Winnipegger Paula Ethans found herself caught in the chaos in Istanbul during the attempted military coup.
Ethans is a second-year law student at University of Ottawa. She is currently in Tel Aviv interning with a legal non-governmental organization that works with LGBTI refugees and travelled to Istanbul for two weeks to help refugees there.
On Friday night, Ethans said she and her friends were getting ready to go out, when they got a call from a friend who was out in the city.
“He told us that there were police everywhere and army personnel everywhere and we didn’t really know what was going on, but it was probably best for us to stay in for the night and not go out to that,” said Ethans.
“Then about an hour later, we got news that there had been an attempted coup. So that was really the only information we really had. At that point ourselves and our roommates were all sort of glued to the Internet and trying to sort of gain a better understand of what was going on.”
About an hour after, the group read that there had been explosions at the parliament buildings in Ankara and that two bridges in Istanbul were blocked by military personnel.
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Ethans said shortly after news sources and social media sites, including Twitter and YouTube, were blocked, making more difficult for the group to follow the unfolding events.
At around 1:30 a.m. local time, Ethans said people began gathering at Taksim Square, located very close to the apartment where she was staying. This came after Turkey’s prime minister made a call to the people to demonstrate their support for the democratically elected government.
“We, at that same time, started hearing from our apartment lots of gunfire and explosions and you could hear people protesting and lots of sirens, so it was pretty close,” said Ethans. “While we weren’t in the thick of things, we felt present and close.”
As a safety precaution, Ethans said the group turned off all the lights in the apartment and sat on the floor.
She said the clashes continued until about 8 a.m. when the military associated with the coup surrendered.
“I would say it was unnerving and scary when we began hearing the gunfire and explosions, because it’s tough to gauge how close that is to you originally,” said Ethans. “Coming from Canada and for us not to know what it feels like being in the midst of a conflict, so when we turned off the lights and were sitting listening to these reverberations, that was unnerving, but once we garnered that it wasn’t as close as we thought I relaxed my shoulders a little bit.”
Ethans had registered with the Canadian embassy in Turkey before she arrived and was receiving email updates throughout the night.
The emails urged people not to travel within Turkey, or try to go in or out of the country. The next morning she received another email warning for people not to go outside.
“It was very quiet, very calm. No one was out on the streets,” said Ethans.
They saw photos of the empty streets and bridges with remnants of tanks from the previous night’s events.
Around 8 p.m. that night, Ethans said she ventured out of her apartment to Taksim Square, where citizens began to gather to celebrate the failed coup.
“It was pretty amazing to be in the midst of that. There were hundreds of people flocking to Taksim Square. They were proudly boasting Turkish flags. They were taking selfies with the flag. They were honking around, driving in their cars with flags. It was a really joyous and festive feeling,” said Ethans.
She said she was happy to see the people of Turkey coming together to denounce the attempted coup and will be watching closely as a lot of international relations will hinge on what happens next.
