What are the chances that the military "coup" in Turkey was NOT orchestrated by Erdogan himself as an excuse to justify even more oppressive laws?

It’s possible, but it would be enormously intricate to plan, and especially to keep secret. I wouldn’t dismiss it entirely, but I doubt your theory is true.

Erdogan is blaming Gulen for the coup attempt. I think Erdogan is full of shit on that, and Erdogan is picking on a convenient enemy.

I’ve seen others say the same thing and I wouldn’t put it past him.

Doubtful in this instance. A lot of stuff is coming in still. Their problem at the moment is a helicopter full of coup leaders made an emergency landing in northern Greece. The Greeks are hesitant to just hand the guys over for possible summary execution. Turkey has announced to the Greek government that this can be considered a act of war. Both are NATO countries.

Lets take a look at the exterior ramifications of this failed coup. These could prove much more important for the future than the turmoil occurring in Turkey at the moment.

Greece is in economic shambles, is completely inundated by almost a million Syrian refugees supposedly in transit, but as their original target asylum countries slowly close their doors, the refugees are piling up in crowded camps and are being fed and cared for as best as possible by the Greek government. There is internal turmoil in Greece: Right wing nationalism is raising it’s ugly head due to the refugees and EC regs they feel are harming their ancient culture. Communist parties are growing rapidly in reaction to the popularity of the Right. People have lost their pensions, they have elected a very far left government, and now must live with 30 years of strict austerity programs instituted by “foreign” banks (read German) for their bailout. University students and professionals who may never own a home of their own are very unhappy about these austerity measures and there is violence in the streets. It is not lost on any Greek that the same nation that invaded them and killed a million of their citizens during WWII is home of the banks that are demanding these austerity programs.

Greece is not ready to fight a war with their ancient enemy, Turkey. Turkey knows this, Putin knows this. NATO knows this. The EC knows this and the US knows this. But Greece has never stood down from one with Turkey either.

I think NATO leadership might do well to mediate this one. The chip on the table might be the disputed islands in the Aegean between Greece and Turkey.

There is a captured military ship full of coup activists and leaders sailing for Greece. This will aggravate an already bad situation. It’s possible that Greece may have to refuse these people. They may run out of fuel before they find a friendly country to give them refugee status. Other countries may offer them fuel but not refuge.

Turkey has closed down it’s airspace—a measure usually taken when a country experiences an internal threat.. This has interrupted US air strikes and intelligence gathering in Syria.

Turkey is strongly linked to Russia in trade. There was a dispute not long ago and Russia turned of the gas and suspended other trade. This had an immediate, crippling effect on the Turkish economy. The dispute was short-lived and things were back to normal as of yesterday.

Putin does not like the American interference in Syria and neither does the regime they are bolstering up at the moment. The majority of our air operations in Syria and over many other places, including Iraq, are based in Turkey. (Others are off the US fleets in the eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf/Indian Ocean.) Putin would love to see futher interruption of our ops in Syria—as would the Chinese who recently parked a brand-new aircraft carrier in the Syrian port of Latakia, the first Chinese naval presence in the Med in modern times.

Putin might like the idea of a limited war between Greece and Turkey. A split between to NATO countries, a dispute between an EC country and a non-EC country, may serve his world vision. But this is risky and could get out of control, so I doubt this is something Putin would go for right now. But it is there and is in the back of western leaderships’ minds.

I’m communicating with regular Greek citizens on the ground, on the Aegean islands and in Athens. They don’t think this was a false flag op. It has been brewing for some time.

The false coup hypothesis was suggested by Gülen. He may sincerely believe in its plausibility, or he may just be trying to damage Erdoğan’s credibility—or both.

I think it’s highly unlikely.

Orchestrating a coup is going to be difficult enough. The logistics, the planning, assessing the risks and chances of success, finding allies, keeping it secret until the launch—and the execution of the coup itself with all the thousands of actors (not the thespian type) involved.

Orchestrating a coup that’s also designed to fail in order to strengthen the political position of the incumbent president—just adds to the complexity and the chance of things not going to plan.

It seems to me that the level of support for the coup to succeed just wasn’t large enough.

The police and other parts of the army not complicit in the coup reacted against the faction attempting the coup.

Social media also played a huge role in countering the coup. Erdoğan’s ability to quickly broadcast through social media, and social media being used as a tool to inform Turks about what was going on quickly, and to get out on the streets in huge numbers stiffled the coup.

The thing is, that this coup was so incompetently done, that any reasonable person would have known it would fail.

In any case, Erdogan is consolidating more power.

It has been interesting to watch the aftermath. Yes. Erdogen pull his own fire alarm. He had been unsettled that the military was as strong as it was. Coup d’états there have been successfully carried out when similar conditions existed. Trust Putin’s grin in news pix, half-hearted at best. No one on the face of this earth would have enjoyed a true uproar of an uprising in Turkey more than he. Had Putin been involved, the takeover would have been completed quickly and successfully. Now Erdogen has hollowly proven the power and popularity he wanted others to believe that he had all along. Interesting who he called to go out into the streets during and in the aftermath of the sound and fury, yet no other Muslim groups nor countries have made a peep. Nor any larger nations. Too perfect. Great timing. Not convincing. Cut military strongmen at the knees before they cut His balls off. Which was likely to have happened very soon. IMO.