Middle East expert Dr. Ephraim Herrera spoke to Arutz Sheva about Friday night's attempted coup in Turkey, providing background and expert analysis.
"The coup attempt is not surprising. Erdogan is connected to the Muslim brotherhood and aims to make Turkey an Islamic state again. So naturally the partisans of the Ataturk movement, who follow Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who'd removed Islam from Turkish politics, are not to happy about this," Dr. Herrera explained.
He then clarified that the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't operate like ISIS. Their goal is to bring about Islamic world-domination through non-military means, mainly demographic ones. "We already see very large Turkish populations in Germany, Belgium, and other countries, and if Turkey enters the European Union, they would be able to move into anywhere in Europe completely freely."
While the desire for a coup among certain segments of Turkish society is not surprising, elements of the execution of the coup were very surprising indeed, said the Islam expert: "The generals didn't cut off internet access during their operation, so Erdogan was able to freely and efficiently communicate with his supporters, and get crowds down to the streets to prevent the revolution. This means we cannot know whether this was really a coup by the officers, or one staged by Erdogan so that he can then eliminate opposition."
Regarding the implications of Thursday night's horrific terror attack in Nice, Herrera said it echoes ISIS's ideology very closely.
"Islam is not conquering France quite yet. But the kind of terror we are seeing comes from the ideas and aims of Islamic State, as written explicitly in the book written by Abu Musab a-Suri, the ideologue of ISIS. His aim is to terrorize the western populations by attacks conducted by lone wolves, without need for affiliation with ISIS. They just read the instructions written by ISIS figures and disseminated online. Remember, the terrorist in Nice was a French citizen."