Hundreds of thousands of Turks gathered in Istanbul on Sunday summoned by President Tayyip Erdogan to denounce a failed coup – a show of strength staged in the face of Western criticism of widespread purges and detentions.

The “Democracy and Martyrs’ Rally” at the Yenikapi parade ground, built into the sea on the southern edge of Istanbul’s historic peninsula, caps three weeks of nightly demonstrations by Erdogan’s supporters, many wrapped in the red Turkish flag, in squares around the country.

The vast majority gathered in a sea of red Turkish flags were Erdogan supporters, some with banners reading “You are a gift from god, Erdogan” or “Order us to die and we will do it”.

“We’re here to show that theses flags won’t come down, the call to prayer won’t be silenced, and our country won’t be divided,” said Haci Mehmet Haliloglu, 46, a civil servant who traveled from the Black Sea town of Ordu for the rally.

“This is something way beyond politics, this is either our freedom or death,” he said, a large Turkish flag over his shoulder and a matching baseball cap on his head.

“The triumph is democracy’s, the squares are the people’s,” said flyers put through doors overnight advertising free bus, ferry and subway transport to Sunday’s rally. The slogan adorns banners hung from bridges and buildings across the country.

SHOW OF UNITY

Erdogan, a polarizing figure has invited the heads of the secularist and nationalist opposition to address the crowds in what he hopes will show a unified nation in defiance of Western criticism.

“The only way to eliminate coups is to revive the founding values of the Republic. These values that make our unity should be spoken out loud at Yenikapi,” said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the secularist opposition CHP, in a tweet ahead of the rally.

The brutality of July 15, in which more than 230 people were killed as rogue soldiers commandeered fighter jets, helicopters and tanks, shocked a nation that last saw a violent military power grab in 1980. Even Erdogan’s opponents saw his continued leadership as preferable to a successful coup renewing the cycle of military interventions that dogged Turkey in the second half of the 20th century.

Source: Reuters, 7 Aug. 2016