An American Enterprise Institute official published an
article in Newsweek in March that, if it came from the State Department would have been considered a greenlight for a coup:
This came on the heels of a long
Atlantic interview in which stated, "Obama acknowledged that he initially viewed Erdogan, mistakenly, as the sort of moderate Muslim leader who would bridge the divide between East and West — but Obama now considers him a failure and an authoritarian, one who refuses to use his enormous army to bring stability to Syria.”;
Foreign Policy Magazine picked up on both in June.
The chatter was out there and one wonders how much the coup plotters were aware of these articles.
