July 15 Truths

"The Truth Behind July 15" is a striking political-thriller novel that reconstructs the most controversial night of modern Turkish history through an inside perspective from the General Staff Headquarters, Army Aviation Command, Armored Units, Akinci Air Base, and other strategic centers. Author Abdullah Esad MINIK meticulously embeds into the solid backbone of the novel the data he gathered over years of personally examining court files, witness and defendant statements, expert reports, security-camera footage, police radio transcripts, and thousands of pages of legal documents. This novel is a powerful work of inquiry, revealing that what was told on television screens and what was actually experienced that night—in the field and inside command centers—belong to two completely different worlds. As fictional characters Asim, Özgür, Bora, Ersin, and others carry out their duties in the most sensitive locations of the state, they gradually realize how an unseen plan was woven step by step. And as they do, the reader is drawn into the hidden layers of that night. The unusual movements in the corridors of the General Staff, the orders given and withdrawn at Army Aviation, the chaotic traffic at Akinci Air Base, the irregularities inside the Armored Units, and the thousands of contradictions reflected in the court files… MINIK weaves all these knots masterfully into a fictional narrative—without avoiding documentation and without relying on exaggeration. The novel does not only recount that night; it also questions how the trials established afterward functioned, which statements were ignored, which pieces of evidence contradicted one another, who was allowed to speak—and more importantly, who was not. As the author blends real events with fiction, he does not force the reader to take sides; instead, he reminds that asking questions is a virtue and that the search for justice is a necessity. This work is an effort to revive—through the lens of documented evidence—the voices of soldiers in the field, command-center personnel, pilots, special-forces members, and the hundreds of individuals stationed in the critical hubs where "the ground seemed to lock in place" that night. It stands as one of the rare works that illuminates the obscured aspects of a coup attempt by combining not only emotion but also the cold, unyielding language of court records.