Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan was reportedly alerted by Russia against the military coup few hours befre it was started last Friday.
Turkish soldiers are seen on the Asian side of Istanbul, Friday, July 15, Photo by: Emrah Gurel
The Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) received information about the prepared coup from its Russian counterpart, the Iranian Fars News Agency reported, citing Arab media outlets that cite diplomatic sources.
According to the report, the Russian military had intercepted “highly sensitive army exchanges and encoded radio messages” allowing to conclude that the Turkish Army was prepparing to overthrow Erdogan. Diplomatic sources say that the Russians intercepted info about dispatch of several army helicpoters to Erdogan’s resort hotel in orderto kill or arrest the Turkish president.
There is no information about the Russian station that had intercepted the radio mssages. However, the report says that the Russian army intelligence unit deployed in Syira’s Latakia province is reportedly equipped with state-of-the-art electronic and eavesdropping systems to gather highly sensitive information.
Fars noted that a week before the coup attempt Erdogan took stepts in order to normalize the relations with Russia that had deteorated last year when Turkey shot down a Russian Su-25 bomber over Syrian skies.
Sources suggest that the shift in Erdogan’s foreign policy was “a major cause pushing several foreign states to provoke and promise support for the army to stage the coup, and the same shift also saved him.”
Furthermore, after the coup, Turkish authorities announced that the two Turkish pilots who played a role in the downing of the Russian warplanes last yearere in custody over the recent military coup attempt.
