Inside Turkey's Parliament After Failed Coup
A prominent MP shows Sky News the damage as he denounced the "brutal" assault on his country's "democracy" and "solidarity".
Monday 18 July 2016 08:51, UK
“It's brutal, brutal, totally sad," said Mehdi Aker, the co-chair of the ruling Law and Justice Party, as he gestured towards the shattered hulk of Turkey’s national assembly.
"This place is our democracy, our solidarity, our unity," he added with a whisper.
This prominent MP - and former government minister - agreed to give Sky News a tour of the damage caused in the early hours of Saturday morning by the participants in a chaotic attempted army coup.
Missile strikes by F16 fighter jets and machine gun fire from helicopter gunships have punched great holes in this parliamentary complex and the Prime Minister's office has been wrecked.
We found the great golden door to the debating chamber unhinged and punctured with molten shrapnel.
Through the dust and poor light of a shattered office block, Mr Aker told me his story.
When the plotters realised that he - and 50 other MPs - had hunkered down in parliament, they decided to blast the parliamentarians out.
"When we got here we all sat together in the main plenary hall.
"The MPs from the government and the opposition parties too - we were all together.
"Then came the first bomb at 2.35, then the second, and we went down to shelter.
"But we stayed to defend it, to do whatever was necessary. (We would) even give our lives."
"Were you scared?" I asked.
"Scared? You get annoyed, this building is valued, it is our heritage," he replied.
For the coup participants, it is clear there will be a heavy price to pay.
Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, called the uprising, "a gift from God because it will be a reason to cleanse our army".
As for Mr Aker, well he says he knows exactly who is behind it.
"It is Gulen," he said with total certainty. "Fethullah Gulen."
A Muslim cleric living in self-imposed exile in the United States, Mr Gulen heads up a relatively liberal social and religious movement called Hizmet or 'the Service'.
Its leader, however, has categorically denied any involved in the uprising.
Nonetheless, Mr Aker says the 75-year-old, based in Pennsylvania, has already tried to overthrow the government.
"In 2013, he tried to do a coup, in a different way, with his people in the bureaucracy, the police and army.
"We know it is him, we are sure. Everybody knows it."
There are many in Turkey who are just as worried about what Mr Erdogan may do in the wake of this military insurrection.
He already stands accused of increasing authoritarianism, and critics fear he will use the crisis to ramp up his power.
Still, the former cabinet minister describes this view as nonsense: "They are big lies, big lies made by Gulen and his people."
"Yes, a lot of people have been detained (after the coup attempt) but remember, it is not easy to make a coup.
"You can't do it on your own.
"Ask yourself who is against democracy and then ask, who has tried to defend it."