Usual suspects at an air base on July 15

With the first anniversary of July 15 approaching, understanding what happened that night at the Akıncı air base carries a particular importance in order to properly reveal the essence of this coup attempt. Because Akıncı airbase is the operational brain center for the July 15, 2016, coup attempt.

Akıncı, in this regard, is a location that can play a role in identifying the identities of those responsible of the coup. This is the place where the transmission line functioned on the night of July 15, between the soldiers who carried out the coup and the “civilian leg” that directed the coup and said the final word on behalf of the organization. And that night on this base, the civilian cadre who played a determining role in the coup activity takes us directly to the Pennsylvania address.

This base, first of all, worked as the main command center in the conduct and coordination of the coup operation throughout Turkey.

Besides, this is also the place where the Chief of Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and other high level commanders were held hostage after being apprehended. Likewise, it is the place where the coup plotters tried to convince Akar to get him on their side and Akar tried to talk them out of it by directly speaking to them (the military leg) and sending indirect messages. The coup plotters had even intended to have Akar address Turkey on a state-run TRT broadcast.

The coup’s launch was also made at Akıncı. The special forces who would apprehend Akar had departed at this point by a white bus to the General Staff. Likewise, helicopters taking off from the Güvercinlik base first went to Akıncı and raged terror on Ankara airspace after getting their instruction from there.

The F-16s that pour death onto Ankara on the night of July 15 took off from this air base.

Just as the start of it, the coup’s terminating decision was also taken at Akıncı. The decision to give up came out from the 143rd fleet, where the organization’s civilian leg was based.

Actually, everything we listed here, are essentially facts that the public opinion already knows. The dimension that requires a special focus on Akıncı is the fact that the civil executive components of the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ), which is on the brain team of the coup, showed up at this base on the night of July 15. As stated on the 4658-page long indictment, prepared by Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, this operation was carried out on the headquarter of  the 143rd fleet which is located on the northeast point of the central track in the base.

Various statements about that night indicates that during the time period from the night of July 15 to the early morning hours of July 16 many civilians showed up in the 143rd, using laptops and continuously being in contact with some places on the phone.  An activity was carried out on the 143rd fleet.

The issue we should highlight is that only five of the civil executive cadre present that night at Akıncı appears as suspects mentioned in the indictments. There are six suspects on the “Civil executive Suspects” cluster (exluding the other four civilian suspects in the case). They are respectively: prime suspect Fethullah Gülen, second suspect Adil Öksüz, third suspect Kemal Batmaz, fourth suspect Hakan Çelik, fifth suspect Nurettin Oruç and sixth suspect Harun Biniş.

Öksüz is an academic of theology, Batmas is a businessman, Oruç is a former teacher who says he makes documentary films, Çiçek is a businessman who owns schools, and Biniş is an engineer who is also a computer software developer.

Was the number of civil executives in the Akıncı base that night higher?

Probably... We can also assume that there are also other civilian coup plotters who escaped when the coup attempt was unsuccessful.

Airforce ‘imam’ Adil Öksüz, in the civil executive group, is one of the key names of the coup who the government missed although he was caught by the gendarmerie at a field near the base. The other four names arrested around the base on the morning of July 16 are still under arrest.

What a coincidence that some of the suspects in this group flew to the U.S. together a short while before the coup.

We can turn our projectors on this civil executive cadre to see closer the finger prints of the Gülen movement on July 15.