Turkish President Foiled Coup With Luck, Tech Savvy

Recep Tayyip Erdogan slips helicopter-borne commandos, texts the nation.

The immediate result seems to be the opposite of what the coup leaders intended. Instead of weakening Mr. Erdogan, the coup provided a rationale for him to crack down on the military and judiciary, the two strongest bastions of Turkish society with the power to check the president’s political ambitions.

This reconstruction of the failed coup is based on interviews with Turkish and Western officials and Turkish citizens who took part in resisting the takeover. It wasn’t possible to reach the accused coup leaders, including more than two dozen top military officers, who were rounded up across the country.

The events on the ground caught the Obama administration off guard, and the Central Intelligence Agency didn’t see it coming. In the initial confusion, some U.S. officials thought the troop movements could be a response to a terrorist threat. Other officials thought it could be a sham, put on by Mr. Erdogan to strengthen his hand domestically. Intelligence officials told the White House that they believed the coup was legitimate, said U.S. officials.

On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan moved to extinguish the final flickers of armed opposition with an expanding crackdown on more than 6,000 military officers, soldiers, judges, police officers and prosecutors accused of taking part in the botched attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government.

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