he does not accept the dialogues he was affiliated with.

Yet the recordings from the tower of the Akıncı air base shows that of the two F-16 flights that took off on the night of July 15, one was used by Çavur and the other by Kırcı. These are F-16s that took off with the coup mission. They were assigned to fly above the General Staff.

Let’s go back to the meeting in Çavur’s home by looking at the indictments against Macit and Kırcı.

An interesting point is that Kırcı had also come to realize the moment the relationship between Çavur and the other two’s affiliation to the brotherhood.

“At the end of the two-hour-long stay, we left the house and as Kaplan, Macit and I were walking, we had a conversation and said, ‘I knew you were a good guy.’ This is how I understood that Kaplan and Macit were raised in the houses of the brotherhood like me,” Kırcı explains in his testimony.

There is another surprise that Macit came across on the day of the coup.

A briefing was given by Hakan Karakuş to the pilots who would attend the operation on July 15 around 18:00. In the later stages, Macit would see that the commander of the base, Hakan Evrim, as well as the head of the operation, Ahmet Özçetin, were in this endeavor.

He explains his astonishment: “Looking at their profiles I never thought Hakan Karakuş and Ahmet Özçetin would be from the service movement [Gülen network]. But the day of the incident I thought they were from the service movement. Hakan Evrim’s profile made me think he was affiliated to the movement.”

All these statements that are in the indictment into the Akıncı base offers an eye-opening framework about the Gülen organization’s (whose members in the same base do not even know each other) secret structure and working style.