The WeaponsMan blog had some background info:
http://weaponsman.com/?p=33457
It’s not known whether the officers who staged the coup were Gulenist (a moderate Islamist faction, compared to Erdogan’s more extreme AKP) or Kemalist (secularizers who oppose Erdogan’s Islamism and antidemocratic tendencies).
The most likely cause was a secularist reaction to the AKP, Erdogan’s party, floating (but withdrawing) an explicitly Islamist constitution this spring.
With the failure of the coup, de facto President-for-Life Erdogan has lost the last check on his power, the Kemalist military, which he has been undermining since being elected in 2003. As his time in power has grown, he has taken many actions to nullify any risk of a future election turning his AKP islamist party out, to increase the power of islamism over Turkish life, and to pack the military with AKP Islamists, Erdogan flunkies, and AKP nepots.
About the author:
About Hognose
Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).
SF Intelligence is not infallible, but I'm willing to concede that Hognose has access to sources still extant within the SF community which, which combined with his own experience, probably gives him a fair amount of acumen here.
