The situation there is still a bit fuzzy, but a quick summary: the Turkish military is attempting to oust the current government, lead by president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the military claims that they want to defend the constitution, a secular republic, and the vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's first president and the man credited with founding the republic. Erdoğan was elected president in 2014 (the first in which citizens would be able to directly elect their president) after having previously served as a three-term prime minister; he won just shy of 52% of the vote. Also important to note, Turkey is part of NATO, is looking to join the EU, and shares a border with ISIL; the former two groups are really keen on making sure that the border doesn't have any holes, and that will likely shape their response to this coup.

Sometime around 10 or 11pm local time, the military moved into Istanbul, shut down the bridges over the Bosphorus strait that connect Istanbul with the Asian party of Turkey. Tanks arrived at Ataturk Airport within about half an hour, and shortly after, the military announced that they had entirely seized control of the country. Press were told that the president was "safe"; later, Erdoğan's plane was not permitted to land in Germany. Erdoğan was on FaceTime telling citizens to go into the streets and fight back. More recently, I have read that the president is back in Turkey, and telling people that the government was in control.

There's not a whole lot of information right now; as of 10:5-pm local time, access to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube was down from within Turkey (Instagram was still up, I don't know if that changed, or if/when any of the blocked sites may have come back up), so there's not much information coming out of Turkey as a result. The government isn't exactly friendly towards journalists, either, so not many on the ground to report. Any of the above information I posted could be incorrect.

Here's the Guardian's live feed and here's a live feed from The Telegraph. If you've read an informative article, feel free to share the link.

The government is really friendly to Muslim Brotherhood though.  It's really dependent on how you choose to approach it. 

The government is democratically elected (GREAT), however, they have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and there's the occasional rumor they're providing a bit of support toward the continued destabilization of Syria in a bid for additional political influence in the region (bad on all counts).  The redeeming quality? They're willing to play ball with NATO much more and are on fairly strained but equitable terms with the US.

The military is secular (which is a similar concept we can appreciate in western civilizations as a political concept).  Due to that secular concept, they're less friendly toward all the forces fighting based on religion, predominantly ISIL, but extending to other groups in the area. Unfortunately, they're significantly less friendly to NATO, the US, and would much rather prefer isolationist policies vice international entanglements of responsibility (similar to the Monroe Doctrine in the sense of "leave us alone and we're fine with you guys over there"). The negative impact of their potential in seizing power is a more structured, probably totalitarian push and worse relations with the rest of their NATO allies.

It's all a grey scale where your only choice is which poison you prefer.

Anyway, last I heard, it's all settling down now.

As with most things, it's a bad idea to view the situation in Turkey in black-and-white terms. There are no good guys and bad guys, and regardless of the outcome (government wins vs military wins), it probably will have disconcerting consequences.

I'm going to try to cover the facts, and I'll get into speculations and my own opinions later.

First: the government appears to be back in control of the country. Many members of the military surrendered, and some may have been killed. Nearly 3000 have been arrested (unless that number has gone up since the article I read was printed). Eight soldiers fled in a helicopter, and requested asylum in Greece. They were, I think, arrested when they landed. Turkey wants to extradite them; some say the Greek government will process the asylum request in the usual way, while other reports say that the Greek Foreign Minister plans to return the soldiers "promptly".

More than 200 people were killed in the coup attempt, on all sides. Hundreds more were injured.

Arrest warrants were issued for 2745 judges, presumably for connections to the attempted coup. President Erdogan has said he wants to reintroduce the death penalty.

The president also said, "This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army."

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Here comes the speculation: who was responsible? The government has been quick to point the finger at an imam, Fethullah Gulen, and those loyal to his movement (sometimes referred to as hizmet). Gulen, who is presently in exile in the United States, has vehemently opposed the coup attempt, expressed support for Turkey's democratically-elected government, and denied any involvement in the coup. As of right now, there's no evidence of Gulen's involvement, and his supporters are mostly in the National Police, and to some extent, the judiciary; they don't dominate in the military. Gulen's movement was declared a terrorist organization by the Turkish government in May. This might put the US government in the middle of things, should Turkey request Gulen's extradition. This Vox article goes into a bit more depth on who Gulen is and what his movement is about. Having that background might help you understand all the players involved.

Kemalists— those secularists I mentioned yesterday, the ones typically associated with the military— may have tricked Gulenists into attempting a coup, knowing it would fail, but it would mean that the military would be purged of Gulenists as a result. Which appears to be exactly what is happening. I have no idea how credible this theory is.

Alternately: the Kemalists were behind the coup. Considering that Erdogan has been consolidating power and is increasingly authoritarian.

Another theory: Erdogan and/or people in his party/government staged the coup so that they could exploit the aftermath. And while they are taking advantage of the situation to purge judges and military officials, all while blaming political opponents, the coup attempt perhaps went a bit too far. The coup attempt was succeeding, but may have been stopped when Erdogan managed to get word out to people (via a broadcast of a cell phone on CNN Turk, in which the president delivered a message using FaceTime), urging them to defy the military, go out into the streets, and stop the coup. And they did. Maybe they would have regardless, but I think hearing the president (who is, I think, fairly popular) tell them to, helped. The actions of the citizens of Turkey, I think, were the reason the coup failed. Had this been a false flag operation, there are too many points of failure. What if the military fired on those civilians? (Some did, but in general, it seemed the military was reluctant to harm civilians.) What if people stayed home? What if the president had been unable to encourage them to oppose the coup? (Lots of things could have gone wrong just in trying to get the message out.) It seems too risky.

A bit more on who might be behind the attack from the BBC.

Regardless who might be behind the attack, the president's recent actions and comments worry me. I don't know to what extent Turkey's judicial system acts as a check on government power, but I see the removal of so many judges as the removal of either political opponents, or those who might strike down any laws he wants to pass. Like restoring the death penalty. I don't think it's a stretch to wonder if there are people the president wants to execute— political opponents, for example— who he will tie to the coup as a means of doing so. He may also consolidate more power behind himself, and they may not be much opposition right now. I'm in favour of democracy, and this… is looking a bit more authoritarian and moving in the direction of a dictatorship or something.

Things might also get messy for any of the various factions in Turkey. Gulenists are already being rooted out. I'm not sure what the Kemalists think. We've also got Kurdish factions. Then there's ISIL at the gate.

No heroes in this whole affair.