Now that I've gotten some sleep...
OK, do you guys know anything about recent Turkish history? The last coup in 1980 unleashed a brutal wave of repression against pretty much everybody but the "right kind of Kemalists" (both nationalists and the center-left also got their fair share of state terror), with Kurds and leftists getting the shortest end of the stick. Martial law was declared and stayed in effect for 4-7 years depending on the province, arbitrary arrests and house searches were the norm (ask any Turk old enough and at the very least you'll hear stories about burning or stashing away anything remotely "ideological" out of fear), torture was widespread. 50 people were executed, hundreds died under custody or simply "disappeared" after being taken by soldiers, 650 thousand were arrested and all politicians banned, with only military-approved parties allowed to participate in the next elections. Speaking Kurdish was officially banned for the first time in Turkey's history and possibly the worst repression of Kurds in Turkey's history after Atatürk's
Dersim massacre began; PKK was formed in opposition to this in 1984.
"Saturday mothers" still mourn their lost children. The 1982 constitution drafted by the military is the most anti-democratic in terms of free speech, "public order" and workers' rights compared to the 2 earlier ones. The introduced %10 threshold for legislative elections (highest among all democracies; to block "minority" groups like Islamists, far-left and Kurds) backfired and is one of the reasons Erdoğan could centralize his power, as in
2002 elections he gained %66 of seats with only %34 of votes; roughly %55 of votes were simply not represented.
The rise of conservatism and Erdoğan in Turkey was in part caused the backlash to, first, the
1997 coup-by-memorandum that ousted then-PM Erbakan and the ban of his Islamist Welfare Party, accompanied by a purge of suspected Islamists/conservatives among public officials. AKP is simply a Welfare Party offshoot that brought conservative/Islamist votes to a record %34 in 2002 from %21 in 1995.
Another memorandum in 2007, issued because the new president Abdullah Gül would have a wife wearing the veil, simply led to then-PM Erdoğan disbanding the legislative and calling for new elections; AKP votes shot up to %46 from %34. People aren't sheep to be herded by an enlightened military.
The last time they seized power, military was uncomparably more chauvenistic and repressive than Erdoğan. I have no reason to think it'd have been any different if this succeeded. I'm assuming you are Americans, would you like your military to be the "guardian of your democracy", seizing power if Trump wins the elections, enacting curfews, banning all active politicians, dragging off anybody who they suspect are un-American in the middle of the night? It's fucking hypocritical to say this should be the norm for another country. I loathe Erdoğan, but I don't want him to be replaced by an even worse Kemalist general, or martyred and made a hero for generations.