World stood with Turkey after defeated coup of 2016

By Nazli Yuzbasioglu

ANKARA (AA) – Several countries and international organizations voiced solidarity with Turkey’s elected government after the defeated coup of July 15, 2016.

Messages of support for Turkey’s democracy came in the form of phone calls and statements from top international officials.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was the first country to issue a message of support for Turkey.

The first official visit to Turkey after the defeated coup was by Georgia’s then-Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, who arrived in Turkey on July 19, four days after the coup attempt.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was the president of Kazakhstan at the time, was the first head of state to visit Turkey after the defeated coup.

High-level representatives from Middle East countries, including Bahrain, Palestine, Qatar, Iraq, and Iran also later visited Turkey, as did officials from countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Presidents and representatives of international organizations, such as the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the UN, and the Union of Non-Governmental Organizations of the Islamic World also later visited Ankara.

Major European countries issued messages condemning the attempted coup but refrained from sending officials to Turkey for quite some time.

The US spoke out in support of Turkey at least three hours after the coup bid was launched.

Joe Biden, who was the US vice president at the time, visited Turkey on Aug. 24, over a month after the coup bid.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to call Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the defeated coup.

He called Erdogan a day after the unsuccessful bid to overthrow the Turkish government and conveyed his support for Turkey and its people.

President Erdogan spoke to Barack Obama, his American counterpart at the time, on July 19.

In the phone call, Obama condemned the coup attempt and voiced support for democracy in Turkey.

The Turkish president also later spoke to Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz, then-Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, and other officials.

FETO and its US-based leader, Fetullah Gulen, orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, in which 251 people were killed and 2,734 injured.

Ankara accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.

* Writing by Gozde Bayar