«He [Erdogan] comes out of this tremendously strengthened,» says Howard Eissenstat, associate professor of Middle East history at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. «This has remobilized a base that was getting sort of tired of him. It gave him at least a moment in which he unified all elements of society against a clear threat.»

Turkey now will be an even more difficult place to live in for dissidents. Erdogan is already talking about the reintroduction of death penalty. «Our government will discuss [the death penalty] with the opposition,» he said when he spoke to a crowd of party fans who interrupted his speech with the slogan «we want the death penalty.» Then he said he would endorse the reintroduction of the death penalty if parliament approved it.

Meanwhile, the Security General Department (which runs the police force) issued a statement calling on citizens to inform them about any social media material that supports terrorists, the Gulen organization or that contains anti-government propaganda material.

All this Turkish upheaval reminds one of the Reichstag fire, an arson attack on the German parliament building in Berlin on Feb. 27, 1933. A young unemployed Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was arrested for the crime. He had only recently arrived in Germany; he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death. The Reichstag fire was used as a pretext by the Nazi Party to tell its public that communists were plotting against the German government — a pivotal event in the establishment of Nazi Germany.

We may never know if the failed coup of July 15 was a Turkish version of the Reichstag fire. But we do know that it will be used as a pretext to claim that a multitude of enemies, inside and outside Turkey, are plotting against the government.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.